The wondrous operation of the glorious efficient market has set the price of oil at $99 per barrel, which is exactly what it should be. A miracle.
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vanillager
663 posts
The plausible worst case scenario here is that Saudi Arabia loses all export capacity, at least temporarily. Their storage is probably already full. There's literally nowhere else for the oil to go. They would have to shut in Ghawar. Is that even possible?
Paulo Macro@PauloMacro
There's a 310MW fire at Abqaiq right now - nbd (and before you say gas flares, those run 10-20MW) Nbd...
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@toiletkingcap This is the post above yours on my timeline. Nugget popped into my head, saw your post, thought I was having a stroke. x.com/carlquintanill…
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla
Yikes.
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@research34986 Same, I thought it would hold at least until Saturday.
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@vanillager Indeed i thought it would break at the weekend as i suspected this was all cover to save the markets before ground forces get involved at the weekend.
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I expected this to fall apart, but not this quickly.
محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf@mb_ghalibaf
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@SpecialSitsNews I've seen at least three different 10-point plans in the last 24 hours, all from reputable media or official or semi-official sources on one side or the other. It's not clear at all which one of these each side thinks is the basis for negotiation.
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Is the White House saying they never saw the 10 point plan? It has been all over twitter for 12 hours...
x.com/WarMonitor3/st…
WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧@WarMonitor3
White House officials have been surprised by Iran announcement of a 10 point peace plan and say it vastly differs from the proposed plan that a ceasefire was agreed upon.
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WATCH: “Why not just oppose this? We’re gonna trust Trump and Hegseth?”
@Timodc grills Democratic congressman @RepJoshG about why he won’t oppose the war, downplays the role Israel played (even after the NYT article), etc.🤔
Full @BulwarkOnline ep: youtu.be/8jrd5UZObF4?si…
YouTube
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i have decided i am going to be a good little baggy and dig in further. let's see how this goes. may be the beginning of the end for my outperformance. if so, it was wonderful meeting all of you on this platform.
GIF
🚽 🤴JRR ToiletKing@toiletkingcap
man i was completely wrongly positioned for this. do i hold it and bleed for a week to see what happens or cut and run?
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My portfolio got torpedoed by the ceasefire. But due to an entirely unrelated situation that I can’t ethically discuss yet, I’m still roughly flat since quarter end. This situation has allowed me to avoid forced degrossing, and given me the option to continue to hold most of my losing energy and agricultural positions. I am doing that. My sense is that the chances of the situation actually being “over” are well under 50%, and that most of these positions have more asymmetric upside than they did before.
Rationale, in brief:
(1) Attacks are still occurring.
(2) The Strait is still not open.
(3) The US military is still mobilizing, not demobilizing.
(4) This isn’t a conventional ceasefire. There are no agreed-upon terms, even on an intermediate basis.
(5) The US, Iran, Israel, and the GCC all still appear to be impossibly far apart.
(6) The last two times that there were negotiations between the US and Iran, they were interrupted by surprise attacks from the US and Israel. I believe there was similar “the US and Israel are unhappy with each other” reporting prior to each of these attacks as well.
(7) Near-term peace is unlikely to be in what Israel sees as its own best interest, and is certainly not in Netanyahu’s best interest.
(8) Israel generally does not abide by ceasefires. (I’m trying hard to keep this account apolitical. This statement is an observation, not a moral judgment.)
(9) On the commodity front, the damage has been done. Infrastructure has been destroyed and cargoes aren’t and won’t be where they need to be. Energy and agricultural names should still benefit over the medium term, even if peace holds.
It seems like maybe Iran agreed to this ceasefire - which is clearly not in its strategic best interest - to appease Pakistan. My base case is that the situation falls apart due to US or Israel attack before the two weeks are up. I hope I’m wrong.
vanillager@vanillager
What a mess. I’ll share my thoughts on the situation in this post and my positioning in a reply. Most of my thoughts on Iran are in the quoted series of posts. To recap, it’s been clear since the first week of the war that the Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian control. It’s not opening without their consent. Whether the United States negotiates, escalates, or maintains the status quo, it’s in Iran’s best interest to drag this thing out, and to keep the Strait closed. Before today, I’d have said that there’s literally no path to reopening prior to $150+ oil and an economic criss. Today I cut my oil bets because I do see a path to the Strait reopening in the near term. I’ve completely ignored Trump for four weeks straight, but comments he’s made in the last day have registered with me as more likely to be signal than noise, and make me believe that this path is at least possible. The path is that Trump declares victory, stops attacking, and then leaves. He announces the end of the Carter doctrine and immediately begins a physical reduction of US presence in the region. This leaves Israel to pull back (or to escalate catastrophically), and would be a win of such magnitude for Iran that their primary objective of achieving permanent deterrence against attack by the United States would be met. Their priorities would quickly shift to repairing relationships with their neighbors and the world, and to achieving permanent deterrence against attack by Israel. They might open the Strait immediately (with tolling) as an act of goodwill. Maybe not likely, but at least possible. And a good outcome for the entire world. Except for Israel. I use roughly 300% gross leverage, and so I cut my Brent futures positions (still own calls) so as to not be bankrupted by this outcome. I also shorted $EIS on the potential asymmetry.
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@orrdavid This isn't a collection of unfriendly tribes held together by a dictator, where the top guy dies and the whole thing falls apart. This is a cohesive society with institutions that are flawed but resilient. They don't depend on individual leaders. In that way they are like us.
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@orrdavid They're close enough in that an attack on the individual leaders (who are replaceable) would be seen by regular people as an attack on society, and tend to unite the country against the common enemy, making peace more difficult. That's what the attacks do, and are meant to do.
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@orrdavid I thought the number was 70% disapproval of the system of government and 50% disapproval of the leadership, prior to the war. But good point in any case.
Let’s say that an enemy kills 40 members of our Congress, which has an 80% disapproval rating. Does that change anything?
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@vanillager Do you know that 85% of Iranians oppose the current regime?
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@orrdavid The US has four times the population of Iran. Imagine that an enemy assassinated 40 of our top leaders. Would this motivate us to make peace? Would our government collapse?
The purpose of a thing is what it does. What have these assassinations actually accomplished?
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@kingdomcapadv @WaterworldCapi1 i.e. I think it was a good recommendation then and now.
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@kingdomcapadv @WaterworldCapi1 Moving up purchases (at low cost) ahead of a potential major inflation or supply chain disruption is a good idea, even if the worst-case scenario doesn't happen, in exactly the same way that buying insurance on your house is a good idea, even if it doesn't burn down.
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The foundation of our civilization is a moral framework that has been developed by our forebears over the course of millennia, and we are desecrating it.
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I'm an American, and I've thought through these questions a dozen times since the start of the war. The initial assassinations, the bombings of the elementary school and the desalinization plant and the bridge, "no quarter", "back to the stone age", "take their oil".
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@DeepDishEnjoyer @AjaxHamiltonian If she’s cute, you just talk to her. Did you do that?
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@AjaxHamiltonian i just need to be told what to do sometimes why is it only my replyguys that get handheld
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the drunk ice cube in wine lady shoved her lufthansa rose over my ear before going to bed. the flight attendant was about to offer making a double bed before realizing we don't know each other . maybe i was supposed to accept anyway
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