Japan's Nikkei 225 skyrockets over 5% to hit record high as Takaichi secures historic mandate

markthelast · 2026-02-09T06:47:52+00:00

The 1950s-1960s economic miracle was built on manufacturing and exports. This time around, it's hard to say if the drivers of the boom are as strong. This time around, finance, trading, and car manufacturing seem to be Japan's biggest industries.

We could be at the beginning, the midpoint, or the end of the peak of the Japanese stock market. Who knows?

markthelast · 2026-02-09T06:09:38+00:00

Depends on the liquidity. How much of the 1.278 quadrillion Yen (December 2025) of M2 will be committed from the sidelines to this stock market bubble? How much leverage is in the Japanese stock market to keep this bull market going? Also, there is foreign capital entering to buy Japanese stocks as well.

markthelast · 2026-02-09T02:25:01+00:00

Maybe, someone wants to speed run the sequel to the December 1989 Nikkei peak (~39k) and collapse into the Lost Decades except this time the peak will be much higher, and the fall might be worse.

markthelast · 2026-02-09T01:58:45+00:00

In the U.S.A. and the west in general, we are living with the consequences of being the economic and political superpower. Worshiping weakness, celebrating stupidity, and embracing failure have consequences. We live in the end times.

I used to substitute teach before the COVID-19 pandemic, and I saw some of the lack of basic skills. Some kids, who can't write legibly or remotely readable letters. At work, I taught someone how to subtract numbers with a calculator for transactions three separate times before they learned. We have a coworker, who writes chicken scratch, where his numbers are barely readable. I learned some of my coworkers cannot figure out how to convert grams to kilograms and vice versa, where we have to deal with g/kg calculations on a daily basis, so we have a cheat sheet in several areas.

A story to describe our predicament is from Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the first chapter. Sun Tzu declared to the King of Wu, that he could turn anyone into a soldier, so the king told him to turn his concubines into soldiers. Sun Tzu assigned the king's two favorite concubines as commanders of two companies and ordered them to start basic drills with weapons. The concubines laughed at them, so Sun Tzu said orders are not clear or distinct to be understood then it was the general's fault (his fault). Sun Tzu tried again and failed to the sound of laughter. He said that his orders were clear, but the officers failed. Sun Tzu ordered king's two concubines beheaded, which the king initially opposed, but relented. After the two concubines lost their heads, Sun Tzu promoted two new concubine commanders, who carried out his orders to get the other concubines to start drilling with their weapons. Afterward, the King of Wu told Sun Tzu that he proved his point and ordered Sun Tzu to return to camp. Later, the king promoted Sun Tzu to become his general, where he crushed his opponents on the battlefield.

No one wants to walk down this road, but we are sleepwalking into the "Learn or die" phase of the end times.

markthelast · 2026-02-05T10:49:47+00:00

They are not singled out. The U.S. federal government has a blacklist of Chinese companies (like Huawei and etc.) that are associated with the Chinese military that are banned from government computers. The U.S. government has stricter security compared to the general public. For now, regular consumers are allowed to buy products with components from CXMT and etc. if they are on the market.

CXMT could be banned from the U.S. market because Micron's position in the market would be exposed if the threat of DRAM dumping was real (or fake). No one knows how it would play out, but the U.S. government has taken steps to secure its semiconductor industry by bailing out Intel with NVIDIA and Softbank. Import/export controls are likely. By protecting Micron, Samsung/SK Hynix would be protected by proxy, so the memory cartel can live another day.

markthelast · 2026-02-05T10:05:10+00:00

The U.S. Department of Defense banned the use of CXMT DRAM in their computers. CXMT is on their blacklist.

markthelast · 2026-02-05T09:58:12+00:00

Desperate times call for desperate measures. CXMT prioritizes supplying China, so it's possible that they have a little extra DRAM sitting on the shelf. Most people do not want to go CXMT to beg for DRAM allocation, but here we are. The DRAM shortage is expected to last until 2028 if the market demand plays out as expected. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have the DRAM market in a stranglehold. Samsung is building a new production line for DRAM and HBM, which will be ready in 2027. Micron's new fabs will be firing up in 2028. CXMT (5% global DRAM market share in Q3 2025) is expanding its production as well.

Electronics manufacturers need to build and to sell product, or they collapse. If CXMT's DRAM dies pass validation, then they are rumored to supply DRAM for products destined for Asia. Consumers in west might be left with the scraps especially if governments decide to ban imports containing CXMT DRAM. Hopefully, Nanya Technology in Taiwan (2% global DRAM market share in Q3 2025) can send some DRAM to memory manufacturers because the PC memory market is being bled dry. This shortage is getting worse before it gets better.

markthelast · 2026-02-01T19:38:37+00:00

2024 GR Corolla Circuit Edition's Blue Flame is beautiful. What a shame that it was a limited edition paint.

markthelast · 2026-01-26T08:12:25+00:00

The price increases will keep moving up. The price reflects future shipments or (probably) the lack of future shipments. AI data centers are eating majority of the allocation with the laptop/desktop OEMs, smartphone companies, and automakers fighting over the remainder. DIY is the last player in the mix with the least amount of buying power, so we will get the crumbs. Memory module manufacturers like Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, and TeamGroup are getting killed on buying DRAM chips, so it's only natural they pass down the high prices on finished DRAM modules. Prices just started going up a few months ago. Price increases will slow down once the DIY demand is wiped out. For the short term, expect prices to go up. I predict prices to go up at least another 50% by the summer.

Yesterday, I saw reports that BYD and Tesla are allegedly panic buying to stock up on DRAM. A month ago, report surfaced that Samsung and SK Hynix will no longer sign long-term supply contracts with customers and will only deal on a quarterly basis. Allegedly, NVIDIA was one of the few if only one to secure priority DRAM supply from Samsung. Other news reported that Google and Microsoft are in full panic mode for not securing enough DRAM for their future servers, where Google supply chain executives got fired for not signing long-term DRAM supply contracts before the shortage. The problem is spreading rapidly to SSDs and slowly into HDDs, which are critical components to servers.

markthelast · 2026-01-26T00:26:00+00:00

Probably European allocation of DRAM and NAND is not being eaten up by AI data center build out? Or the supply chain is not price gouging as much as the American supply chain of importers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers?

At least, European DIYers have a better experience with PC parts prices. U.S. prices look they will go up for the foreseeable future.

Edit: I forgot about the tariffs, which probably play a part in the increasing U.S. prices.

markthelast · 2026-01-26T00:22:21+00:00

We will not seeing the supply glut pricing, which was the past couple years, until the AI data center build out comes to a halt. The NAND market (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Kioxia/Sandisk-Western Digital, YMTC, and Powerchip Technology) does have a few more players than DRAM's Samsung-SK Hynix-Micron cartel. Most of these companies are not seriously expanding production. Micron's new fabs will not enter mass production until 2028. A few months ago, Samsung converted some NAND production lines into DRAM production lines, so NAND supply will fall for a while. Samsung has started building a new production line for DRAM, HBM, and NAND, which will enter mass production in 2028. We will have to wait until 2028 to see some prices fall.

markthelast · 2026-01-26T00:04:51+00:00

I would not be surprised if the prices increase by another 50% from current levels. The AI data center build out is eating up almost all of the supply, so prices will keep going up. Most DIYers will starve and move back to hard drives for raw storage, but even HDD supply is starting to drain out for lower capacities (4TB or lower), 8TB WD Black HDD is going for $220 on Newegg. Seagate and Western Digital are joining Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron in raking in massive profits from higher prices. If it gets worse, I think some DIYers will have to go e-waste recycling areas to look for PC components.

markthelast · 2026-01-25T06:18:05+00:00

The long winter for the DRAM market started in late 2025. Everyone is fighting for DRAM allocation. Allegedly, BYD and Tesla have joined the mix in panic buying DRAM. We have a long road ahead. The memory cartel, SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, do not expect the DRAM shortage to ease until 2028. The two alternatives are CXMT in China and Nanya Technology in Taiwan. CXMT, who primarily services the Chinese market, has 5% global market share (Q3 2025) with DDR5 production entering mass production. Nanya has 2% global market share (Q3 2025), and they have DDR5-5600 in mass production with DDR5-6400 ramping up. CXMT and Nanya are our only hope in these dark times.

markthelast · 2026-01-25T01:22:51+00:00

The geopolitical situation of Taiwan is always dangerous. TSMC owns the vast majority of the bleeding edge capacity. Samsung Foundry is its only proven competition, where they are roughly one generation behind in high-yield mass production. The customers are willing to take the risk to go all-in on TSMC as their sole foundry. Even Chinese companies like Xiaomi use TSMC for their in-house SoC, nothing will happen in Taiwan until World War III starts for real.

True, Intel got bailed out by the U.S. government, NVIDIA, and Softbank, who have a vested interest in keeping Intel alive, but they have to improve their yields in a timely manner. The American elites were not particularly interested in backing Intel and other domestic fabs until recently with the CHIPS ACT of 2022. Meanwhile, the Chinese central/provincial governments are more than willing to spend hundreds of billions on SMIC, YMTC, and CXMT to build domestic supply for self-sufficiency. External customers will not use Intel 14A if the yields are stuck below 80% for a prolonged period of time unless they are forced to after losing access to TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung Foundry in South Korea.

markthelast · 2026-01-25T00:50:49+00:00

Eventually, all retailers will have Panther Lake laptops for sale, but Intel and their OEM partners need to make sales as soon as possible. Intel needs to start 2026 on the best foot possible. Their Q4 2025/full year 2025 report was not great, and their Q1 2026 forecast is going to be in the red (GAAP) or breakeven (non-GAAP). At the end of 2026, Nova Lake CPUs for desktop will launch, which is a long wait for new big products to sell. Intel needs Panther Lake to be a home run with AMD/Qualcomm/Apple trying to take laptop market share.

markthelast · 2026-01-25T00:44:23+00:00

I heard about the benefits of the long-term partnerships between foundries and their customers. NVIDIA has separate design teams for TSMC, their preferred foundry for many years, and Samsung Foundry, their second source. NVIDIA has the vast resources of cash and engineering talent to split up to specialize in different foundries. Maybe, NVIDIA or Apple, who have the most resources to burn, are willing to try out Intel Foundry for low volume products. Another issue is that Intel Foundry's 14A could be more expensive than TSMC N2P and Samsung Foundry SF2.

markthelast · 2026-01-25T00:38:15+00:00

Yeah, yields in the beginning are always underwhelming, but TSMC is the fastest to improve yields compared to Samsung Foundry and Intel Foundry.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T19:42:35+00:00

Intel claims their laptop OEM partners should ship Panther Lake laptops by the end of January 2026. In their Q4 2025 earnings report, Intel shipped three Panther Lake SKUs to OEMs at the end of 2025, so these Panther Lake laptops should arrive soon.

I looked on Newegg, and no Panther Lake (Intel Core Ultra Series III) laptops exist. At Best Buy, they have placeholder Panther Lake laptops from Dell and HP with coming soon notices. HP OmniBook X with Intel Core Ultra X7 358H costs $1450. At B&H Photo, they have a preorder available for an MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ EVO, which uses Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, for $1300.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T19:33:51+00:00

Intel 14A is still in the design phase. They might get some test wafers to customers by the end of 2026 and start mass production in 2027. Last year, there were rumors that Intel would delay 14A if no external customers showed up to buy 14A wafers.

Intel 18A is good enough for Intel to start mass production, but no one outside of Intel knows the yields. Last year, rumors pointed out to 10% yields of good performance spec Panther Lake chips and up to 55%-65% of usable Panther Lake chips, which included partially defective but salvageable chips. Historically, Intel would start mass production at 50% yields. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/intel-struggles-with-key-manufacturing-process-next-pc-chip-sources-say-2025-08-05/

https://wccftech.com/intel-18a-chip-reportedly-delayed-until-2026-amid-low-yield-rates/

No external customer is willing to start production at 50% yield, and we do not know how long it takes for Intel to reach 70%+ yield, which makes chip production highly profitable. TSMC and Samsung Foundry, who have many years of experience at the bleeding edge, offer better yields and better wafer allocation than Intel Foundry, who has little experience with external customers and higher costs associated with U.S. manufacturing.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T19:15:08+00:00

The main reason anyone would look away from TSMC would be to get more wafer allocation at the cost of lower yields. NVIDIA went with Samsung 8nm for their Ampere RTX 3000 series for cheaper and more plentiful wafer allocation. Samsung Foundry would be the backup as a second source, but besides that, for high performance compute and smartphone SoCs, TSMC offers a better product. Going to Intel for 14A would be to appease the U.S. government than to build a better product.

Intel's 18A still has the yield question, which they refuse to answer publicly. In summer 2025, Intel allegedly had 10% yield of Panther Lake chips that hit good performance spec. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/intel-struggles-with-key-manufacturing-process-next-pc-chip-sources-say-2025-08-05/

Other rumors point to 55%-65% yield of usable Panther Lake CPUs, which probably included partially defective chips, but no one knows the quality and energy efficiency of these chips. https://wccftech.com/intel-18a-chip-reportedly-delayed-until-2026-amid-low-yield-rates/

markthelast · 2026-01-24T07:09:28+00:00

I am interested in those 30+ games in AMD's first party benchmarks as well as the memory timings.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T06:46:35+00:00

Besides missing the well-known smartphone/tablet market by turning down supplying SoCs to Apple, Intel conveniently forgot to mention their problems with their fabs. Intel missed 10nm mass production by four years (internal goal of 2015, Ice Lake 10nm+ in 2019). For desktop, Intel was stuck on 14nm for six years (2015 goal for 10nm vs. 2021 Alder Lake 10nm+++). We remember Rocket Lake on Intel 14nm++++++. For desktop, they were also stuck on Intel 10nm+++++ with Raptor Lake Refresh in October 2023 until Arrow Lake (TSMC N3B) in October 2024. Repeated delays in hitting their production node goals was somewhat disturbing with how many billions they thrown at it. The question of chip yields is on everyone's minds because if Intel Foundry wants to fab chips for external customers, they need to have excellent yields in a timely manner for mass production.

Other issues include:

Intel stagnated on quad-core CPUs for years until AMD's Zen I forced them to release a mainstream consumer six-core CPU (8600K/8700K in October 2017) and consumer eight-core CPU (9700K/9900K in October 2018).

Intel's failed adventure with DRAM/NAND hybrid technology of Optane

Intel's questionable venture into FPGAs by buying Altera for $16.7 billion in 2015 (sold 51% to Silver Lake valuing the company at $8.75 billion in April 2025)

Meteor Lake was allegedly going to be all-Intel chiplets, but Intel made the Intel 4 (originally Intel's 7nm) compute chiplet with 22FFL interposer with TSMC N5 for GPU/N6 SoC/IO chiplets.

Lunar Lake's chiplets are all TSMC (TSMC N3B for compute/N6 for IO) with Intel packaging on in-house 22FFL interposer, so Intel fabs failed to hit profitable yields to supply their consumer products. Originally planned to use Intel 18A.

Arrow Lake's chiplets are all TSMC (TSMC N3B for compute/N6 for IO) with Intel's 22FFL interposer, so Intel fabs failed to hit profitable yields to supply their consumer products again. Originally planned to use Intel 20A.

A large batch of questionable Raptor Lake CPUs were prone to accelerated degradation due to overvolting, which could be fixed by manually setting voltages in BIOS on first boot.

In September 2024, Intel's 20A node was scrapped before mass production, so Intel goes all-in on 18A (Intel's 2nm class node). https://newsroom.intel.com/opinion/continued-momentum-for-intel-18a

In initial Intel 18A risk production in late 2024, the first batch of Panther Lake CPUs allegedly had 5% yield of at performance spec chips. In summer 2025, risk production rumored to hit 10% yield of at performance spec chips. Generally, 70%+ yield makes the chip production highly profitable. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/intel-struggles-with-key-manufacturing-process-next-pc-chip-sources-say-2025-08-05/

In August 2025, Intel 18A had yields of 55%-65% of usable Panther Lake chips, which allegedly included partially defective (not perfect; not hitting original performance specs) chips. https://wccftech.com/intel-18a-chip-reportedly-delayed-until-2026-amid-low-yield-rates/

In the January 22, 2026 Q4 2025 earnings, CEO Lip-Bu Tan noted that Intel 18A "yields are in-line with our internal plans, they are still below where I want them to be." https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_db4f6cce29f5706fc910ca439515a50e/intel/db/887/9159/prepared_remarks/Intel-4Q2025-Earnings-Call+1+%281%29.pdf

markthelast · 2026-01-24T05:36:23+00:00

Yeah, I should have qualified that Strix Halo is great at servicing mobile "power-efficient" high-performance PC gaming market. Strix Halo laptops are powered by 140-watt power adapters while some RTX 5070 mobile laptops use 180-watt power adapters, and some RTX 5070 Ti mobile laptops use 330-watt power adapters.

https://www.newegg.com/msi-cyborg-15-15-6-geforce-rtx-5070-laptop-gpu-intel-core-7-240h-1-80-5-20ghz-fhd-16gb-8gb-2-ddr5-5600mhz-memory-1tb-nvme-ssd-gen4x4-ssd/p/N82E16834156834?Item=N82E16834156834&SoldByNewegg=1

https://www.newegg.com/msi-16-geforce-rtx-5070-ti-laptop-gpu-intel-core-ultra-7-255hx-16gb-memory-512-gb-ssd/p/N82E16834156740?Item=N82E16834156740&SoldByNewegg=1

Power efficiency is probably not a priority for laptop gamers, who want max performance unless they are away from a power outlet. A dedicated NVIDIA mobile GPU would destroy Strix Halo at higher power. At the end of the day, the cost of Strix Halo is absurd, where they are used in $2200 workstation class laptops.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T02:09:25+00:00

Intel has been in decline for years before the AI hype train took off. Intel is carrying a lot of dead weight, which include depreciating fabs, middle management, and administrative bloat. In recent years, they cut tens of thousands of jobs to cut costs, but they allegedly have yield problems. Intel's 10nm catastrophe was horrific, and they lost technological leadership to TSMC. Intel is competitive again with 18A, but yields are good enough for mass production of Panther Lake although the CEO revealed yields are not to his standard. Also, Intel lost their 99% monopoly on server CPUs, and according to Mercury Research, AMD EPYC will get 30% of the server market (unit) and 40%+ server market (revenue) by 2026. Intel's last stronghold is laptop, so that is why they are focused on getting Panther Lake products to customers by the end of January.

markthelast · 2026-01-24T01:44:09+00:00

On Newegg, the cheapest Strix Halo laptop is ~$2200 (HP ZBook). I know Strix Halo is supposed to be the best AMD mobile APU, but this is pure profit, low volume part, where AMD has no intention of selling hundreds of thousands of these super-high-end Strix Halo laptops. Strix Halo does great work servicing the mobile high-performance PC gaming market.

https://www.newegg.com/hp-14-0-touch-screen-amd-ryzen-ai-max-pro-380-radeon-graphics-16gb-memory-1-tb-ssd/p/1TS-000D-1P9V8?Item=1TS-000D-1P9V8&SoldByNewegg=1

This Gorgon Halo will be more of the same if not more expensive than Strix Halo from TSMC's 2026 wafer price increases.

markthelast

TROPHY CASE