space monkey

BREAKING: The oil market needs demand destruction; Germany has other plans. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that gasoline / diesel duties will be cut by 17 cents per liter for 2 months to cushion the impact of the US-Iran war.

Konkrétan sírok.

I believe that Iran is playing a game of chicken with the US in the oil market because that's Trump's real political cryptonite and true leverage they can exploit in the negotiations to end the war. ⚠️ The first time, Iran waited 48 hours before officially rejecting the US proposal. That sent $CL May price all the way up to almost ~116$ on by this Tuesday, while the various Tacos along the way were only effective to hold up stocks and hold down the June contract. 🚩As you can see in this chart I made, that was the exact point in time when oil futures started to factor in significant supply stress with the spread between CL1 and CL2 hitting ~16$ on Tuesday. Here is where things become interesting. As you can see in the chart, the June 26 WTI futures contract (that becomes CL2 after the 18 of March) only briefly traded above ~100$ a few times since the 9th of March. On the other side, the May contract surpassed the ~110$ 9th of March high one month later on the 2nd of April. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that during the Easter weekend, it was when President Trump lost his temper when he posted the famous "open the f-ing Strait". Why? Because he was surely informed that not too far above the oil futures market was about to break loose, since those who were short that contract were starting to get squeezed hard. After a brief market relief from that post, the squeeze resumed till Monday, when, as reported by the FT, the US administration was pushing hard on Pakistan to open a direct negotiation channel with Iran. 🚩Here is when Iran seized the opportunity again, this time having more leverage in the negotiations, to the point that they got a public preliminary acceptance of their 10 conditions to end the war (the president even reposted FM Araqchi statement, the post is now deleted). Those conditions would have never been accepted if the GCC or Israel were actively involved in the negotiations, but Trump was in a rush to announce a ceasefire to trigger an oil futures price crash and avoid a sudden spike that could have crashed stocks. Again, I do not think it is a coincidence that on Monday, several large $QQQ short positions were placed in the market with 13th of April expiry. ⚠️If I am right and Iran continues its game of chicken with the US, which has already figured out how they are in no position to accept all the conditions Iran asked, as early as tomorrow, Iran is going to announce they will pull out from the ceasefire talks in Pakistan. This is going to be a MASSIVE problem for the oil futures market, which at that point will be about one week away from the May to June contract rollover. Why? Because not only will the May 26 contracts resume running higher when shorts are in the process of rolling their positions into June, but traders will be forced to price in the supply tightness in the June contract that can potentially even start trading in contango if the conflict escalates further and its end is then projected later in the future. Beware that so far I haven't factored in additional supply disruptions caused by more strikes on oil infrastructure in the Middle East and potentially the closure of the Bab-El-Mandeb strait. These additional elements can spark the perfect storm on the June 26 contract, with prices likely surpassing the recent ~120$ high by a big margin till the point the pain will be significant for Trump again (maybe because stocks will be crashing at that point causing a big political problem for him too) and he will be willing to accept Iran's conditions and pull out of the region. Feel free to bookmark this post

Two weeks ago, the Hungarian opposition was bracing for a false flag operation, an "emergency" that would allow Viktor Orban to turn the tide or even cancel an election he is losing. Now it appears to have arrived

Silver has never closed a quarter this high. Anyone complaining about the silver price is watching the market far too closely.

🚗⚡ Electric cars are dominating Europe! Here’s the share of EVs in new car sales across Europe in December 2025: 🇳🇴 Norway: 98% 🇩🇰 Denmark: 81% 🇳🇱 Netherlands: 64% 🇮🇪 Ireland: 62% 🇮🇸 Iceland: 58% 🇫🇮 Finland: 53% 🇲🇹 Malta: 44% 🇸🇪 Sweden: 43% 🇧🇪 Belgium: 39% 🇱🇺 Luxembourg: 36% 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 32% 🇨🇭 Switzerland: 32% 🇵🇹 Portugal: 27% 🇫🇷 France: 24% 🇩🇪 Germany: 22% 🇦🇹 Austria: 21% 🇸🇮 Slovenia: 20% 🇨🇾 Cyprus: 18% 🇱🇹 Lithuania: 14% 🇵🇱 Poland: 11% 🇮🇹 Italy: 11% 🇪🇸 Spain: 11% 🇬🇷 Greece: 11% 🇭🇺 Hungary: 10% 🇱🇻 Latvia: 9% 🇷🇴 Romania: 6% 🇸🇰 Slovakia: 6% 🇪🇪 Estonia: 6% 🇨🇿 Czechia: 6% 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: 6% 🇭🇷 Croatia: 5% Source: 800ev