Independent Markets Research · Est. 2022
Financial
Gurkha
Equity valuations, macro analysis, and market coverage — researched, written, and filed from Wall Street, New York.
Reported from Wall Street. Published to the world.
New York City
Featured Analysis
09/16/2026 · Kanchan
Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rates to 3.75%–4%. Twelve Votes, Zero Dissents.
The Federal Open Market Committee raised the target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter point to 3.75 percent to 4 percent — unanimously. In July, three voters dissented to hike and were outvoted. Seven weeks later, nobody dissented. We go through the 12–0 vote, what "expanding at a solid pace" actually commits the Fed to, every line of the Implementation Note, and what changed word by word from the July statement.
Read the analysis →
The Ledger
All articles →
09/11/2026
When Markets Turn Volatile, Can Machine Learning See the Risk Coming?
ML-LiqVaR combines GARCH volatility modelling, Extreme Value Theory and gradient-boosted quantile regression to forecast one-day-ahead Value-at-Risk on US equities. Across 8,072 out-of-sample observations from eight S&P 500 constituents between 2018 and 2024, it delivered the closest 99% calibration and the lowest average pinball loss of five models tested — but its improvement over GARCH-EVT was not statistically significant at the 5% level. This is what the paper found, what it did not find, and why the second half matters as much as the first.
09/04/2026
The State of US Energy: Crude Production, Petroleum refining, the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, and Why Nobody Will Build a Refinery
A full read of the US crude complex as of the week ending August 28, 2026. Domestic production is at 13.86 million b/d, refiners are running at 98% of a capacity base that shrank again last year, Cushing is scraping tank bottoms, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since 1983, and the diesel crack just printed above $100 a barrel. Compiled from EIA weekly data, Bloomberg terminal research, and reporting on why the record margins are not buying a single new refinery.
08/30/2026
US National Accounts, Gross Domestic Income Components, Fiscal Deficits, and Housing: Insights from Bloomberg Terminal Research
A comprehensive macroeconomic study of US Gross Domestic Income breakdown, 70-year wage share trends, housing inventory anomalies, mortgage rates, budget balances, and global superpower comparisons.
08/12/2026
July 2026 CPI: Headline Inflation Says 3.4%. The Last Three Months Say 0.8%.
Consumer prices rose 0.1% in July and 3.4% over the year, with core at 2.5%. But annualise the last three months and headline inflation is running at 0.8% and core at 1.6% — below target. The 3.4% is a March energy shock that has not yet rolled out of the base. We go through the energy component in detail, show why the shelter number is quieter than it looks, and cross-reference the EIA outlook to ask whether record US oil and gas output is producing healthy or unhealthy emissions growth.
08/06/2026
Sandisk reports $9.8 billion in Q426 revenue
Sandisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $20.2 billion, up 175%, and swung from a $1.6 billion loss to $11.4 billion of net income. Datacenter revenue grew 437%. Cost of revenue actually fell year over year while sales rose 372%. Eighteen months after being spun out of Western Digital and written down for impairment, the company that invented flash storage is printing a 77% net margin. Here is what the filing says — and why memory investors should read the cycle warning carefully.
08/04/2026
Caterpillar's First $20 Billion Quarter: A Record $72 Billion Backlog, Raised Guidance, and the AI Boom in Yellow Iron
CAT posted $20.5 billion in sales and revenues in Q2 2026 — the first $20 billion quarter in company history — raised full-year guidance to mid-to-high teens growth, and disclosed a record $72 billion backlog with Power & Energy customers ordering as far out as 2030. Power generation sales grew 29% on data center demand. Here is the full breakdown, from the release and the call.
From the Street
We walk the blocks we write about.
Financial Gurkha operates from New York City. Most articles are researched and written from Wall Street and the surrounding Financial District — on the ground, at least twice a week.
On the doorstep of 14 Wall Street
Wall St, Financial District
Morning coffee before the open
Financial District
Street art on the subway map
Lower Manhattan
“Markets reward the prepared. We do the preparation in public.”
Financial Gurkha · New York City · Est. 2022