Micron and Memory
The original plan was just to beat the Nasdaq for the year — by past-average backtests that might even let me feed myself independently. Instead, the opening move landed me a doubler. Part of it, credit to the tape: the Nasdaq just printed a one-month rally not seen in who knows how many years, actually allowing a company worth hundreds of billions of USD to double within a single month — genuinely never seen before; part of it is a repricing process in HBM and memory. Honestly, the repricing itself isn’t jaw-dropping; the only dizzying thing is how fast all of it happened.
And yes, I basically rode the whole move from start to finish — I did rotate a chunk into a DRAM ETF midway and probably left about 10 points on the table because of it. No harm done.
Other Moves
Every move right now is chasing strength — a bit risky, but I don’t want to waste a market this good. Cut half my MSFT at a few points of loss; I can shout MSFT at least 600 all day long, but I honestly don’t have that kind of patience anymore. Bought a tiny bit of TQQQ, a little AMZN, and a whole lot of INTC&GOOGL. TQQQ is a good thing. AMZN is basically the MSFT-alike dupe — the fundamentals might even look a bit better than MSFT’s, and at least it won’t get wrongly slaughtered as a software stock haha.
I chased INTC on Tuesday when the scuttlebutt broke about it making up with Apple — the entry wasn’t bad. The main reason I passed on AMD is probably exactly one: fabless. I don’t need a double-fabless position (NVDA); and of course I didn’t buy TSMC either — the avoid-a-single-point-of-failure thinking is perfectly sound, though if TSMC really did get hit by a monster card, tech stocks might as well start digging their own grave. As of now, INTC’s short term should look very pretty, especially when WST broke the official partnership intraday on Friday — one cloud-piercing arrow of a candle, a dead ringer for a meme coin. But I still deeply doubt the intrinsic quality of the American workforce — 18A yield issues and the like. Anyway, it’s already being hyped as America’s Huawei, and I happen to be in this game too, so for now I’ll close my eyes and enjoy.
As for adding GOOGL — that’s an ambush for the developer conference! I refuse to believe Gemini, with YouTube as its multimodal data source, can lose. And in the second half of the year, as SpaceX and Anthropic go public, GOOGL will pocket a nice chunk too. After this add, GOOGL and NVDA are nearly tied for the #1 position — though of course GOOGL’s return rate got diluted into something rather ordinary.
The INTC and TSMC Story
Here’s the little essay I think best captures the current situation — obviously not written by me. Whether this is really the starting point of an era change is extremely doubtful, but TSMC definitely won’t be basking in the spring breeze anymore:
唏嘘一下
INTC 当年毛利 90%。觉得苹果 margin 低，且手机没品牌露出，是个垃圾生意，没谈拢。
这决定性事件的结果是，苹果找 TSMC，Intel 输了先进制成。Intel 没手机需求，就永远无法 justify 巨额 EUV 投入。最后甚至落魄到被 AMD 用 TSMC 先进制成压制。
直到 Pat 决心破釜沉舟，即使没客户，也要硬上，筑巢引凤，差点筑破产。
而这回轮到 TSMC 太傲慢了，一来没有意识到晶圆厂回美国是大国博弈国策，在温和的 Biden 窗口期 Fab 搬迁拖拖拉拉；二来成了最牛乙方：苹果给开发费用，但 TSMC 分配先进线程优先考虑自己"儿子" Jensen。
Apple 终于决定敲打下这个把脚翘到桌子上的长工，顺便配合下美国战略。不但在 Intel 开发，还顺便把给 TSMC 的下一代研发费也分一部分给 Intel。
现在 Intel 成了那个听话的小工了，LBT 还乖乖请了 Trump 儿子当 FA。小 Trump 在欧洲路演自己基金到处吹嘘自己持仓 INTC。
一个时代如此开始，一个时代如此落幕。
(Rough gist: Intel at 90% gross margin once dismissed Apple as a low-margin, no-brand-exposure garbage business and walked away — Apple went to TSMC, Intel lost the leading edge, and without phone demand could never justify its massive EUV bet, ending up suppressed by AMD on TSMC silicon — until Pat bet the whole company anyway, nearly bankrupting himself. Now the arrogance has rotated to TSMC: slow-walking the fab move to America and prioritizing its “son” Jensen for advanced nodes, so Apple decided to whip the hired hand lounging with its feet on the table — developing at Intel and splitting next-gen R&D fees with it. An era begins this way, and an era ends this way.)
Mm, my private fund’s performance has once again attracted a violent top-up from the family. Maybe it’s time to consider asset allocation diversity.
Stay tuned for more updates on my trading journey!
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