Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Back to today

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

Judging Tower Semiconductor ($TSEM) by how advanced its chip process is misses what its chips are for. Skeptics often set Tower's older 65 nm process against the more advanced processes at TSMC ($TSM). That yardstick suits logic chips, which are judged on transistor density. It does not suit the analog chips Tower makes for optics. 1. In an optical engine, the analog front-end is the circuitry that drives the laser and reads the returning light. It needs speed, linearity and power efficiency, not maximum transistor density. 2. Tower's strength is its silicon-germanium BiCMOS processes. They have long dominated the merchant market for these laser-driver and receiver chips because they deliver high performance without the most advanced CMOS logic. 3. A less noticed strength is hybrid bonding. Co-packaged optics needs an electronic chip bonded reliably onto a photonic one. Tower already runs mature, high-yield hybrid bonding for stacked image sensors in high-end phones, where a signal-processing chip is bonded onto a light-sensing chip. A close technical parallel, already at volume. The limit: if the electronic chip has to take on more complex signal processing, such as clock recovery or adaptive equalization, TSMC's advanced FinFET processes do offer real advantages in power and integration. Different foundries may end up making different parts of the system. So Tower's position in optics rests on silicon-germanium and photonic process expertise, not on advanced logic.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Bro, $AMZN semi ETF portfolio is probably going to end up more compelling than what $NVDA owns... Today Amazon signed a $49.8M private placement into PCB maker Gold Circuit Electronics (2368). So now Amazon has ownership/warrants in: - $AAOI - Alchip - $MRVL (Celestial) - $ALAB - $CRDO - $JBL - $FLEX - $STM - $CBRS - $GNRC - $FN - TD SYNNEX - $QCOM - Gold Circuit Electronics And others.. If we look at the private placement amount for GCE in speciifc, it's like .36% of the company... Kinda small financially, meaningful strategically. Esp. since there were claims that GCE supplies ASIC-server PCBs to the four major hyperscaler CSPs... Regardless it's pretty funny to see Amazon to Nvidia start to own all the worlds leading companies. Since Amazon has exposure to the entire supply chain like PCBs now, optical fabric with Celestial, lasers with $AAOI, assembly from $FN to $JBL, ASIC partners like $QCOM / ALchip.

Investor Letters

All letters

Vicor Update, Part Two

Vicor uses ITC exclusion-order cases to license power-module patents, with published royalty multipliers rising from 1.0x before filing to…

VICR $10B
CV's Substack 4 clicks

Expert Call | Nebius

Nebius’s 1 GW annual active-capacity target from 2027 is realistic, according to a former product manager, with greenfield data centers…

NBIS $56B
P Equity Research 4 clicks
PTRN · short

Pattern Group INC

Pattern Group is a fragile consumer business targeted on the short side.

PTRN $3B
Value Investors Club 3 clicks

“Is Ralph Lauren Still Relevant?”

Ralph Lauren’s 2017 CEO change put Patrice Louvet in charge of reversing nine quarters of same-store sales declines and restoring the…

RL $22B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

Deep Dive: Inter & Co

Inter & Co, Brazil’s second-largest neobank, grew over 20% with controlled delinquencies and 15% book-value compounding while trading at…

INTR $3B
Capitalist Letters 7 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 107

YouTube 4

Blogs 17

Seeking Alpha 49 of 231

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

88 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.