Rey

Will we experience another TACO Tuesday? #Trump #Iran

It's not just me then who thinks it is "cloud cuckoo land".

Such a dignified post from a supposed Christian for Easter Sunday.

@KKBalenthiran Oddly, Globex US indices are trading - supposed to be closed today - if you need to view the "market tone".

I was looking for weekend market prices on IG and thought I was going mad as I couldn’t find them! At least I didn’t go to work. Happy Bank Holiday Friday 😀

@biancoresearch @KimbleCharting We almost certainly will see TACO because his primary concern is his own public image and, in this case, being able to convince his followers that he has won the war in great style. Markets have not yet factored this in.

I am not a military analyst. I'm a financial analyst focused on macroeconomic risk. That different lens might explain why I see something most military strategists and investors are missing. --- The New Rules of Warfare—And Why We Can't Opt Out For nearly a century, warfare belonged to whoever controlled the biggest defense budget. Aircraft carriers. Stealth bombers. Multibillion-dollar weapons systems. That model is changing in ways many aren't appreciating. Ukraine and Iran are showing the West what 21st-century conflict actually looks like: decentralized, highly iterative, fast-changing, unmanned, and cheap. Neither the US nor Russia—beginning in 2022—appears prepared. We might now have no choice but to show we can fight and win such a war. The Ukraine Approach Faced with a small defense budget, a much smaller population, and a vastly outnumbered army, Ukraine had to get creative. They couldn't match Russia's industrial capacity or spending. So they abandoned that playbook entirely. They developed an entirely new way to fight, highly decentralized, iterative, and most importantly, cheap. They also created Brave1—a completely new way to conduct war. Frontline commanders log into an iPad and bypass central command entirely. They spend digital points to purchase equipment directly from hundreds of (Ukrainian) manufacturers. When they encounter a new threat, they message the manufacturer directly and work with the engineers to find a solution, even if that means they visit to the front. The result is hardware or software upgrades that once took months now take days. Here's the crucial part: hundreds of manufacturers compete fiercely for these dollars by offering the best possible product as fast as possible. This isn't centralized procurement. It's a market. Competition drives innovation at scale. Weapons evolve as the enemy evolves in real time. Units are also awarded points for confirmed kills, uploaded from drone video—a powerfully eloquent way to grade effectiveness. But the real innovation might be how they decentralized manufacturing itself. Instead of building weapons in massive, centralized factories that make perfect targets for Russian bombing, Ukraine distributed production across hundreds of small manufacturers—workshops, machine shops, garages, and yes, kitchens. Each produces components or complete systems. This approach serves two purposes: speed and survival. You can bomb a tank factory. You destroy production for months. You cannot bomb ten thousand kitchens. If one workshop gets hit, ninety-nine others keep producing. The network regenerates faster than Russia can destroy it. This is why the manufacturing process includes actual kitchens—it's not a metaphor. It's a strategy. The Metric That Defines a New Era The result is staggering: at least 70% of battlefield casualties now come from drones. This is the first time in over a century that the primary cause of combat death is neither a bullet nor an artillery shell. Since World War I, industrial warfare meant industrial killing. Ukraine has broken that equation entirely. As a result, Russia is now controlling less territory than at any point since 2022 and going backward. In March, Ukraine made gains while Russia recorded no gains for the first time in two and a half years, and Drone-led offensives recaptured 470 square kilometers while paralyzing 40% of Russian oil exports. Ukraine has lowered the "cost per kill" to less than $1,000 per casualty—a 99.98% reduction from the millions of dollars that were common in the post-9/11 wars. This isn't an incremental improvement. This is a complete inversion of modern military economics. Yet the Western defense establishment is not learning from this. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger mocked Ukraine's entire approach. In The Atlantic, he called Ukrainian manufacturers "housewives with 3D printers," dismissing their work as "playing with Legos." They are not studying this revolution. They are mocking it. And the "housewives with 3D printers" are beating the Russian army! Ukraine Is Now in the Middle East The US Military and Gulf states face an eerily similar problem. Iran's Shahed drones threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz—a chokepoint that funnels 21% of global oil. They cannot fend off Iran by firing a $4 million Patriot missiles at $20,000 drones. They need what Ukraine has discovered: a decentralized, rapidly adaptive defense network that doesn't require centralized industrial capacity. That's why Ukraine just signed historic 10-year defense deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Over 220 Ukrainian specialists are now on the front lines of the Persian Gulf—exporting not just weapons, but a completely new doctrine of how to fight. The precedent is set. The model works. Everyone is watching. Mosaic On April 1st, Trump threatened to bomb Iran "back to the stone ages" if they don't reopen the Strait within weeks. It's the classic 20th-century playbook: overwhelming offense force, massive bombardment, industrial-scale destruction. The problem? That playbook doesn't work against distributed, cheap, rapid-iteration systems—especially when your enemy is organized under a mosaic structure. Iran's "Mosaic Defense" doctrine is a decentralized command system where authority and capability are distributed across multiple geographic and organizational nodes. Each region operates semi-autonomously with overlapping chains of command and pre-planned contingencies. It's designed so that when you destroy the center, the edges keep fighting. You cannot decapitate a system with no head. You cannot out-bomb your way to victory when your enemy is not centralized; this was the solution for 20th-century industrial warfare. Defense Wins Championships 21st-century asymmetrical threats require defensive shields, not aggressive offenses. Ukraine has built exactly that: rapid-iteration defenses, decentralized manufacturing, commanders empowered to buy solutions in real time and rewarded for success. That same defensive model may hold the key to opening the Strait of Hormuz. Not through massive offense, but through the ability to adapt and defend quickly. Why We're Stuck Whether you viewed this as a war of choice or not, it has now become a war to keep global trade open. And that makes it inescapable. This is precisely why the US cannot declare victory and walk away from the Strait of Hormuz— or TACO. Every adversary on the planet will interpret American withdrawal as confirmation that cheap asymmetric systems work against powerful centralized platforms. And these adversaries might have sent us a message last month. In mid-March 2026, an unauthorized drone swarm penetrated Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to the U.S. Air Force's Global Strike Command. The fact that this happened not overseas but in the United States, and that these tests occurred just weeks ago, underscores how close this threat is now. They didn't attack. They announced their presence. Every adversary watching learned that cheap drone networks can reach into the US. The Global Supply Chain Risk If the US abandons the Gulf while Iran holds the Strait contested, markets will price this as validation that cheap systems can hold global trade hostage. The current market disruptions will become permanent. Supply chains will have to pivot from "just-in-time" efficiency back to "just-in-case" redundancy. Inflation returns as safety costs money. Trade routes diversify away from vulnerable chokepoints. The global friction tax becomes permanent. The Unavoidable Truth Once you prove that cheap, asymmetric systems can hold global trade hostage, that knowledge spreads globally and irreversibly. Every adversary learns the same lesson: you don't need a $2 trillion Navy—you need $20 million in drones and the will to use them. Withdrawing while the Strait remains contested would permanently validate this model. Supply chains shift to "just-in-case" redundancy. Insurance costs rise. The friction tax becomes structural—baked into every global transaction for decades. The cost of staying is measured in months. The cost of leaving is measured in decades of economic drag. We cannot leave unfinished business.

The WIN - WIN loop of the Iran War: Iran keeps Hormuz closed, oil prices surge, oil shortages mean Russian oil sanctions are lifted, Russia's income surges & covers cost to supply missiles/drones to Iran, which helps them to keep Hormuz closed ..... etc. No quick end here ....

I'm wondering if the past 24 hours stock buying frenzy has been Trump's April Fools joke 🤔😂 #FTSE #FTSE100 #DAX #DAX40 #ES_F #SPX

@brithume There is no cure for moron.

This is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes people not just oppose him but hate him. There was no need to say anything.

Just like Putin said about his invasion of Ukraine then ....

@rb357 Exactly! Surely her coach should have done the sums and clearly explained the balance of probability.

@JustRey7 I get she might favour one direction over the other, but surely it's easier to get a mid/high-80s score on the right, than a high-90s score on the left, even if that is your better side.

Can someone in the know explain why Kirsty Muir was trying to improve on her already high 93.00 B score, instead of trying to improve on the much lower 81.75 A score? With A, only 87.75 needed for gold. 96.5 needed for bronze on B? #BigAir #WinterOlympics #MilanoCortina2026

@P_Kallioniemi Yes, they are!

Penguins in Greenland? Are the people running the White House account really this stupid?

Classic #TACO Phrasing a climb down as a great deal.

According to #Trump, if you have a basic command of mathematics and know how % work, you are "fake news" because your % reduction quoted doesn't sound as good as his fantasy % quotes. What a moron.

TARIFFS HIT AMERICANS, NOT FOREIGNERS New research shows U.S. consumers and businesses—not foreign exporters—are paying almost the entire cost of tariffs. A study of $4 trillion in trade found that foreigners absorbed just 4% of the burden, while Americans paid 96% through higher prices and costs. The findings contradict President Trump’s claim that tariffs are paid by other countries. Instead, tariffs act like a tax on U.S. consumption and are likely to push inflation higher over time. While European exporters have been hurt by reduced trade volumes, the economic cost inside the U.S. has been far larger. Economists warn that if tariffs rise further, the financial burden on American households will grow.

When we emigrated to Canada I didn't anticipate that we would be at war with the US a few years later. RiP #NATO

This will surely enrage @POTUS even more! Will we see #Trump double down or will it be another case of #TACO ? Is this the final nail in the coffin for the Federal Reserve independence from political influence? #SPX #Dow #ES

Going in a healthy direction then 👇 #SPX #ES #ES_F #Dow

Social issues asside Is it your life's goal to speculate in markets successfully and as your full time job? If so, read this: Part 1 I did it. It's really really hard but it can be done. It's not for everyone, but some are chosen. I feel really lucky that I was one. By my research (extensive BTW) only 1 or 2 out of a hundred that try actually make it. Are you one of them? Maybe. But it is a journey like you will someday look back upon and realize that few things in life drive a person deeper into his/her soul than overcoming self to succeed at trading. Trading is not about what you know. Just about anybody can learn about the markets and how they work. That is a no brainer. Trading a sim prop account? This adds nothing to ultimate success. Learning to chart? Nope -- not where it's at. Indicators? Nope. Following an online or YouTube guru? That's the way to lose all of your money. Reading books? Watching videos? Joining groups? Nope. Nope. Nope. I've supported my family and built my wealth as a futures market speculator. I've done it for 50 years now. I love the markets. They get me up in the morning. They force me to think and solve problems. Of course successful trading is about knowledge -- knowledge about a bunch of things. If you pursue trading it will take you three years or so to learn enough to be successful. If you play the game of simulated trading you will likely never make it. But if you put your own money on the line you will not gain traction in developing your skills for that three-plus year period. So you better first learn how to be a good loser before you become a steady winner. The first comes before the second. There are certain questions you will need to answer during the first three or so years of your journey learning to trade. They are the same questions for every trader who actually ends up making it. But everyone's answers are different. Anyway, that is enough for this message.