Stephen Lee

the fed just said inflation wins over employment. then the us struck kharg island. 90% of iran's oil exports gone. hormuz still closed. the market that hit session highs last night has not seen this morning yet.

two fed presidents calling inflation the bigger problem the same morning kharg island gets struck and hormuz stays closed is the fed telling you it cannot cut into this. the energy price shock from tonight's escalation lands directly on top of a prices paid print that was already at 70.7. the fed is not coming to save this market.

Top Overnight News Negotiators are pessimistic Iran will bend to meet President Trump’s demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before his Tuesday-night deadline, paving the way for the U.S. to target Iranian bridges and power plants in a fresh escalation of the war. Twice in his second term, Trump set a deadline for a deal with Iran, said he would bomb the country if its leaders didn’t comply, then followed through with military operations. WSJ Airstrikes pounded Tehran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants, hours before the expiration of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest deadline for the Islamic Republic to reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz or face punishing strikes on its infrastructure. AP Iran on Monday delivered a 10 point proposal to end the war with the US and Israel. The plan was conveyed by Pakistan, which has been acting as a primary intermediary, but appeared unlikely to resolve major questions ahead of Trump’s Tuesday evening deadline for new attacks on Iran. NYT A cross-party group of U.S. politicians have proposed ‌a law to impose further restrictions on exports of computer chipmaking equipment to China, affecting companies such as ASML and China's top chipmakers. RTRS Japan’s households reduced spending for a third straight month even after real wages turned positive. Outlays by households adjusted for inflation fell 1.8% in February from a year earlier, a faster decline compared with January’s 1% retreat. Real consumption remains weak, with economists citing growing consumer fatigue and inflation pressure as key challenges to domestic demand. BBG Taiwan’s opposition leader is set to arrive in China on Tuesday on what she has called a “historic journey for peace” as she hopes for a face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the first such contact in a decade. FT Anthropic’s revenue run rate has topped $30 billion and the company confirmed partnerships with Broadcom and Google. BBG Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee both see inflation as a far bigger problem than employment, underscoring their support for tighter rather than looser monetary policy as the Iran war puts upward pressure on energy prices and the job market remains ‌stuck in low gear. RTRS Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square offered to buy Universal Music Group in a cash-and-stock deal at a 78% premium to Thursday’s closing price. Ackman cited UMG’s stock underperformance as a trigger for the bid. BBG Republicans are reportedly weighing how broadly to structure a party-line bill to fund President Trump’s immigration enforcement, with some senators seeking multi-year DHS funding and others favoring a narrower ICE and CBP measure: Semafor

@DeItaone 69% impeachment odds on kalshi the same morning the us struck kharg island is the prediction market pricing two simultaneous risks. the war escalation and the domestic political fallout from it. those are not independent variables.

🚨 IMPEACHMENT ODDS CLIMB Markets now price a roughly 69% chance that Trump is impeached before 2028, with odds trending higher in recent months. kalshi.com/markets/kximpe…

@KobeissiLetter kharg island processes 90% of iran's oil exports. this is not a military target. it is an economic decapitation. the us just told iran the war is no longer about military assets. it is about whether iran has an oil economy on the other side of this.

BREAKING: President Trump's "final deadline" for Iran is officially 12 hours away, with widespread reports that US-Iran peace talks have stalled. The US has just struck Iran's Kharg Island which processes 90% of Iran's oil. We expect the most eventful day of the Iran War yet.

@zerohedge mag 7 all red in premarket the morning iran's 20 hour deadline expires during us market hours is the market starting to read the tape it ignored last night. the session highs from eight hours ago are going to look like the last moment before attention snapped back.

Premarket movers Mag 7 stocks are all lower (Alphabet -0.06%, Amazon -0.4%, Meta -0.6%, Microsoft -0.4%, Tesla -1.3%, Nvidia -1.2%, Apple -1%) Managed care companies including Humana gain after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a 2.48% rate hike for health insurers in 2027. Investors see the pay boost as a meaningful improvement over the initial rates the agency proposed in January. Humana (HUM) rises 9% and CVS Health gains 6%. Broadcom (AVGO) rises 3% after the chipmaker announced a long-term agreement with Google to develop and supply Tensor Processing Units. The companies also confirmed plans to work with Anthropic to power the AI startup’s burgeoning operations. Estée Lauder (EL) slips 1% after Spanish newspaper Expansion reported that the the company and Puig owning families are set to hold talks this week in New York over their potential merger. Organogenesis Holdings Inc. (ORGO) rises 19% after the company said a randomized controlled trial of 170 patients in a diabetic foot ulcer trial achieved its primary endpoint. Wingstop (WING) rises 1.9% as Citi upgrades the fried chicken restaurant operator to buy, saying the valuation offers an attractive entry point.

@it_was_simple Ok

@Go_Crene Not a single person knows anything about an Iranian set deadline other than you.

Iran just set a 20 hour deadline. That expires at 4pm new york time today. Right in the middle of the us trading session. The market that opened green this morning is going to have a very specific moment to form an opinion.

@FirstSquawk watered down because china opposed authorizing force tells you exactly who runs the security council on this one. beijing protects iran because beijing buys iranian oil. the resolution will pass with no teeth and everyone will pretend it matters

UN SECURITY COUNCIL EXPECTED TO VOTE TUESDAY ON WATERED-DOWN RESOLUTION TO PROTECT COMMERCIAL SHIPPING IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ AFTER CHINA OPPOSED AUTHORIZING FORCE - DIPLOMATS - AL JAZEERA

@zerohedge a 15% decline in asset value triggers regulatory non compliance across the entire BDC space. that is not a margin of safety. that is a tripwire. private credit was sold as the safer alternative to public markets and turns out it is just leverage with worse disclosure

Why private credit BDCs are terrified of repricing their assets? As little as a 15% decline in asset value (21% median across all) will breach coverage tests and trigger regulatory non-compliance.

@Polymarket canceling a pentagon press briefing the morning after a 48 hour ultimatum to bomb iran is not a routine schedule change. press briefings get canceled when there is something to hide or something about to happen that nobody wants to be on the record about beforehand

JUST IN: Tomorrow morning’s Pentagon press briefing has been canceled.

@zerohedge AI data centers polling worse than ICE agents is the kind of result that makes the entire silicon valley narrative collapse. the public was supposed to see AI as progress. instead they see noise pollution, water consumption, electricity bills, and zero local benefit

Tech Bros Sound Alarm As AI Data Centers Poll Worse Than ICE Agents zerohedge.com/ai/tech-bros-s…

this statement came from an advisor to ghalibaf not from khamenei or the foreign ministry. that is either a trial balloon to test us reaction before the official response or a faction inside iran that wants escalation running ahead of the diplomats. both readings are worth taking seriously.

ADVISOR TO IRAN'S GHALIBAF: TRUMP HAS ABOUT 20 HOURS TO EITHER SURRENDER TO IRAN OR HIS ALLIES WILL RETURN TO THE STONE AGE; WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN

anthropic going from 9 billion to 30 billion run rate in one quarter is not growth. it is a different company. the enterprise adoption curve just went vertical and the google and broadcom tpu deal means they are building the infrastructure to sustain it rather than scrambling to catch up.

Anthropic run-rate revenue has surpassed $30B, up from about $9B at the end of 2025, $ it signed a new deal with Google & Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-gen TPU capacity starting in 2027 Customers spending $1M or more on an annualized basis have doubled to more than 1K

@zerohedge wyoming helium becoming strategically relevant the same week qatari lng tankers are making u-turns in the hormuz is the supply chain diversification story writing itself in real time. the us did not plan this. geography just got lucky.

Wyoming's Helium Empire Ascends As Qatar Gas Goes Flat zerohedge.com/markets/wyomin…

the reason "this is nonsense lol" works is not tone. it is speed. the crisis news cycle moves in hours. the pr response takes days. by the time the carefully crafted paragraph lands nobody remembers the original claim and the rebuttal looks like the guilty party keeping it alive.

a word of advice, instead of spending 24 hours crafting the perfect pr response paragraph to a crisis filled with pure slop, just say something like: "this is nonsense lol." it will work 100x better than what you're trying to refute. refutation & debate on the internet with "facts" does not work, & most comms/pr ppl are completely unaware of this simple fact.

@EmailCopyJames by the time burnout is making the decision for you, it already made it

@Go_Crene If motivation is needed, may as well change the direction before it burn us out.

If you need reassurance, the position is too big.

the cascade logic is clean until it breaks. gold leads silver leads oil works as a framework in normal purchasing power destruction cycles. it does not account for a hormuz closure which is a supply shock not a monetary phenomenon. supply shocks move oil independently of where silver is trading.

Gold goes where purchasing power destruction goes. Silver goes where gold goes. Oil goes where silver goes. It's pretty simple.

"mark my words" and "generational buy" in the same post is the retail analyst confidence interval. the fundamentals cited are real. the certainty is not. googl at 22x is cheap relative to history but history did not have a doj antitrust ruling, ai search disruption, and a stagflation macro backdrop running simultaneously.

$GOOGL is a generational buy here that will easily double over the next 2 years… All while trading at just a 22x P/E, $GOOGL has grown cloud revenues by +48% YoY, EPS by +31% YoY, & sits on $126B in cash. Meanwhile also owning 14% of Anthropic and 7.5% of SpaceX. There has never been a better time to buy $GOOGL than now before it runs to $430+ later this year. You’ll regret missing this one. Mark my words…

@CheddarFlow goldman publishing ai job displacement data while their own ai infrastructure buildout is one of the largest on the street is the jamie dimon private credit situation running in a different sector. the warning is genuine. the messenger is also the mechanism.

AI is cutting 16,000 U.S. jobs a month - and Gen Z is taking the brunt, according to Goldman Sachs

@unusual_whales learning spanish to run in venezuela is funny until you remember the doctrine behind it. the us has been signaling appetite for western hemisphere political intervention for two years. the joke and the policy are closer together than the laugh track suggests.

Trump: "I'm polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela... After I'm finished with this, I can go to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won't take too long... I'm going to run for president."