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This is week 7 of the war with Iran. Bulls predicted the war would be short. They were wrong. Not only is this war not short, but the war just escalated to include a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. That said, oil experts predicted that the global economy would implode by the end of April if the Hormuz remained shut. This is the middle of April and nothing has imploded so far. So who will be right in the end? The next two weeks should be decisive. In Phase 1 there was

The most bizarre aspect about this era isn't just Trump's increasingly deranged mental breakdown culminating in his threat to totally destroy Iranian civilization aka. what I call Level '11' End Times; the other bizarre aspect is how easily the mainstream business media can pretend that Trump's derangement syndrome is not an ongoing market risk factor. According to today's pundits, just like the trade war last year, this totally unexpected Iran "detour" is merely a speed bump

If you told anyone thirty years ago that the U.S. deficit would be 6% of GDP, the AI bubble would be bigger than the DotCom bubble, stock valuations would be at all time high, consumer sentiment at a 50 year low, the Strait of Hormuz is shut, the U.S. is waging an ongoing trade war against the entire world, and Donald Trump was president, anyone would think that investors would be panicking. But they're not. All of that risk can be easily swept away by simply ignoring it. The

Circus Donny is about to find out who is really in charge around here. In my last blog post "Now For The Main Event" , I surmised that Trump was about to begin an imminent ground invasion of Iran, based upon the escalating build-up of ground troops. That scenario is still very much on the table, however Wednesday night Trump raged in his address to the nation that he is planning to bomb Iran into the "Stone Ages". Iran has made it equally clear they will retaliate by destroyi

Writing Tuesday morning March 31st, another huge short covering rally is taking place on the optimism that the war will be ending "soon". Over the past several weeks we've seen this movie at least a dozen times, however, bulls keep believing it over and over again. Trump's goal with all of his massively contradictory messages was to lull Iran into a state of complacency while he built up ground forces in the region. However, the net effect of these "hopeful" message was to ro

This marks the end of week four of the U.S./Israel war on Iran, with no end in sight. Clearly Trump totally underestimated Iran's will and ability to go toe-to-toe in an ever-escalating war, as Iran has shown no sign of capitulation. The U.S. troop build-up continues in the background as Trump attempts to intimidate Iran into surrender. Both sides are far apart in their negotiation demands, because Trump's standard negotiation tactic of "escalating to de-escalate" is backfiri

Trump has been building up troops in the Middle East in order to prepare for his Plan B ground attack. We don't know exactly where ground troops will be deployed, but the highest probability target remains Kharg Island. Nevertheless, it doesn't matter where U.S. troops land, because the market reaction will be the same: Panic, over the idea that this war could go on for several months or longer, and in the process implode the global economy. Markets know that there are only a

This is now week four of the Iran war with no end in sight. The pattern of the war has stayed fairly consistent from the start - the U.S. and Israel pound Iran incessantly with their air superiority while Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz with their superior tenacity. The strategic miscalculation the U.S. military made was believing that after having attacked Iran last June that they can just show up whenever they want and start carpet bombing the country without any consequen

The consumer is imploding due to high oil prices and the Fed can't do anything about it because of high oil prices. This isn't "stagflation" as so many bulls want to believe - this is obliteration... Yesterday, we got the news that recession will be unavoidable if oil prices remain at these levels for even a few more weeks despite the fact that the U.S. has energy independence. Why? Because oil is a global commodity, therefore a supply shortfall in the rest of the world trans

I had to take some time off of posting on Twitter because my mind had melted down at the amount of bullshit streaming out of the Trump Administration regarding this ONGOING Iran clusterfuck. Trump's latest demands that the world now clean up the gargantuan mess that he made would make a petulant three year old blush. But I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of wartime propaganda again. So below I will focus on markets: Despite the obvious risks, Wall Street pundits remain

"Bin Laden wanted to draw the United States into Afghanistan, which was already being called the graveyard of empires...Bin Laden caught America at a vulnerable and unfortunate moment in its history" Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower (p. 272). What Bin Laden started, Iran is finishing. The U.S. and Israel are attacking Iran for the second time in less than a year, which has given the Islamic regime zero incentive to stand down in another fake ceasefire. Trump has painted hi

At the Monday open in Asia global oil prices sky-rocketed to Ukraine war highs (see second graph below) and the overnight futures imploded. However by Monday afternoon in the U.S. Trump was getting worried so he declared "victory" on the war in Iran and said it would be over "soon". Markets sky-rocketed on the news and oil tanked. However, this morning (Tuesday) the IRGC stated what anyone could predict except Trump and the Wall Street Journal, which is that they have no inte