Steve

I believe that Iran is playing a game of chicken with the US in the oil market because that's Trump's real political cryptonite and true leverage they can exploit in the negotiations to end the war. ⚠️ The first time, Iran waited 48 hours before officially rejecting the US proposal. That sent $CL May price all the way up to almost ~116$ on by this Tuesday, while the various Tacos along the way were only effective to hold up stocks and hold down the June contract. 🚩As you can see in this chart I made, that was the exact point in time when oil futures started to factor in significant supply stress with the spread between CL1 and CL2 hitting ~16$ on Tuesday. Here is where things become interesting. As you can see in the chart, the June 26 WTI futures contract (that becomes CL2 after the 18 of March) only briefly traded above ~100$ a few times since the 9th of March. On the other side, the May contract surpassed the ~110$ 9th of March high one month later on the 2nd of April. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that during the Easter weekend, it was when President Trump lost his temper when he posted the famous "open the f-ing Strait". Why? Because he was surely informed that not too far above the oil futures market was about to break loose, since those who were short that contract were starting to get squeezed hard. After a brief market relief from that post, the squeeze resumed till Monday, when, as reported by the FT, the US administration was pushing hard on Pakistan to open a direct negotiation channel with Iran. 🚩Here is when Iran seized the opportunity again, this time having more leverage in the negotiations, to the point that they got a public preliminary acceptance of their 10 conditions to end the war (the president even reposted FM Araqchi statement, the post is now deleted). Those conditions would have never been accepted if the GCC or Israel were actively involved in the negotiations, but Trump was in a rush to announce a ceasefire to trigger an oil futures price crash and avoid a sudden spike that could have crashed stocks. Again, I do not think it is a coincidence that on Monday, several large $QQQ short positions were placed in the market with 13th of April expiry. ⚠️If I am right and Iran continues its game of chicken with the US, which has already figured out how they are in no position to accept all the conditions Iran asked, as early as tomorrow, Iran is going to announce they will pull out from the ceasefire talks in Pakistan. This is going to be a MASSIVE problem for the oil futures market, which at that point will be about one week away from the May to June contract rollover. Why? Because not only will the May 26 contracts resume running higher when shorts are in the process of rolling their positions into June, but traders will be forced to price in the supply tightness in the June contract that can potentially even start trading in contango if the conflict escalates further and its end is then projected later in the future. Beware that so far I haven't factored in additional supply disruptions caused by more strikes on oil infrastructure in the Middle East and potentially the closure of the Bab-El-Mandeb strait. These additional elements can spark the perfect storm on the June 26 contract, with prices likely surpassing the recent ~120$ high by a big margin till the point the pain will be significant for Trump again (maybe because stocks will be crashing at that point causing a big political problem for him too) and he will be willing to accept Iran's conditions and pull out of the region. Feel free to bookmark this post

Encontro petróleo no meu quintal Os Estados Unidos:

They're dismantling the revolutionaries and resistance in front of your eyes, wake up. This is like when the state broadcaster refused to air the leaders speech in December 2024, and the claim was "the office of the leader ordered it"

@cirnosad Notice how there is not a single reformist traitor on this list. These traitors were free roaming Tehran with full confidence, zero attempts on their lives.

"Operation Eternal Darkness." It is like Israel said, fuck it, yeah, we are the children of Satan.

‼️🚨🇮🇱 Feodor Dostoevsky WARNED all of us about the Talmudic globalist conspiracy in 1877: “Yes, Europe stands on the threshold of a terrible catastrophe… All these Bismarcks, Beaconsfields*, Gambettas**, and others - they are all mere shadows to me… Their master, the ruler of everything without exception, of all of Europe, is the Jew and his bank… Judaism and the banks now govern everything and everyone, both Europe and socialism, for through it, Judaism will uproot Christianity and destroy Christian culture. And even if nothing but anarchy remains, it too will be controlled by the Jew. For although he preaches socialism, he and his fellow Jews remain outside of socialism. So when all the wealth of Europe is depleted, the only thing left will be the Jewish bank. (…) The Jewish revolution must begin with atheism, for the Jews must overthrow that faith, that religion, from which emerged the moral foundations that made Russia both holy and great!” -Feodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Diary of a Writer’, March 1877 ☦️🇷🇺 *’Beaconsfields’ refers to the Earl of Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli - the first Jewish Prime Minister of the British Empire (1874 - 1880). **Léon Gambetta was a French liberal politician, freemason and advocated for the ‘separation of church & state’ In late 1800s France. His political opponents sometimes referred to him as ‘Jewish’ (an Italian Jew) which he most likely was due to this vehement anti-Conservative views.

Reformists are low on the rungs of the ladder of investment in the theory I've explained in Please Bomb My Country. This means as opposed to having a sense of protectiveness and importance for community, nation, and universal ideals, they are more "Social-Dominance Orientation" (Sidanius, Pratto) individuals focused on their own self-interest and immediate circle's well-being. This is essentially the type discussed by Jalal Al-e Ahmad in Weststruckness, the blank bourgeois professional/careerist that appears during industrialization and urbanization, and is a portable, slick individual that knows how to survive, self-promote, and navigate politics. Essentially, Vilfredo Pareto's "fox" character. In short, urbanization and the policies first created by Reza Shah and taken to their zenith by the Islamic Republic actually created contradictions which threaten to collapse the Islamic Republic; by creating a large class of bourgeois type "bigheyratis" or foxes, they ensured that liberalism will always have an entry point into Iranian society and people willing to midwife it (Zarif, Rouhani, Khatami). This leads, as I explain in Please Bomb My Country to two outcomes- fox dominance, where the system as a whole becomes weak, susceptible to subversion and sovereignty is constantly traded for ruling class self-interest (Qajar dynasty level at its extreme), or a recalcitrant reassertion of gheyrati power, i.e. "North Koreafication" where system fragility occurs after the gheyratis or in Pareto's terminology, the "lions" crack down, consolidate power, and use ruthless force to limit the foxes.

🚨 BREAKING: Spain’s Prime Minister is calling on the European Union to suspend its trade and diplomatic agreement with Israel — after Israeli strikes hit Lebanon’s capital today. Europe is moving.

#SPX My 2 cents The likely path after rally exhausts itself is new lows into end the of April beginning of May for $SPX. 1) Global economic growth was rolling pre war and credit cycle ending via private credit was evident before war. Oil shock only hastens it. AI bubble deflating, housing headwinds and China economic woes in process. 2)Fed is on pause due to price shock until the damage is right in from of them. Holding rates into declining global liquidity is de-facto tightening. 3) Odds of ceasefire lasting very uncertain at this point.

What have we learnt so far? What are the surprises? What has been discovered about the shape of the world? Here’s the five most important. 1 — The most important discovery is that Iran is a great power. This is a real discovery that was not known to the Iranians themselves; specifically, they could not be sure in advance that a strategic victory over the US was achievable. It is a fundamental discovery about the polarity of the system: there are now four great powers in the world and this structure will have very important consequences going forward. 2 — The idea that you can secure strategic objectives with the air weapon due to the precision-strike revolution has been debunked. The ‘combined-arms orthodoxy’ has been vindicated and proponents of strategic air war have again been proven wrong. 3 — We have learnt that Warden’s decapitation idea does not work against highly-institutionalized states. This was always the position of the serious scholars, but recent Israeli successes had sown some doubt about the thesis. These doubts have now vanished. 4 — We have learnt that a mature precision-strike regime is defense-dominant. Specifically, we have learnt that a great power can deny a global maritime power access to its near-abroad, curtailing the latter’s ability to project power. 5 — As a corollary of the above, the US command of the global commons is gone. The US is no longer a maritime hegemon that can guarantee access to even the most important chokepoint in the system. This is a development of great significance in the history of capitalism.

There's a 310MW fire at Abqaiq right now - nbd (and before you say gas flares, those run 10-20MW) Nbd...

This is not the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan War, where we could spend months and years without major damage to the US or the global economy. This is like a knife fight in a cave between a SCUBA diver with a diminishing air tank and a moray eel. In this war, time is a more unforgiving enemy than Iran. And the civilization which invented chess understands this even if we do not.

BREAKING: NASA FIRMS satellite data shows a massive 310 MW fire at Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq facility, the world's largest crude oil processing site. Routine gas flares at oil facilities are 10-20 MW. Abqaiq handles up to 7 million barrels per day.

@cirnosad Everything we are seeing comes back to this message, everything. We were warned. Larijani warned everyone yet instead of immediate execution for treason, they chose house arrest. Now Larijani and IRGC intelligence are dead. They've completed their coup. x.com/i/status/20412…