james barty
32.9K posts

james barty
@jamesbarty
All views personal. Investment strategist at CC/Baml/DB/Arrowgrass, ex Policy Exchange and BBA

What just happened? At 2:30 PM ET today, CBS News reported that President Trump was considering "boots on the ground" in Iran. Then, at 3:43 PM ET, President Trump said "I don't want to do a ceasefire with Iran," with the S&P 500 hitting a new 2026 low. Exactly 90 minutes later, at 5:13 PM ET, President Trump said the US is "considering winding down" the war with Iran. Between the 3:43 PM ET and 5:13 PM ET comments, the S&P 500 had already risen nearly +1% on NO news. By 6:15 PM ET, the S&P 500 rallied +1.8% from its low, adding +$900 BILLION in market cap. Markets are now closed until Monday.



JUST IN: President Trump just posted that the United States should consider pulling its forces from the Strait of Hormuz. Let the countries that use it be responsible, he said. No free rides. The man who authorised a $16.5 billion military campaign to secure the strait is publicly floating the idea of leaving it nineteen days later. That is not a contradiction. It is a negotiating position published to 90 million followers on Truth Social, and it is the most dangerous sentence written about global energy security since the war began. Because the market has to decide whether he means it. If he does not mean it, the post is leverage. Another pressure tool aimed at the allies who refused to send warships. Germany. France. Japan. Australia. India. Every country that declined just learned that the American president is publicly questioning whether their energy security is worth American ships and American lives. The threat of withdrawal achieves what the request for coalition never could: genuine fear that the protection is conditional. If he does mean it, the permissioned chokepoint becomes permanent. The Mosaic Doctrine’s 31 provincial commands do not need an American carrier in the Gulf to keep the strait closed. They need the carrier gone. American naval presence is the only force that theoretically could assemble the minesweeping, escort, and insurance-normalisation architecture needed to reopen commercial transit. Remove it and the sealed packets run indefinitely. While President Trump posts, the rest of the world is moving. Argentina pledged naval units to assist in Hormuz. Argentina. Not Britain, which refused. Not France, which denied airspace. Not Japan or Australia or Germany. Argentina. The coalition that the world’s most powerful military alliances declined to join is being assembled from the southern hemisphere by a country whose navy last fought a major engagement in 1982. The IRGC published satellite images of five specific Gulf facilities with identical Arabic evacuation warnings: military strikes within hours. Ras Laffan and Mesaieed in Qatar. Jubail and Samref in Saudi Arabia. Al-Hosn in the UAE. These are not vague threats. They are targeting packages published on open channels with coordinates the entire world can verify. The UAE responded by officially labelling the Iranian strikes terrorist attacks, the strongest diplomatic language Abu Dhabi has used since the war began. And China opened military talks with EU and NATO scheduled for next week. Not trade talks. Not diplomatic consultations. Military talks. Beijing is positioning itself as the security interlocutor for a Europe that refused to fight alongside America and now needs someone to talk to about what comes next. Every seat at the table that Washington left empty, China is filling. South Pars and Asaluyeh are confirmed hit. The gas field that feeds Iranian fertiliser production and the petrochemical hub that processes it are both damaged. The IRGC responds by threatening five more facilities across three Gulf states. The escalation ladder has no empty rungs left. Urea at $610 on CBOT. Corn acres falling. Soybean acres rising. The cattle herd at a 75-year low. The packaging supply chain under satellite-guided threat. The insurance market frozen. The planting window closing. And the president who started the war is publicly considering whether to stay. Deep dive analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…




Absolutely bang on from George Monbiot here 🎯 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

















