Rafael 🇵🇹🌐

@HedgieMarkets Hello, @HedgieMarkets, how areyou doing? Appreciate this post, as usual. Btw, it seems your newsletter subscription button is not working 👇 Could you see if you can fix it? It would be nice to start receiving it 👍

🦔Amazon reported Q2 earnings. Revenue was $200.6 billion, up 20%. AWS grew 37%, its fastest in 18 quarters. Net income was $62.6 billion, but $53.4 billion of that came from Anthropic investment gains. Strip those out and net income was about $9.2 billion. Free cash flow went negative, an outflow of $7.6 billion versus an inflow of $18.2 billion a year ago. Capex was $53.1 billion in one quarter. Long-term debt nearly doubled in six months, from $65.6 billion to $128.9 billion. My Take This is the third earnings report this week where Anthropic paper gains did the heavy lifting on the headline number. Alphabet, Microsoft, and now Amazon all booked billions from the same investment. Remove those gains across all three and the operating picture looks a lot less impressive. I think investors are going to start discounting those gains the same way they learned to discount stock-based compensation a decade ago, because unrealized markups don't service debt or cover capex. Amazon borrowed $82 billion in new long-term debt this year while free cash flow went negative. That confirms what I wrote on Monday, that Amazon is covering this buildout with debt, not cash from the business. AWS at 37% growth is impressive and that business alone justifies serious investment. But $53 billion of capex in a single quarter is a bet that AWS demand not only continues at this pace but accelerates enough to justify the borrowing. Q3 guidance came in at 9-12%, half this quarter's rate, and that acceleration hasn't arrived yet. The Fed held rates yesterday with three members who voted to hike, and Amazon just doubled its debt load heading into that. Hedgie🤗

... 🤨🫤

🎯😂

@JG_Nuke 🤣

The demand is insane and so we're lowering prices 80%.

@ghoolverto @MenchOsint I don't rule that out at all. But have you seen them already?

@RafaelDifferent @MenchOsint IRGC has high-res images. Thus confirmed 3 were completely destrpyed

⭕⚡️BIG: At least one U.S. fighter jet was hit on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan, according to low-res Sentinel-2 imagery. This morning IRGC claimed to have destroyed 3 x F-35s and damaged more.

Wow. And Vance had the nerve to call the EU Orwellian 👎

@MenchOsint I guess this would make a lot of sense, given the recent Netanyahu visit. They seem to be missing a false flag or some sort of emergency to impose marshal law or something, in order shore up their domestic front, and have casus belli for much harder strikes.

@MenchOsint 🤔🤔🤔 x.com/RafaelDifferen…

I didnt see a statement from Saudi Arabia, but UAE just released one condemning the "renewed" attacks originating from Iraq attempting to target Saudi Oil Facilities... odd.

@MenchOsint Unimportant slight detail

Funny how neither Reuters nor Bloomberg mentioned this detail. reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Qatar has sent its first shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz in weeks... using the Iran-designated shipping corridor ! Interesting development, few weeks ago they were still using the US-backed corridor.

@MoloWarMonitor @afxxm49 Isn't Trump screwed domestically? Provided he doesn't have a solid plan for a coup or for implementing marshal law? Perhaps a false flag could finally be at play?

@afxxm49 We will find out in the coming hours, I believe there will be no external diplomatic attempt to save the situation this time.

According to my sources, there will be a significant escalation in U.S. attacks against Iran tonight. As President Trump stated a few hours ago, the response to the "surprise" Iranian attack on Jordan will be very harsh, in my view, it will differ greatly from the limited waves of attacks seen in recent weeks. Indeed, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place today, Israeli PM Netanyahu met with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Washington, likely to discuss the plan to be implemented in the coming days. I therefore expect a somewhat broader wave of attacks tonight, though the true escalation will likely begin in a few days, once Netanyahu has returned to Israel.

👇 #ExposeElonMask

@rocinante2d @HormuzLetter Bingo 🎯 Prof. Izadi really is the best representative of your people in my opinion: the most knowledgeable, balanced and not corrupt 👌

@RafaelDifferent @HormuzLetter x.com/Mark4XX/status… x.com/Mark4XX/status…

BREAKING: Iran has directly rejected any new passage or route through the Strait of Hormuz, demanding potential talks to only proceed if the Strait is addressed first to affirm it remains under Iran's full control, frozen funds release second, and the nuclear issue last, per Al Arabiya.

@chiefdoomer @MenchOsint But Araghchi is a cuck

@MenchOsint Zelenskyy literally celebrated the attack and mentioned Iran. 😒

Iran's Araghchi says he was assured by Ukrainian FM that the attack on the Iranian ship was unintentional. "There must be restitution for losses." he added. Sounds like there is no more threat of Ballistic Missile strike against Ukraine.

@MenchOsint 💯, lol. This one nice too x.com/i/status/20821…

"Iran begging to make a deal ... head for an eye..."

Kheili mamnoon for taking the time to write such a detailed reply 🙏 I would like to reply with some detail as well, but am in the middle of a few things, so I wished to just quickly thank you, and to also use the opportunity to ask: do you have a Signal account, or in some other messaging app? (Signal seems to be the best)

That's a really great question and really great framing. I'll give you my (and I believe *the*) honest take. Corruption amongst elites is real. It's not western propaganda. But the reason for it is structural i.e. sanctions, that have forced black market activity which in turn provides the perfect conditions for parallel self-dealing economic networks. It's not that I don't condemn it, I just know that the root cause is western intervention and economic hegemon cruel sanctions regimes (plenty of other examples it's not just Iran). I'll always condemn US before I do the opportunists and bandits among the state apparatus. In any case fixing it is not straightforward - very many powerful interests benefit. What is painful is when you see political families preaching 'resistance' while they launder money in Dubai. I would say though that during these hard times I have heard of many examples of sharing the proceeds on the part of elites towards citizens suffering from economic hardship, and that's not just good to hear but a tribute to the strength of Iranian culture togetherness and civic sense. Most other nations you wouldn't never see that. The Amini period was a difficult pill to swallow for the younger generation. It resulted in coercion rather than dignity and was ultimately counterproductive. The line between domestic legitimacy and external independence revolutionary resistance principles is the natural by-product of ideological fanaticism. My view is that ideology is dangerous; smarter to know the other sides argument better than they do rather than your own better than they do. A more reformist approach rather than the morality police would have been better damage control. To question of non-radical resistance, yes of course it does exist very much so. Iran has a strong intellectual tradition, maybe too strong, so that everybody argues and considers themselves a leader and sophisticated (like France). Resistance doesn't require maximalist theocratic confrontation, it can mean ideals like economic self-reliance, insubordination, deterrence prioritisation (all espoused by wise Ali Khamenei). One is mostly theatre - compromise is betrayal and that's what's important (!) - while the other is realist, treating autonomy and survival as the actual objective. The latter group includes all levels:- some technocrats, some military, some academics, some analysts/influencers. Izadi is in that camp. He is in the nationalist-intellectual wing more than religious hardliner. I like him a lot. Unfortunately he has been hijacked by the hardliners and Basij ideologues who misappropriate his discourse-led approach to cast him unfairly as a theocrat. Alizadeh is able to sit outside the power structure and analyse with an anti-imperialist lens while also pointing out the contradictions at the elite level. He is independent and doesn't need to be ideological and so include the domestic social package. Herein lies the problem - 'resistance' has been co-opted so that it covers both the real strategic beliefs but also conveniently protects the corrupt self-interests. That's the irony - sanctions strengthen the power structure that leads to corruption. Many of the elite/political families love sanctions; it's their meal ticket. So a non-radical resistance formula is the way forward, and i think that's what you're getting at. It reduces domestic animosity, while pure ideology has not delivered clean governance or across-the-board social consent. Getting there will be the big challenge for Iran society, and success is likely to be a compromise i.e. some degree of controlled reformism. But after events of 2026, anybody expecting reformists to deliver transformation of institutions is being naive. Security first.

👇