InvestInsight

We're InvestInsight - the social portfolio tracker. 📊 Track your investments across brokers 👀 See what real investors actually hold 🎯 Make smarter decisions together Sign up free: investinsight.io #investing #portfoliotracker #fintech

Oil hits $116, Treasury floats SPR release to ease prices, and JPMorgan notes traders fleeing to crypto DEXs for 24/7 oil exposure. Wild that in 2026 the traditional markets close at 5pm while the world burns and retail needs Hyperliquid to hedge their petrol bill. Legacy finance had decades to build always-on infrastructure and didn't bother. Now a DEX with better uptime than the NYSE is the serious option.

HSBC planning to cut 20,000 jobs - 10% of workforce - after CFO spent months saying AI would handle cost reduction. Turns out AI doesn't just replace tasks, it gives management cover to accelerate headcount cuts they already wanted to make. Every bank will follow this playbook.

Russia didn't have to lift a finger. Their competitors' infrastructure is burning, oil prices are spiking, and every sanction built over three years is suddenly irrelevant because the market needs every barrel it can get. Sometimes the best strategy is just watching your enemies fight.

The war on Iran is now an 'unintended US gift' to Vladimir Putin, given higher energy prices and greater demand for Russian oil, according to Financial Times editorial board.

@spectatorindex Europe spent three years diversifying away from Russian gas and ended up just as dependent on Qatari LNG flowing through a single chokepoint. Now that chokepoint is a war zone. Every diversification strategy led straight back to someone else's bottleneck.

BREAKING: European gas prices up 32%

@spectatorindex Toll collection on an international shipping lane. Piracy with a receipt. Every tanker that reroutes around the Cape adds weeks to delivery and millions in cost. European energy bills are about to get significantly worse and summer hasn't even started.

BREAKING: Iran is considering collecting tolls from ships that pass through the Strait of Hormuz

@WatcherGuru $116 and climbing. Two days ago we were debating whether $100 was sustainable. Nobody's having that conversation anymore. Summer driving season plus active supply destruction keeps repricing higher until someone brokers a ceasefire.

JUST IN: Brent crude oil surges to $116 following strikes on oil refineries and gas plants in the Middle East.

@spectatorindex Kuwait yesterday, Aramco's Yanbu refinery today. Iran is methodically hitting every alternative export route since Hormuz shut down. If Yanbu goes offline, Saudi basically can't ship crude. $116 oil might look cheap by Friday.

BREAKING: Reports of fire at Saudi Aramco refinery

@KobeissiLetter 16 months straight. China isn't buying gold because they like shiny things - they watched Russia's dollar reserves get frozen in 2022 and decided to build an insurance policy. The timing with Hormuz and the yuan settlement push is not a coincidence either.

China’s demand for gold remains robust: China officially bought 1 tonne of gold in February, marking the 16th consecutive monthly purchase. Over this period, China has acquired 50 tonnes of gold. By comparison, in 2022-2024, the buying streak lasted for 18 straight months. As a result, China’s total gold reserves are up to a record 2,309 tonnes, or 10% of foreign exchange reserves. The percentage has DOUBLED over the last 20 months. At the current gold price of ~$5,000/oz, China now owns ~$371 billion of gold. China is holding more gold than ever.

@KobeissiLetter Retail piling $70B into gold ETFs while institutions quietly sell. Classic distribution pattern. Gold might still run on war premiums but when the geopolitical dust settles, guess who's left holding the expensive bag.

Wall Street is selling gold and silver to retail investors: Since Q2 2025, retail investors have bought +$70 billion in gold ETFs. These purchases have more than TRIPLED over the last 6 months. Over the same period, institutional investors have sold -$1 billion with outflows accelerating in late January after gold prices crashed -20% in just 3 days. Meanwhile, silver ETFs have recorded +$10 billion in retail purchases over the last year. Over the same time period, institutions have sold -$200 million. Retail investors are all-in on precious metals.

@spectatorindex Kuwait refinery fire while Hormuz is already restricted. Asian importers must be panicking - Japan gets most of its crude through that strait. We've crossed from price speculation into actual supply disruption territory.

BREAKING: Fire at Kuwait oil refinery after Iranian drone attack

Iran hit Qatar's LNG facilities overnight. Brent jumped to $114, European gas up 30%. The Fed held rates yesterday because of inflation worries. Powell probably woke up to this news and immediately regretted not having more room to cut.

@BenGrahamUK Its insane how much is budgeted these for projects. Guarantee you'd find companies flocking at the opportunity to sign this contract for 10% of that amount.

Britain is spending £460 million building a 60 metre wildlife bridge over the A417 dual carriageway in Gloucestershire, for animals to cross. That’s a £7.6 million per metre deer crossing. It would be funny if it wasn't our tax payer money being wasted, meanwhile real problems remain unfunded.

@cryptorover Half a trillion wiped out and the Fed just said 'no cuts, deal with it.' Market wanted a safety net and got told to sort itself out. Brutal gap between where investors thought 2026 was heading six months ago and where we actually are.

💥BREAKING: $500,000,000,000 has been wiped out of the US stock market today.

@zerohedge Someone spent real money betting the Fed has to emergency cut within weeks. Either they know something about a credit event nobody's talking about yet, or they're hedging a position that's about to blow up. That's not a trade you put on for fun.

Buying in SOFR Options Hedge 50bp of Fed Cuts Over Coming Weeks: BBG Someone betting on 50bps of emergency rate cuts in the very near future

Keeping Hormuz restricted gives the admin two things at once - leverage over OPEC and a reason to fast-track domestic drilling permits. Cheap oil was never the goal. The shipping angle is the sleeper story here - whoever controls the chokepoints sets the insurance premiums, and those premiums set the real cost of global trade.

Let's unpack this.. What if the White House has no intention of reopening the Strait of Hormuz? What if this war is really about ships & tariffs? I had a long discussion with senior DOE official yesterday on background. I can’t share any details but it’s clear everyone’s Strait of Hormuz calculus is wrong. We need to go back to the drawing boards. That's it. That's the tweet. Now a hypothetical 🧵 with my personal thoughts.

@BRICSinfo If Iran actually hits Gulf oil infrastructure, forget $100 - you're looking at $120+ within days. Tanker insurance alone would spike enough to pull ships off the water. And that $3.85 national average at the pump? Summer driving season hasn't even started.

JUST IN: 🇮🇷 Iran warns of strikes on Gulf oil facilities "in coming hours," Reuters reports.

@unusual_whales Second straight hold and honestly what else could they do. Oil past $95, PCE revised up, Hormuz under active threat. Cutting now would be pouring petrol on the inflation fire. The corner gets smaller every meeting.

BREAKING: The Fed has held rates and not cut.

@KobeissiLetter Miran dissenting is the story here. One member pushing for cuts while PCE gets revised up to 2.7% tells you there's real disagreement about whether the bigger risk is inflation or recession. Six months ago markets expected four cuts this year. Now we might not even get the one.

SUMMARY OF FED DECISION (3/18/2026): 1. Fed halts rate cuts for the second straight meeting 2. Fed projects one rate cut in 2026, one in 2027 3. Fed 2026 PCE inflation forecast revised higher to 2.7% 4. Fed says implications of Middle East developments are "uncertain" 5. Fed Governor Miran dissents in favor of an interest rate cut 6. Today's rate decision was reached in an 11-1 vote We believe December was Fed Chair Powell's final rate cut.

BHP just named a new CEO and the entire pitch is copper. Not iron ore. Not coal. Copper. EVs need 2-3x more copper than combustion cars. Grid upgrades need miles of wire. Data centers need copper backbones. And nobody's found a major new deposit in years. The energy transition isn't about solar panels and wind turbines - it's about whether we can mine enough metal to actually build the thing. BHP sees the bottleneck and they're betting the company on it. Smart money follows the infrastructure, not the headlines.

FOMC: Fed holds rates at 3.5-3.75%. Dot plot unchanged - 2 cuts still projected for 2026. But PCE inflation revised UP to 2.7% (was 2.4% in December). GDP revised up to 2.4%. One dissent: Miran wanted a cut. Middle East risk flagged. Holding while inflation climbs. Something has to give.