What was said: Q1 2026 was defined by three forces arriving simultaneously: capital rotating out of US tech, AI shifting from tailwind to margin compressor, and a single chokepoint closing that forced a rethink of energy costs, trade routes and supply chain reliability.

What made it unusual was the sequencing. Each shock landed before the previous had been priced, creating a sustained gap between sentiment, price action and business reality. The market's verdict on individual positions often bore little relation to what was happening inside the businesses. Strong operators fell on sector sentiment; weak ones held on technicals before breaking down. The quarter forced a hard question: whether a thesis was being tested or whether it was broken.

By March, the stress was no longer theoretical. Private credit was wobbling, consumer confidence rolling over, and the assumptions embedded in equity multiples — cheap energy, open trade, stable software margins — were all repricing at once. The quarter closed in chaos, but price action began to suggest the marginal seller was tiring.

Why we give a ****: Q1 showed what is easy to state but hard to hold through: structural theses take time, and the market will test them before it rewards them.

The split that emerged by quarter-end now defines the landscape into Q2. Companies tied to physical reality - commodities, defence, infrastructure - corrected shallowly and held structure. Dip buyers stayed aggressive. These proved to be trends, not sentiment spikes. On the other side, businesses reliant on software margins, licence models and stable consumer demand face something more structural than a tough quarter. Whether those models can be rebuilt quickly enough remains unanswered.

The geopolitical overlay sharpens the picture. The diplomatic framework around Hormuz looks deliberately conditional - a pause designed to buy time, not resolve the tension. The deeper risk is not immediate supply disruption but whether the standoff pushes parties toward a parallel economic system the existing order cannot absorb. If that crystallises, it is not a quarterly story.

The implication is consistent across the stack. The physical layer - energy, minerals, industrial capacity - is repricing upward as the software layer faces compression from below. Capital continues to move toward what is harder to replicate and slower to rebuild. If the geopolitical tail risk resolves faster than expected, the repricing could be violent. If it doesn't, the case for hard assets only strengthens. Either way, patience and positioning are the same thing.

Relevant stocks: EuroNext: SU (Schneider), NYSE:MT (ArcelorMittal), WSE: KGH (KGHM), NYSE: NEM (Newmont), NASDAQ: ASPI (ASP Isotopes), LSE:CNE (Capricorn Energy), LSE:AET (Afentra), LSE:HBR (Harbour Energy), LSE:BP (British Petroleum), SSE:600938 (CNOOC), LSE:KIST (Kistos Holdings), LSE:BAB (Babcock)

Stock of the week: The Arbitrage the Market Couldn't See

CoinShares entered Q1 as a detractor and exited as the most instructive position in the portfolio. The Stockholm-listed shares fell 36%, dragged by forced sellers ahead of the delisting and bitcoin's broader underperformance. Trading at SEK 80, the market was pricing a $560m company with $400m of cash. The discount was structural, not fundamental.

The deal mechanics were never in doubt. Cash on the balance sheet had grown north of $400m, forward pre-tax earnings sat at circa $110m, and SEC approval was secured by mid-March. The gap between price and value was a product of re-listing mechanics, not a verdict on the business.

On April 1st, CoinShares completed its Nasdaq relisting as Odysseus Holdings. Each Stockholm share converted at 1.8x, closing a near-100% valuation gap in a single session. Original holders received approximately 107% on their entry cost, a genuine doubling of invested capital. A single calendar day separated a 36% quarterly loss from a greater than 100% total return.

The lesson is not about crypto. It is about structure. When price and value decouple for mechanical rather than fundamental reasons, the gap closes. It always does.

View Coinshares investment case

🌍 Next-Generation Geothermal: Drilling for Heat Instead of Hydrocarbons

Why Watch? A former Shell executive makes the case that a century of oil and gas drilling expertise — horizontal wells, fracking, pinpoint subsurface precision — is directly transferable to geothermal energy, without the learning curve. The Earth holds 50,000 times more energy than all oil and gas reserves, it is always on, and it is clean. Unlike wind and solar, it works regardless of weather, and can store their excess energy too. Wells are already being drilled in Texas. The prize, if costs reach parity, is meeting the majority of global energy demand by 2050 using the workforce and infrastructure already in place. Watch here.

🚢 Inside the Strait: A Field Report from the World's Most Consequential Waterway

Why Read? Everyone is watching the Strait of Hormuz from a distance. This piece gets closer — literally. One analyst crossed into Oman, hired a speedboat and got eighteen miles from the Iranian coast while drones flew overhead, before being intercepted and detained on the way back. The result is a ground-level account of how the waterway is actually functioning, who is deciding what moves and what doesn't, and why the standard satellite imagery and Pentagon briefings are missing half the picture. A rare piece of original reporting on the most consequential chokepoint in the world right now. Read here.

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Equity Stories in 90 Seconds

VEON Ltd (VEON US, c.$3.2bn mkt cap)

A Nasdaq-listed digital operator serving 205m users across frontier markets.Every day has 1,440 minutes. Most telecoms only care about a fraction of them. VEON decided to own the rest.

In Pakistan, its platform processes over 14 trillion PKR a year. In Ukraine, it kept the country connected during a war. Digital revenues surged 62.5% in a single year.

This is not a telco story. It is a digital platform story playing out in markets the world has barely noticed.

We’ve broken it down into a short video you can watch in under 90 seconds. Watch the video here

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