Element
2.3K posts


Switzerland: • 16% Debt to GDP ratio • 0.2% inflation As healthy of an economy as it gets. If you had to pick an "issue", it'd be the GDP growth stagnating at ~1%. But even then: hard not to expect CH to come out as a winner of the AI & Robotics race.



Trump can TACO, burrito and chimichanga, but nothing will open Hormuz unless Iran wants it open. We can’t go home with Hormuz shut and missiles raining down on our friends. The only way out, is through Iran.. As scary as that sounds, I think we’re going to mobilize serious boots on the ground. That takes 6+ months. No one’s portfolio is positioned for half a year of this chaos…


They had all weekend to think something up. The best they could come up with is sailing into a turkey shoot… Think it’s time to accept the obvious. Hormuz opens when the Iranians want it to open. Only way Trump can force the issue, is troops on the ground, but we need a force projection that is Gulf War 1 or larger in scope to do this. That takes 6 months to assemble and involves calling up reserves. Does Trump dare to do this?? Can the world make it 6 months with Hormuz shut?? Feel damn good to be running long vol and lower gross. Gonna be a great opportunity to gross-up as this becomes apparent to everyone else…



Fed's Powell: We are in a difficult situation, we have to balance risks.




NYC spends more per homeless person than the median NYC household earns. $81,705 per person in FY2025. And $81,705 is a floor. It excludes supportive housing (~$500M/yr), mental health response teams, and NYPD encampment costs. The city projects ~$97K per person in FY2026.



US WOULDN'T ESCORT HORMUZ VESSELS UNTIL IRAN THREAT REDUCED - WSJ

Instead of another "2026 Outlook" report, we did a 40+ page dive into the credit and distressed landscape. Private Credit has surged in growth and even Apollo has rung the alarm bells. We venture to answer whether the "Angry Men of Credit" will return to center stage. open.substack.com/pub/lakecornel…


$BAK quick and dirty. $BAK uses North American natural gas-linked feed stocks to produce plastic resins and other chemical base products. US/N. Am. Ethane is a primary feedstock and their end products are generally priced with a rough oil (brent) price linkage. The PE-Ethane spread, a good indicator of $BAK profitability has blown out following the war outbreak in Iran. The spread was in the $700/mt range pre-conflict, and is now ~$915/mt, with momentum accelerating to the upside given a cascade of chemical plant force majeures in the ME and Asia over the past few days. A lot of petchem supply offline in the Middle East and Asia and obviously oil prices are up, while US natural gas/ethane prices have remained largely flat. $BAK is a spread business and recent developments have been good for margins. In 2018, the $BAK PE-Ethane spread was $978 for the year according to the chart below from US. The company did $3B of EBITDA in 2018. Consensus is looking for ~$1.1B of EBITDA in 2026 (Second chart below from UBS). That's a big delta... Enterprise Value as of right now is ~$12BN, so that’s a ~12x multiple on consensus EBITDA for 2026. Call it 10x just to be conservative. 10x * $3bn = $30bn EV. Less ~$11B net debt is ~$19Bn implied market cap. Market cap today is…$1.5Bn That's a big delta... Spreads obviuously need to stay at current levels for a while and the company needs to operate well (certainly no guarantee), but $BAK capital structure is 90% debt and obviously it has a huge fixed cost base. So big financial leverage+big operating leverage+unexpected positive inflection in pet chem margins. Market just has to believe this thing is not going BK…which, don’t get me wrong, it very well still might…but even the prospect of no BK could result in a 2-3x from current prices…let alone the 10x+ scenario I just laid out above… No material debt maturities until 2028 and Brazil elections in October (slim possibility of a swing to the right...), so likely have some time regardless until a restructuring is a forced requirement. Probably the highest beta oil bet in the market today and the stock really hasn't begun to reflect the prospects of a protracted war in Iran and structurally higher oil/petchem prices. $BAK charts courtesy of UBS. @calvinfroedge @contrarian8888 @hkuppy

BREAKING: The price of European jet fuel is now up over +70% this week to the highest level since June 2022, per FT. 40% of Europe's jet fuel comes through the Strait of Hormuz. This is simply becoming unsustainable.



Want to hear an even more surreal story? I was a freelancer in Spain, making 4-5K€ per month. Then my son was born, and I was forced to take at least 6 weeks of paternity leave. During this time I would be paid around 900€/month (regardless of how much I made). A good portion of my income came from ongoing monthly contracts that didn't require daily involvement on my part, and I arranged with my clients to do more work upfront and then catch up when I came back to make up for my time away. HOWEVER, to my surprise, my accountant told me the Spanish system did not allow me to create invoices during my paternity leave. I asked if I could give up my paternity leave "benefits" altogether. The answer was NO. So for a while there, I was forced by the government to stop generating 4-5K€ for my family and instead take the 900€ they so kindly were giving me.









