Trishul

@CommodMkt The most asymmetric trade in modern financial markets is to buy oil when it’s up 100% YTD?

Welcome to the most asymmetric trade in modern financial history. The thread below lays out why. The opportunity exists because capital has chased the AI trade while ignoring the physical assets AI requires to run — assets that have quietly become the best-performing asset class of the decade. Since October 2020 when we first called for the commodity super cycle: QCI Total Return +217%, GSCI Total Return +205%, Gold +140%. NASDAQ trails at +130%. S&P 500 at +85%. The top three are all commodities. Yet oil cannot get out of its own way while copper and the broader atom complex prints fresh highs . That is the dislocation. That is the trade. Get long. Buckle in. Hang on for the ride. Forgive the longer posts in this thread — attempting to mimic my old 10-bullet commodity takes. On to it.

@AndreasSteno Weren’t you short oil throughout?

So, I have quite clearly been too optimistic around settling terms with Iran (it admittedly looked like a deal to everyone that Friday a few weeks back), and it seems like both sides think they can afford to be strategically patient. As I have said over and over, I am not blind to the oil math, but I think the energy executives and pundits have very little feeling/knowledge around leads/lags. It is going to take quarters from here before we can see it in growth data. There is a very evident growth acceleration ongoing in US data, and the regional evidence out thus far in April suggests that we will reach >55 territory in ISM Manufacturing (see chart).. If we pair that with the scope for a glut, if a deal is settled, and I stress IF... Then, yes.. Its pretty solid news. I am yet to turn downbeat on US risk assets, and I consider them underowned given how much doom and gloom we listen to around the cycle near-term. So after all, I am here to make returns, and not 100% accurate timing calls on Geopolitical deals. And in terms of markets, I have been right..

@TheAndreiZZ @dampedspring This guy is a total bullshitter

@dampedspring So you aren't max bearish anymore?

My view of the setup 1. Buy/hold as long as US can suggest a deal is imminent 2. Sell a deal is signed 3. Sell a U.S. escalation But I don't know shit

@AgustinLebron3 @MichaelRoyzen Don’t get schmoozed by his message. You were right on the first turn

@MichaelRoyzen Always happy to chat, feel free to DM.

Who's going to tell him.

@biancoresearch @JesseCohenInv You shouldn’t spend the effort to answer these clickbait accounts….

@JesseCohenInv This is not crude oil; it is the ETF USO. Look at the percentage change.

⚠️Just In: Oil-linked futures on Hyperliquid surge to $127 per barrel after Vance heads back to the U.S. without striking a deal with Iran to bring an end to the war. Brace for impact.

@karpathy Totally agree. I was a non-coder (would puke if someone showed me a terminal window) 2 months ago, and in 2 months I’ve built up tools myself I couldn’t possibly imagine building out even by outsourcing to coders

Someone recently suggested to me that the reason OpenClaw moment was so big is because it's the first time a large group of non-technical people (who otherwise only knew AI as synonymous with ChatGPT as a website) experienced the latest agentic models.

Judging by my tl there is a growing gap in understanding of AI capability. The first issue I think is around recency and tier of use. I think a lot of people tried the free tier of ChatGPT somewhere last year and allowed it to inform their views on AI a little too much. This is a group of reactions laughing at various quirks of the models, hallucinations, etc. Yes I also saw the viral videos of OpenAI's Advanced Voice mode fumbling simple queries like "should I drive or walk to the carwash". The thing is that these free and old/deprecated models don't reflect the capability in the latest round of state of the art agentic models of this year, especially OpenAI Codex and Claude Code. But that brings me to the second issue. Even if people paid $200/month to use the state of the art models, a lot of the capabilities are relatively "peaky" in highly technical areas. Typical queries around search, writing, advice, etc. are *not* the domain that has made the most noticeable and dramatic strides in capability. Partly, this is due to the technical details of reinforcement learning and its use of verifiable rewards. But partly, it's also because these use cases are not sufficiently prioritized by the companies in their hillclimbing because they don't lead to as much $$$ value. The goldmines are elsewhere, and the focus comes along. So that brings me to the second group of people, who *both* 1) pay for and use the state of the art frontier agentic models (OpenAI Codex / Claude Code) and 2) do so professionally in technical domains like programming, math and research. This group of people is subject to the highest amount of "AI Psychosis" because the recent improvements in these domains as of this year have been nothing short of staggering. When you hand a computer terminal to one of these models, you can now watch them melt programming problems that you'd normally expect to take days/weeks of work. It's this second group of people that assigns a much greater gravity to the capabilities, their slope, and various cyber-related repercussions. TLDR the people in these two groups are speaking past each other. It really is simultaneously the case that OpenAI's free and I think slightly orphaned (?) "Advanced Voice Mode" will fumble the dumbest questions in your Instagram's reels and *at the same time*, OpenAI's highest-tier and paid Codex model will go off for 1 hour to coherently restructure an entire code base, or find and exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems. This part really works and has made dramatic strides because 2 properties: 1) these domains offer explicit reward functions that are verifiable meaning they are easily amenable to reinforcement learning training (e.g. unit tests passed yes or no, in contrast to writing, which is much harder to explicitly judge), but also 2) they are a lot more valuable in b2b settings, meaning that the biggest fraction of the team is focused on improving them. So here we are.

@HormuzLetter Shouldn’t attacks on petrochemical plants REDUCE demand for oil given they are consumers of oil?

BREAKING: Iran conducted a ballistic missile attack on Jubail, Saudi Arabia tonight, hitting the industrial zone and petrochemical facility. Jubail is the world's largest industrial city and contributes roughly 7% of Saudi Arabia's GDP. Saudi Ministry of Defense has acknowledged the attack and says damage assessment is underway. Iran named the Jubail petrochemical complex as a "legitimate target" on March 18 after the South Pars strike. Tonight's attack is the first time it followed through on that specific threat. 24 hours before Trump's deadline.

@AndreasSteno When bad news seems to have no impact on the price, the peak is in, and market is looking beyond

The amount of insults I have received based on this tells me that we are very very close to peak oil here

@chamath @BillAckman @X You’ve got a hyperbole problem. When you start talking money, you need to show that it’s big money to somehow prove to yourself that you’re doing well. Just chill out dude, you’re doing fine without needing to write things like “a few million here or there”, or “I lost 5b” etc

I’ve dealt with a bunch of this nonsense in the past. It’s the “tax” I spoke about on the pod this week. It was simpler to pay it for a while because it was relatively small dollars each time (a few million here or there) but then the system realizes I am a mark and won’t stop. Then they try to come after tens or hundreds. I finally got fed up with it and drew a hard line in the sand with a bunch of folks who sued me for profits they didn’t deserve. They lost. I won. I will never settle again. Only fight.

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@AndreasSteno I liked your contrarian take on silver too. Then as well as now, I agree

THE MOST CONTRARIAN TAKE ON OIL YOU WILL READ THIS YEAR! We are living through a truly historic moment. There is real momentum building around bilateral energy deals that completely bypass the United States as alliances are shifting. France is for example increasingly aligning with China and Russia in the UN on key votes around this question. The global order is fragmenting in ways that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. But this may actually resolve the oil crisis sooner than most expect... Let the insults begin!

@nequalonetrader If something’s about to break, he’s not gonna find that out on Bloomberg

@AndurandPierre I’m short front month, selling daily expiry puts which are 5% OTM, rolling the same strike if goes ITM, in a smaller notional than the futures, and while I know backwardation will cost me, the carry from options cushions

The oil market now reminds me of when prices were around $30 in March 2020. Plenty of people who never looked at oil were going long oil futures, not realising what could happen to the roll. A few weeks later prices traded negative, with a $50+ contango for WTI a day before expiry. They looked at oil futures like equity, not understanding the impact of futures roll. This time is similar, plenty of people shorting the oil market thinking the Strait of Hormuz will eventually reopen and things will go back to normal. Many are trying to call the top. Without realising they might have to roll their shorts at $30, $50, $70+ backwardation?

@shanaka86 How do you write so much crap every 10 minutes?

BREAKING: President Trump just gave Iran 48 hours to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or he will obliterate their power plants, starting with the biggest one first. He posted it on Truth Social. He signed it with his name. The clock is now running. The deadline is March 23rd. Ninety million Iranians are counting down to a blackout announced on a social media platform by the leader of the country bombing them. The exact words: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Three weeks of “winding down” rhetoric ended in one post. President Trump told reporters yesterday he was considering scaling back operations. His defense secretary announced strikes would increase significantly. His treasury secretary lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil to stabilise prices. His military bombed Natanz for the fifth time this morning. And then the President posted a 48-hour ultimatum threatening to destroy the electrical infrastructure that powers hospitals, water treatment plants, sewage systems, and the homes of 90 million civilians. The signals are not mixed. They are simultaneous. Escalation and de-escalation are not contradictions in this strategy. They are the same lever pulled in different directions to keep Tehran unable to calculate the next move. Iran’s power grid is not a military target. It is civilian infrastructure. Destroying it would plunge the country into darkness within hours. Water pumping stations would fail. Hospitals would lose power beyond generator capacity. Sewage systems would back up into population centres. Refrigeration chains for food and medicine would collapse. The humanitarian consequences would be immediate and irreversible on a timeline measured in days, not weeks. This is the threat that makes the Kharg scorched-earth doctrine operational. Iran has said explicitly that if the US attacks its critical infrastructure, it will destroy every allied energy facility within missile range. Power plants qualify. The response to their destruction would not be negotiation. It would be the activation of every remaining missile, drone, and proxy capability Iran possesses, from the IRGC’s nightly launches to the Houthi blockade of Bab el-Mandeb. The 48-hour clock is not just counting down to a US strike. It is counting down to the trigger event for the two-strait closure that puts 30 percent of global seaborne oil offline. The markets heard it. Brent is above $105. Dubai crude hit $166 this week. Silver has lost 43 percent since January. Gold is being vacuumed by Chinese banks at 600 kilograms per minute. The helium that fabricates the chips that power the AI models that process the data that informs the strategy is 30 percent offline behind the same closed strait the ultimatum demands reopened. The 48-hour clock runs through every supply chain on Earth simultaneously. Twenty-three nations signed a statement pledging readiness to help reopen Hormuz. Greece fired a Patriot missile over Saudi Arabia. Five thousand Marines are heading to the Gulf. And the President of the United States just told Iran to open the strait or lose its power grid, in a post that ended with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” The clock is running. 23rd March. The world is watching a countdown posted on social media by the man who controls the bombers which Iran doesn’t have. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@INArteCarloDoss How do you have 200k followers?

The case for a black Monday is growing with every headline

@milesdeutscher How much are they paying you?

Perplexity is underrated af. I use it daily for things other AI platforms simply can't do. Here's everything I'm currently using inside the Perplexity tool suite: • Perplexity Computer (OpenClaw for browser) • Finance mode - politician tracking, finance data/research/modeling • Council - deploy agent swarms • Deep research - daily deep research/tables • Analyse - for markets/competitor analysis • Spaces - projects except you can share/collab with others (I share these with my team) • Discover feed - curated AI news feed • Connectors - for connecting my daily tools (Gmail, Drive) • Assistant - browser control & light calendar management So much value for $200/month.

@Citrini7 Who is ‘we’? Aren’t you a dude sitting at home alone?

We don’t get enough credit for calling the exact bottom (and massive pluggable/CPO demand coming) for CIEN, COHR & LITE and the rest of the optics space back in August 2024. Everyone’s on it now, but you can’t imagine the flak we got for being “tourists” that would get burned by the telecom cycle back then. We were so convinced we wrote TWO back to back articles pounding the table on these, and even compared CIEN’s revision cycle to NVDA’s. When all of these stocks were at the bottom of a 2 year long, 50%+ cyclical drawdown. Anyway, our update to the optics trade is coming out Thursday. I wonder if it’ll be as unpopular as our initiations were. I sure hope so.

@FinanceLancelot How do you blatantly bullshit?

BREAKING: The New York Times claims the White House is reportedly planning to announce the end of kinetic strikes on Iran

@milesdeutscher How much did they pay you to write this?

Perplexity just took its shot at killing OpenClaw, and I'm completely blown away. Their new Computer tool is the most powerful agentic system on the market right now. Think OpenClaw, but on steroids (easier setup, better security + more) My top 10 mega prompts (copy/paste):

@dampedspring Simple shit doesn’t work always bro

850MN of forced selling wrapping up at 1:25 $SLV $AGQ. Degen long here

@AndreasSteno No one wants to know your emotions, or even your actions. Stick to writing factual stuff

I rotated my Silver into (more) Gold and Copper earlier in January. Starting to become very happy with that move now.