Patient Speculator

@it_unprofession 3 consultants for 2 months would charge a lot more than $250K. My individual day rate when i left consulting in 2018 was $7,000. With inflation, this study would probably cost over $1M, especially when you add in some partner overhead

We hired a consulting firm to tell us why our profits are down. They sent three 24-year-olds wearing vests. They spent two months interviewing us about our own jobs. Then they put our answers into a PowerPoint presentation. They charged us $250K for this privilege. During the final readout, one of them used the phrase synergy optimization without blinking. I looked around the conference room. Our CEO was nodding like he just received the Ten Commandments. The grand conclusion was that we need to increase revenue and decrease costs. I could've told them that for a gift card to Panera. But nobody listens to the guy who works here. You only listen to the guy who flies in on a Tuesday. I'm updating my resume to include synergy optimization. It feels like the right move.

@JavierBlas Although I am heavily invested in energy, I have to admit that Trump’s oil jawboning is impressive. Let’s see how this plays out. In the short run I am holding onto all my oil/gas stocks and aggressively buy coal. Nobody gives a shit about coal prices

The White House is (truly) winning the oil jawboning battle against Tehran — still to be seen if Trump would win the physical oil market war. But to see Brent trading at sub-$100 a barrel (and WTI below $90) after 25 days of Hormuz almost full closure is almost surreal.

I think there’s a big misconception when it comes to large market moves. Many people take a theoretical view that “the market prices everything in.” But if you look at history, you’ll see that some of the largest market declines have come well after the catalyst was already widely known. 1.COVID-19: It’s called COVID-19 because it was identified in 2019. Yet markets didn’t fully digest the ramifications until mid-March, when economies were already shutting down. 2.GFC: Before the major collapse in Q3 and Q4 of 2008, it was already known in 2007 that cracks were forming. There were multiple warnings pointing to a potential mortgage crisis. Credit began to slowly reprice, and then it all unraveled at once. 3.Volmageddon: Prior to the February 2018 blowout, it was widely known among derivatives traders that these ETPs could fail. Portfolio managers were openly arguing with issuers at major derivatives conferences. 4.“Liberation Day”: Weeks before Trump announced tariffs, the market was aware he had a plan in place. In fact, markets initially rallied a few percent within seconds of the announcement, then went on to decline 20%. My point is that there’s a cognitive bias that leads people to believe the market is all-knowing, smarter than everyone, and always prices everything in. But during major volatility events, it’s often only at the very end that the market fully accepts the fear. This is likely because humans naturally are optimistic creatures. It’s embedded into our DNA.

Lmaoooooo I’m crying

@TaviCosta @TFMetals I sold most of my $EQX 2027 calls when gold was between $5200 and $5600. I’m thinking of starting to reload with 2028 calls now that gold is in the low $4000s

This meme never gets old. You never know the exact bottom — and it’s not worth having the hubris to think you do. I’ll keep scaling in at what I see as cheap, historically oversold levels. No need to follow my approach — I know many prefer to buy at $5,500 instead.

And why was the market green today?

@ttmygh @fleckcap Excited to listen to this.

Dammit! I left out the main man's Twitter handle: @fleckcap Sorry, my friend!

@nocapalpha Aren’t party balloons for kids’ birthdays last in line for helium? I think the MRIs are slightly more important than birthday balloons

Purposely taking credit for what might become the largest humanitarian crisis in the history of mankind will go down as one of the biggest unforced errors made by a politician. Things are about to get really dark in the near future if this war doesn’t de-escalate soon. @tedcruz youtu.be/ug07xac2gKM?si…

I think the most dangerous thing that I see in markets currently is this assumption that, as soon as the war ends, commodity production will just switch back on again. It won’t. It can’t. Commodity production is not like a manufacturing plant where you just line up your raw materials, flick a switch and production restarts again. Restarting oil and gas production, for instance, can take several months, depending on the assets. Some simple wells may only take a few days or a few weeks, but offshore fields or LNG facilities can take weeks or months. Delays are caused by the need to repressurise systems, inspect equipment and ensure the safety integrity. Reservoir behaviour can also change during shut-ins, requiring careful ramp-up to avoid damage or flow issues. So, this assumption that fields will just restart production immediately is not realistic. For LNG plants it takes weeks to cool down the cryogenic systems. It's a similar situation in aluminium, as I discussed in previous posts. When you idle an aluminium smelter, the molten aluminium in the pots freezes. It can then take 6 months+ to restart a plant. While not as bad as oil&gas and aluminium, turning a urea plant back on can take 2-3 weeks. It takes 1-2 weeks to restart ammonia plants and then another 7-14 days to restart the urea plant around it. Likely it will take 1-4 weeks to restart the petrochemicals and plastics plants, and the oil refineries will also take a similar amount of time to restart. And those factors don’t even consider that the world’s shipping fleets are now mispositioned and it will take weeks in many cases for those ships to reposition themselves to the right places. So this assumption the market’s making that, as soon as peace breaks out, everything will go back to normal is very dangerous. Supply disruption is into its third week now. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, it would be several months before supply of many of these commodities will be re-established. And that’s simply not being priced into commodity prices or economic expectations, in my view.

@dollarsanddata The purpose is to socialize a 98th percentile student out of "I'm smarter than everyone so I can coast" into "I will have to hustle to compete with these people, and hustle even harder to outcompete the people who start with more money and better connections than me"

@calvinfroedge @johnkonrad But they are still paying the day rates… right?

Guys they've basically abandoned all the jackup rigs in the gulf The crews were evacuated A jackup rig is basically a shallow water oil driller That production isn't coming back quickly even with naval escorts or insurance or trump press conferences You don't get it yet

It takes Two to TACO! Probability of a Crash just shot up from 30% to 44.44% 🤭🌳🙏open.substack.com/pub/shrubbery/…

We are now 8.16 million b/d offline. Iraq -3.3 million b/d Kuwait -1.3 million b/d UAE -1.56 million b/d Saudi -2 million b/d

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC. May God bless America.

@dailydirtnap I’m glad you and @TgMacro started a podcast. When I see a new video drop it is an instant watch for me.

Ten years ago, if I went on a podcast, I could expect 5-15 new subscriptions. Now, when I go on a podcast, I get LinkedIn requests from bots.

Hey @MebFaber I have been a big fan of you and Cambria for a while. A lot of people have been asking me how to hedge the current situation. I have been suggesting $MFUT since it isn’t correlated and managed futures should do well in situations like 2022 with a slow grinding lower. I appreciate all that you do and trying to spread the word to other people

@chrismartenson This is exactly what I have been saying. I think that the market is pinned because of options hedging and after the expiry on March 20 the market will start the crash, then everyone will pay attention to what is going on

People will look back and realize that these past two weeks were like the last week of January and the first week of February 2020. Nobody was concerned, let alone alarmed. A month later, they were fighting over toilet paper at the grocery store.

@MarhelmData It was 0.25% before the war for reference

War-risk insurance now ~5% of hull value for a single transit after Iranian-linked ship attacks.

@vtchakarova @anasalhajji The economy is already doomed to go into the abyss. We just have not felt the impact yet because it takes a month for a ship to sail from the Middle East to Asia

There is a small window of opportunity these weeks to get China on board and agree collectively on a ceasefire for the sake of not pulling the global economy into the abyss. Otherwise, the cascading ripple effects will be devastating as Iran is greater systemic risk than Ukraine.