$ILMN may be one of the strangest Trump–Xi summit trades hiding in plain sight

I'm regarded, so hear me out. Trump is in China meeting Xi, and he brought a bunch of the boiz with him. Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, Boeing, BlackRock, etc. But the one outlier??? Illumina. $ILMN. A gene sequencing company with a market cap that looks hilariously tiny next to basically everyone else in that group. Unless I’m missing someone, ILMN looks like the smallest public-company name in the delegation by a mile. So why the hell is Illumina’s CEO there? Here’s my theory: China asked for him. Illumina got put on China’s Unreliable Entities List. China later eased the outright equipment ban, but ILMN is still stuck on the list, and sales there are still a major unresolved problem for the company. Now suddenly the CEO is in the room during a Trump/Xi summit where U.S. companies are clearly trying to get China business wins. Illumina’s official comment was basically corporate-speak about being “honored” to join and “shape the future of precision medicine,” but come on. They are the only life sciences/medtech CEO in the delegation while Big Pharma is nowhere to be found. That feels specific. Could China have wanted Illumina at the table because removing them from the UEL, or giving them some kind of China relief, could be part of the summit/trade package. $ILMN could absolutely fucking soar. Why is the CEO of a relatively small gene sequencing company sitting with Trump’s mega-cap CEO Avengers squad in China right now? My answer: Because Illumina’s China issue is on the menu. Maybe I’m galaxy-braining myself into poverty. Maybe this is the most obvious “nobody is looking here” trade of the summit. Positions: ILMN calls expiring way too soon because I have a gambling problem