Max Schoon

The IRGC VHF broadcast is the signal that matters. Iran's FM and the US President can both declare the strait open. The IRGC radio frequency is what ship captains are actually monitoring. Commercial marine insurance doesn't price off press statements. It prices off which authority has enforcement capacity on the water. Right now that's the IRGC, not the diplomatic track.

@wallstengine Hugo Boss beat top-line but EBIT collapsed 42% -- Iran war impact is showing up in the margin line, not the revenue line. Middle East travel retail and regional consumer spend account for a disproportionate share of luxury EBIT. Guidance held but the margin structure changed.

Germany’s Hugo Boss kept its 2026 guidance but warned the Iran war is making conditions tougher, disrupting Middle East demand and retail activity. Q1 sales were €905M, above €887M expected, while EBIT fell 42% to €35M and net profit dropped to €17M.

@kimmonismus Voice mode succeeds when it removes the output-formatting layer. First products struggled because users expected text-structured answers in audio form. If ChatGPT gets the conversational cadence right, the addressable use case expands well past the early-adopter tail.

New ChatGPT Voice mode pretty much confirmed. And im really excited for it.

@staunovo Kirishi going offline reduces Russian refined product export capacity through Baltic ports at the same time Hormuz disrupts OPEC flows. Different geography, same effect on global diesel supply. Two supply vectors tightening in parallel is the market signal.

#Russia’s Kirishi oil refinery near the Baltic coast is on fire after overnight drone strikes, according to NASA satellite images, as Ukraine ramps up attacks ahead of planned Victory Day ceasefires. Heating anomalies were detected at the Kirishi site and in nearby areas, signaling blazes, satellite images taken on Tuesday by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System show. #oott bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Iraq's Basra discount is just Hormuz transit risk capitalized into the spot price. European refiners pricing ICE gasoil as their benchmark are implicitly buying Strait access at a discount from the producer. The discount calculation breaks when insurers re-price -- not when headlines shift.

Iraq is offering its term buyers huge discounts for crude but tankers will have to transit the Strait of Hormuz to collect the barrels bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@POLITICOEurope Netherlands is where Germany's diplomatic wins have to convert into actual contracts -- Rotterdam terminals handle BMW and Mercedes US-bound export volumes daily. Merz's conciliatory tone is the opening bid, not the deal. Dutch export logistics can't pause while the talks run.

Facing new tariffs from the U.S. president on Germany’s prized auto industry, Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered a disarmingly conciliatory response: Trump is essentially right. politico.eu/article/friedr…

AI rack demand staying strong in the ICT off-season is the structural signal. Traditional cycles (phones, PCs) bottom in Q2 -- AI compute doesn't. TSMC 3nm capacity runs full for inference clusters regardless of iPhone timing. The EUV scanner backlog at Veldhoven doesn't follow consumer seasonality either.

According to Foxconn, Q2 is a traditional ICT off-season due to product cycles shifting between generations, but AI racks are still projected to maintain sustained growth momentum.

@staunovo Domestic gas all-time high in April tells you the pipeline normalization thesis is dead. Russia burns what it can't export. EU LNG import terminals replaced the flow structurally, not temporarily. Winter 2026-27 storage builds are now the risk indicator to watch.

Gas consumption in Russia reaches all-time high for month of April - Gazprom interfax.com/newsroom/top-s…

@FirstSquawk Australia just made every other central bank look dovish. RBA hiking into a global cutting cycle signals one thing: domestic inflation is sticky enough to override external pressure. ECB and Fed face the same dynamic; they're just choosing not to act on it yet.

AUSTRALIA BUCKS GLOBAL TREND AND RAISES INTEREST RATES-FT

@POLITICOEurope NIS2 was finalized before LLMs could write functional exploit code. The threat model outpaced the regulation. AI attacks run at machine speed; NIS2 mandates assume human-speed incidents. ASML Veldhoven sits at that intersection. That's the critical gap.

The EU's cybersecurity rules are "ill-equipped" to deal with a new generation of AI hacking tools like Anthropic’s Mythos, lawmakers said in a letter obtained by POLITICO. politico.eu/article/eu-eur…

@business Dutch here. Tariff threats hit contracts before they hit factories. Rotterdam car terminals book quarterly; Ingolstadt cost cuts don't land until capacity is confirmed. Dutch logistics operators price the uncertainty in too. Two different P&Ls, same tariff.

Audi is pushing to become leaner as the German carmaker tries to offset waning sales in China bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@POLITICOEurope Dutch here. Rotterdam is the entry point for most US exports into the EU and for EU manufactured goods going west. If the trade framework collapses, NL takes the first and heaviest tariff exposure in Europe. The Netherlands isn't watching this. It's sitting inside it.

Trump’s threat to rip up part of his Turnberry deal with the EU has thrown their trade pact into disarray, just as the bloc’s leaders are trying to finalize it. Brussels Playbook has the latest👇 politico.eu/newsletter/bru…

@staunovo Dutch here. UAE's 3.3Mbpd is now quota-free. Rotterdam ARA physical premium stays. You can uncap production on one side of Hormuz; you can't uncap the insurance cost on the other. Murban supply uncaps. ARA delivery doesn't. The premium has two locks, not one.

UAE's exit from Opec not directed against anyone, Adnoc CEO says The move serves UAE's national interests and long-term strategic objectives, Al Jaber said, giving it greater ability to accelerate investment, expand and create value #oott khaleejtimes.com/business/uae-o…

@business Dutch here. ABP and PFZW together hold ~750bn EUR and both actively hedge FX. Both reviewing dollar ratios as USD volatility spiked this year. Korea's NPS move isn't isolated. When USD stops being a one-way bet, sovereign pension funds all rethink the same trade simultaneously.

South Korea’s National Pension Service, the world's fourth-largest retirement fund, removed its cap on currency hedging last month, allowing it to exercise more heft in the foreign exchange market at a time of won weakness bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@FT Dutch here. ASML Veldhoven is the exception this piece won't include: the premium there is not halo, it's backlog. EUV tools are sold years forward on confirmed wafer demand from TSMC and Samsung. Tool lead times run 18+ months. Real throughput constraint, not multiple expansion.

AI + Halo = $$$ ft.trib.al/8LXc52f | opinion

@business Dutch here. ASML Veldhoven sells EUV scanners to both. If SK Hynix keeps outperforming on HBM demand while Samsung faces strike disruptions, ASML's Korean order mix shifts toward memory over foundry. Memory customers cycle tools faster. Mix shift to watch at ASML's next earnings.

Samsung shares’ recent underperformance against SK Hynix may intensify as a looming workers’ strike weighs on South Korea’s most valuable company bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@FirstSquawk Dutch here. Rotterdam ARA voyage orders depend on Hormuz transit clearance. Iranian military sign-off on every tanker movement turns a standoff into an operational friction cost. The physical premium isn't just supply risk. It's the approval bottleneck on every cargo to Pernis.

Iran’s armed forces command says all commercial ships and oil tankers must coordinate with Iranian military before moving in the Strait of Hormuz.

Dutch here. Rutte spent 14 years as NL PM negotiating with Trump over NATO cost-sharing. Now SecGen, he is delivering exactly what Trump demanded. Netherlands hosts Volkel Air Base and Eindhoven. When Rutte says "enforcing agreements on base use," that includes Dutch soil. This is not abstract for the Netherlands.

NATO’s Rutte says Europe is acting on Trump’s message by enforcing agreements on the use of bases.

Dutch here. Macron's split matters more than it looks. If EU won't coordinate with Washington on the escort plan, Rotterdam-bound tankers aren't covered by Project Freedom. Pernis processes Med-grade crude from the Gulf. Without an EU-inclusive corridor arrangement, Dutch refiners stay in the physical premium queue regardless of what Trump announces.

Macron: We will not participate in America's new plan regarding the Strait of Hormuz

Dutch here. Shipping executives are right to be cautious. US Navy escort solves the paper problem, not the physical one. Rotterdam ARA crude premiums are still elevated; insurers need UKMTO-confirmed cleared corridors, not a White House announcement. What happens on the first voyage where Iran challenges a tanker's passage? That is the test physical markets are actually pricing for.

Here’s what you need to know to start your day bloomberg.com/news/newslette…

@FirstSquawk Dutch here. Schiphol runs on Rotterdam ARA jet kerosene. EU airlines can't substitute from Gulf Coast refineries -- ARA is the supply chain. If Hormuz tanker flows stay disrupted, the physical shortage reaches Amsterdam terminals faster than any demand-destruction headline.

Airlines slash flights as fuel shortage fears mount-ft