Ferg’s Finds

This is a short weekly email that covers things I’ve found interesting during the week.

Sep 23, 2026

Article

JPMorgan: The Year of the Trojan Fire Horse: China’s imbalanced economy and unrelenting mercantilism

The following chart is well represented in my portfolio via my Chinese tech holdings, which have been frustrating performance-wise.

This was a great overview of Michael Howells framework on liquidity cycles: The Ratio That Drives Everything: Debt, Liquidity and the Financial Cycle.

Podcast/Video

Investing In Cyclical Industries - A Masterclass with Robotti & Co.

Esgian Webinar Floating Rigs: The Rising Tide (My offshore rig sentiment indicator is the number of views Esgian gets, as they’re one of the best offshore data providers and analysts).

Quote

“The basic lesson of history is that human behaviour changes, but human nature does not.”
“Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.”
-Will Durant

I’m a broken record on this point, but if the EU doesn’t pay up for its US LNG, the cargoes can be rerouted to Asia (even mid-voyage). The biggest beneficiaries of this are the LNG portfolio players and thermal coal.

Some great charts illustrating it in this piece: Six Charts to Explain the Global Energy Crisis

Charts

You can track Norway’s hydro levels here, and it looks eerily similar to EU gas storage.

This matters as it’s fine for Germany to sign bilateral solidarity agreements with the likes of Denmark and Austria, but they are all net electricity importers… Net electricity exporters (Norway & France) balance the EU, and any solidarity agreements don’t bind Norway.

China is also on the low side with hydro levels which is supportive on thermal coal demand.

**Three Gorges hydropower output seen weak in Aug despite inflows**

Something I’m Pondering

I’m pondering how it pays to keep an eye on policies I’d initially write off as “too stupid ever to gain traction”. The COVID period taught me never to underestimate policymakers’ stupidity…

Taxing unrealised gains is a current example, which thankfully appears to be repealed in most countries. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gain traction with certain Governments when they get desperate enough.

Or via meme…

Likewise with windfall profit taxes, which I’ve gone over the potential impact on some of the companies I own here: EU ministers to discuss taxing windfall profits of energy companies as oil prices surge.

Take this, for example: a Modern Excess Profit Tax, which falls in the “too stupid ever to gain traction category, but also keep an eye out via AI if it ever does start to show up more frequently, i.e. aim to catch a breakout in policy stupidity and get out of the way in the portfolio.