the real cee

@hispanicnomad @levelsio Besides kuala lumpur, these are all ass

Was just checking @levelsio NomadList current top 12 nomad destinations... And I'm honestly surprised with the results: 🇹🇭 Bangkok — $1,547/mo 🇻🇳 Da Nang — $1,174/mo 🇯🇵 Tokyo — $3,063/mo 🇮🇩 Uluwatu, Bali — $2,097/mo 🇰🇷 Seoul — $2,439/mo 🇿🇦 Cape Town — $2,555/mo 🇦🇺 Melbourne — $3,696/mo 🇲🇾 Kuala Lumpur — $1,586/mo 🇦🇷 Buenos Aires — $1,694/mo 🇩🇪 Berlin — $4,129/mo 🇳🇿 Auckland — $3,344/mo 🇭🇺 Budapest — $2,668/mo A few surprising findings: → Southeast Asia still wins on price. Bangkok, Da Nang, KL... all under $1,600/mo. If you're earning in dollars and spending in baht, the math is embarrassing → "Affordable Europe" is dead. Budapest at $2,668, Berlin at $4,129. Nomad demand killed the Eastern Europe budget play → The Anglosphere is a trap. Melbourne and Auckland both above $3,300. The lifestyle arbitrage works in reverse there → Nobody talks about air quality. Seoul's AQI is 112. Bangkok has a crying emoji. These are places people live for months. Probably also why Chiang Mai didn't make the cut this month → Da Nang at $1,174 is ranked #2 and still underrated. That gap between quality and popularity is usually where the value hides

@jackprandelli Deindustrialize, divide, destabilize... reset n control. Its not incompetence

Italy is signing its own Gulf gas deals. It's the clearest sign that Europe has no energy strategy. When the crisis hit every country ran for itself: 🇩🇪 Germany flew to Houston for LNG 🇮🇹 Meloni flew to the Gulf to sign her own deals 🇫🇷 France quietly thanked itself for keeping nuclear This isn't strategic autonomy. It's 27 countries in a panic, each cutting their own deals, paying their own premiums, with zero collective leverage. The irony? Europe has the world's largest single market. Negotiating together, it could dictate terms to any gas supplier on earth. Instead supplier by supplier, country by country they're being picked off one at a time. Russia understood this. The Gulf states understand this. Washington understands this. The only people who don't seem to understand it are in Brussels. A closed Hormuz exposed every weakness Europe built over 30 years of cheap energy complacency. No unified strategy. Just 27 prime ministers on planes looking for the same molecules That's not a union. That's a queue.

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@martypartymusic Somethings always happening in the universe, the further u go into it.

An extreme astrological event is happening and peaks April 25. Uranus retrogrades through late Taurus from late 2025 into early 2026, stations direct in February 2026, and then moves forward again. • It re-enters Gemini at 0° Gemini on April 25–26, 2026 • From this point, Uranus settles into Gemini for a much longer duration, remaining in the sign until 2032–2033 (with a brief dip into Cancer in late 2032 before returning). This may explain everything. Last time this happened was 1940 - 86 years ago.

The War Trade Wasn't Gold The "buy gold for the war" crowd bought the wrong asset for the wrong reason. Gold is not a war trade. It never was. Diesel is the single largest operating cost in an open-pit mine. When oil rips 66%, the cash cost per ounce jumps before the gold price catches up. GDX hit -31% at the war low. It's clawed back to -18%. The miners that absorbed a 66% energy shock without breaking just showed you their cost structure HOLDS. Every major gold bull market of the last 50 years started after an energy shock — not during one. X is trading the war headline. The repricing happens when inflation feeds through and the survivors are still standing.

@KobeissiLetter Sounds like europes goin back to heating with firewood. Thatll power the datacenters.

BREAKING: The US-Europe alliance is reportedly reaching a "breaking point" over the Iran War, and President Trump has "mused" to aides about backing out of NATO, per WSJ. Details include: 1. Trans-Atlantic ties between the US and Europe are "deteriorating rapidly" 2. Trump has expressed "disgust" with European allies for not joining the US-Israeli war against Iran 3. Trump is questioning whether defending Europe serves US interests at all if Europeans do not help American military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere 4. The White House’s stance is being described as a "break" with American global strategy since WW2 US-NATO relations appear to be at new lows.

Goldman's asking "Are We Running Out of Oil" . . . yes. The two heat maps are telling, Asia first then Europe. Bottom two charts indicates what's to come as the physical commodity air bubble keeps moving. Demand destruction ahead w/prices if this keeps up.

@OpenSquareCap Let me introduce you to the strategic petroleum reserve x.com/bunchofnumberz…

Alright I’ll admit it 😄 Came in ready to hate… but @jtrader model is actually solid On NQ 1m, once you layer ML on top, it gets interesting Quick grading model → A / A+ setups only → ~72% WR Trained 2020–2024, forward tested 2025+ So yeah… respect where it’s due , works very well on trending market🤝 Now I could just slap ML on top, sell it for $50 and retire who’s in? 😏

The remarkable resilience of copper prices given what we’re seeing across markets cannot be ignored. It’s striking how the metal is evolving from a traditional cyclical gauge of economic activity to one increasingly driven by structural demand and a tightening supply backdrop. This is the time to be building a position, in my view. If recent volatility hasn’t derailed it, what will? open.substack.com/pub/tavicosta/…

We are now facing the biggest global energy crisis in history: Total oil product exports from the Middle East plunged -63% in March, or -4.8 million barrels per day, to ~2.8 million barrels per day. Of the remaining ~2.8 million barrels per day still being exported, ~1.1 million barrels per day, or 39%, is flowing through Saudi Arabia's Red Sea ports, bypassing the shut Strait of Hormuz. Jet fuel was hit the hardest, with exports plunging -85%, triggering flight cancellations and fuel shortages across Asia-Pacific. At the same time, LPG and naphtha exports dropped by -1.0 million barrels per day. Diesel, gasoline, and fuel oil exports also fell sharply, with declines ranging from -60% to -70%. The Strait of Hormuz crisis is in full-swing.

There are two oil prices tonight and they are $40 apart. The one on your screen says $109. The one on the tanker says $140. The screen is a bet. The tanker is a fact. And the gap between them is the space where the true cost of this war hides from the public, from the polls, and from the President who quotes the lower number. Brent futures closed near $109 on April 3. That is the price traded in London by hedge funds, algorithmic systems, and institutional investors speculating on when the war ends. Dubai physical crude, the benchmark for actual barrels loaded onto actual tankers and delivered to actual refineries in Asia, traded between $126 and $140, with spikes to $166. Dubai physical has risen 76 percent since the war began. Brent futures have risen 36 percent. The gap was less than one dollar before February 28. It is now $37 to $40 on an average day and $57 on a bad one. This is the largest sustained paper-physical divergence in the modern history of the oil market. The futures market is pricing a short war. Brent for December 2026 trades at $80. Paper believes the strait reopens and barrels flow. Physical says the strait is closed, diplomacy collapsed on April 3, and barrels are not flowing. Eight million barrels per day were taken offline in March, the largest monthly disruption on record. The IEA released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, the biggest coordinated draw in history. The US SPR sits at 345 million barrels after 2022 drawdowns never replenished. At current consumption, the reserve covers roughly 18 days. The bypasses were supposed to close the gap. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is at its full 7 million barrels per day. Terminal constraints cap exports at 5 million. The UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline is near its 1.8 million limit despite March 28 fires. Combined, bypasses cover 13 to 28 percent of normal Hormuz flows. The remaining 72 to 87 percent is gone. And here is the detail that closes the circle. Habshan, the origin point of the ADCOP bypass pipeline, caught fire twice in fifteen days from the debris of intercepted missiles. The bypass that was built to survive a Hormuz closure starts at a facility that is burning from the wreckage of its own air defences. The pipe works. The source is on fire. The workaround is damaged at the point where the oil enters it. The molecule reaches the bypass and finds the bypass is burning. The screen price is what Trump quotes when he says oil will come down. The physical price is what Asian refiners pay when they bid for the last cargo in the Gulf. The screen is what the Fed watches for rate decisions. The physical is what sets jet fuel, diesel, fertiliser, and everything that moves on a truck. The screen responds to ceasefire tweets. The physical responds to tanker availability. One is a narrative. The other is a molecule. The narrative says $109. The molecule says $140. The gap is the war. And the market that closes tonight for 63 hours has no mechanism to price what happens to either number when the April 6 power-plant deadline expires on Monday evening and the bypasses are maxed, damaged, and burning at the source. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

SWIFT is testing blockchain. That’s a bigger signal than most realize. The network connecting 11,000+ institutions is moving a shared ledger for tokenized deposits into live MVP testing with 40+ banks including JPMorgan Chase, HSBC and Deutsche Bank. Why it matters: - Cross-border payments could reach $320T by 2032 - Tokenized deposits could enable 24/7 settlement - Less reliance on correspondent banking delays The real story: This isn’t crypto disrupting banks. It’s incumbents like SWIFT upgrading the rails themselves. When legacy infrastructure tokenizes money, on-chain finance stops being optional.

Turkey has sold 6 years worth of accumulated gold in 3 weeks: Erdogan has dumped a shocking 120 tons of gold (almost $20BN) since the war started, and 70 tons last week. It's amazing gold is not much lower, and begs the question: who is buying all the gold Turkey is selling?

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I think way too many ppl are delusional about this idea of letting Iran control the SoH, having the US pull out, and just letting Iran set up a toll booth. Where does Saudi’s power actually come from? It’s not just because they’re rich. Their entire influence comes from being the world’s only swing Producer. We need oil, and Saudi controls that market. If Iran takes over the SoH, they become the most powerful, one of a kind Global Swing Producer in history. If they don’t like the oil price? They can just "adjust" the traffic in a strait that handles ~20mb/d to swing prices however they want. If the UAE gets on Iran’s bad side? "No passage for UAE tankers." If Kuwait tries to build a bypass? "Fine, the SoH is closed starting today. Let’s see if you can finish that bypass—which takes years—without making a single dime." By letting Iran control that flow, the US is effectively making Iran the ultimate energy gatekeeper. The entire regional hegemony shifts to Iran. Saudi and the UAE lose everything. Think about it—if you were MBS, would you let this happen? Let’s say the US pulls out this week. The US started this mess, and now the GCC has to just sit there and watch their power handed over to Iran? Let me give you a reality check for Americans: Imagine Mexico now controls the North American continent. "Want to fly to the UK? Get Mexico’s permission. Want to import jet fuel from Asia? Pay Mexico a toll and take the route they tell you to. Did you dare to criticize Mexico? Now, no container ships can enter your waters. You can’t say a word against the great President of Mexico." It sounds like a fantasy, but that’s the reality for the GCC. If the US tries to run away? If I were the GCC, I wouldn’t let them leave. I’d grab them by the hair and drag them back to clean up the mess they made. I’ve said before that this is an existential issue for Iran and Israel. Well, Iranian control of the SoH is an existential issue for every other GCC nation. And the GCC has leverage. They have massive wealth invested in the West, huge U.S. asset holdings, decades of lobbying networks, and they are the biggest donors for Trump’s terms. And of course they have oil. Do you really think Brent would stay below $100/bbl if the GCC teamed up and cut just 3mb/d for six months? Even the most optimistic guy knows the answer is zero chance. They don't even need a fancy excuse: "Oh, since the US gave up on us and Iran owns the SoH, it's not safe. We have to cut production. Sorry!" Within months, the US would be begging to come back. It’s just pushing the Middle East into an even bigger pit of fire. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk :) #oott #iran

IMO: Three possible outcomes to the Iran war: Option 1 The war ends right away. Iran gets some of what it wants (repayment for damage done), US army bases out of Middle East, assurances it will never be attacked again. Fed cuts rates. Banks loosen, markets recover back to the way they were. The USD will survive but be weaker than it was. However Iran and Russia will still sell oil to BRICS nations in yuan, Saudi Arabia will still buy gold through Switzerland etc. the world will be different the dollar will not be a hegemony. Option 2 The war goes on longer (a month or more) Hormus stays closed longer. Things start to break. Foreign holders of US Treasuries have to sell to buy energy and food. Credit crisis like 2008. Job layoffs. Stock market drops. Option 3 War drags on even longer The big print aka yield curve control. The Fed has to intervene or the Bond market collapses taking down the western world with it. However, we have never seen a QE big print with oil at $100+. It’s always happened with cheap oil. Nobody knows what the outcome will be some believe stagflation. Printing money with cheap oil increases asset prices. Printing money with expensive oil is called hyperinflation.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

This is the petrochemical value chain Crude → Petrochemical → Intermediates → Everything

One of the interesting dilemmas facing the oil market today is that even if the Strait of Hormuz opens fully tomorrow, there are now north of 180 million bbls sitting in tankers. All of those tankers will have to unload first, which would take 35-45 days. After, it needs to travel back to the Middle East, which would be another 25-30 days. Meanwhile, other tankers will be in route to countries like Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq to load. This will take 25-30 days. Altogether, flows physically can’t resume to normal even if it opened tomorrow. This is why we are headed for the breaking point in the oil market. The physical dislocation I just explained above saw the reverse take place during COVID when OPEC+ came to a historic production cut agreement of 10 million b/d. The cuts came too late as demand destruction had already taken place. Couple that with the fact that the cuts weren’t going to start until May, and the agreement was in early April, sent oil prices into the depth of hell 2 weeks later. So manage your expectations accordingly.