MacroTrader

Portfolio Update

@GlobalMktObserv 11 in 11 is the stat but the weirder part is nobody got a real entry along the way. Every shallow pullback got bid back inside the same session.

🔴The S&P 500 is experiencing a historically massive move: The index has risen +11% over the last 11 trading sessions, according to Deutsche Bank. Gains of +10% or more over any rolling 11-session period have occurred only 15 times this century. The only comparable episodes include bounces during the Dot-Com Bubble collapse, the Global Financial Crisis, and the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011. More recently, the 2020 Crisis rebound and hopes for a short war in Ukraine in 2022 produced similar moves. Historically, parabolic rallies of this magnitude have tended to mark a short-term peak rather than the start of a new leg higher. Expect more volatility ahead.

@graddhytrading Miners leading BTC on breakouts is the usual tell. They front-run before spot actually catches.

@brent_e_trader Tahts great point

@MoMoMacro Hedge funds are short Option dealers are short The good news is the bank does not have to deliver shares on TRS.

$CAR biggest short squeeze since $GME $AMC. The difference though is this was manipulated and engineered by a hedge fund and now you have a vicious battle between hedge funds that are either long or short and banks suffering from cash-settled total return swaps. You playing?

Iran's entire oil escape hatch just got welded shut by a single US threat to Chinese banks. Here's what actually happened. Iran saw the blockade coming. In anticipation, they loaded crude onto tankers and parked them outside the Persian Gulf. A giant stockpile of Iranian oil sitting in international waters, waiting for a buyer. The buyer was always going to be China. China takes almost all of Iran's oil. Yesterday the US made one move that changed everything. It told Chinese banks that if they process a payment for this Iranian oil, they get hit with secondary sanctions. Secondary sanctions means the bank itself gets hit, not just the Iran transaction. Imagine being told you can't touch the dollar anymore. That's what this threat means to a Chinese bank. That shuts the whole thing down. Chinese banks can't process the payments. The oil sits on the tankers. Iran's dollars don't come in. This matters because Iran's economy was already a basket case before the war even started. The floating-storage play was one of Tehran's main lifelines, the thing that was supposed to buy them time. That lifeline just got cut. And there's a second move, which might be even smarter. The Trump administration is publicly dangling the prospect of a peace deal. That caps the oil price. Look at Brent (the global oil benchmark) right now. Both the price for oil delivered today and the price for oil delivered next month are sitting on the idea that a deal could break out any minute. Which matters because Iran's main leverage in this standoff is to panic the oil market and spike crude as hard as possible until the world begs for a ceasefire. That's the whole playbook. If crude won't spike, the playbook doesn't work. So now Iran is boxed in. Their oil is stuck on tankers nobody can pay for. Their economy was already in ruins before a shot was fired. And the one weapon they had, the ability to blow up the oil market, is being held down by the mere possibility of a deal. For anyone watching the gas pump, this is why oil isn't ripping higher on every Middle East headline. It's being capped in real time. The press keeps writing this story as if Iran is the one with the upper hand. Calm mullahs, leaky blockade, toothless sanctions — that's the framing everywhere you look. Read the actual mechanics and it's the opposite. Tehran is cornered. A regime with no money coming in and no way to spike oil has one real option left, which is to come back to the negotiating table in good faith.

@elerianm @ScottWapnerCNBC @CNBCClosingBell @CNBC Buyer side has been the tell all year. Bessent leaning on bills is the only reason the duration auctions keep clearing.

The link to yesterday's conversation with @ScottWapnerCNBC on @CNBCClosingBell. Thank you, Scott, for having me on your show. cnbc.com/video/2026/04/… #economy #markets @CNBC

@TankerTrackers Labels only work when the buyer actually cares about them. These barrels keep finding homes anyway.

As you can clearly see in this 3 day long AIS playback since the blockade line was drawn between the eastern horn of Oman and the Iran-Pakistan border, a lot of the tankers which have been placed under US sanctions have been entering and departing the scene with ease. #OOTT

@TedPillows That's a lot of cushion down to 64,502. Whoever took this isn't scared of a wick, they're sized to sit in it.

Someone has opened a $31,155,000 $BTC long position. Liquidation Price: $64,502

@rev_cap The platforms you're looking at are the survivors. Short vol books always look composed right up until the one print that clears them.

Short vol thesis supported That said these platforms have all had fairly modest drawdowns in last few years in the face of truly insane vol events

@Fongern_FX Nobody builds a CDS index on vibes. Somebody upstairs with a real book on the long side asked for it.

⚠️ Big, really big bombshell: The same banks publicly calling private credit "manageable" just launched a CDS index to short it. In short: When banks build the instrument to bet against a market, the diagnosis is already made.

@Fongern_FX The first buyers of any new CDS index are the desks that built it. Outside money always shows up late and ends up holding the long leg.

@GlobalMktObserv Going from +730 to -80 in a single revision is IEA quietly admitting the demand side broke. Matters more than anything the supply side does from here.

‼️The Gulf energy shock is now destroying global oil demand at a scale not seen since 2020: The IEA now expects global oil demand to contract by -80,000 barrels per day in 2026, a reversal of -810,000 bpd from its prior forecast of +730,000 bpd👇 globalmarketsinvestor.beehiiv.com/p/physical-rea…

🚨Asia and Europe are running out of jet fuel: Jet fuel prices rose +70% since the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran six weeks ago, to $4.24 a gallon, according to the Argus US Jet Fuel Index. Europe has ~6 weeks of jet fuel remaining, though the situation varies significantly across the continent, with Britain, Iceland, and the Netherlands most at risk, while Austria, Bulgaria, and Poland hold more comfortable stocks, according to IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. This comes as only ~10% of a barrel of oil goes to jet fuel, making it the most vulnerable refined fuel to supply disruptions, according to GasBuddy. After China and Thailand stopped exporting jet fuel to meet domestic needs, import-dependent markets including Vietnam, Myanmar, and Pakistan began running out of supply. Major European airlines including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Ryanair have begun cutting flights and rationing fuel, with some Italian airports already restricting supply. Tokyo-London round-trip airfares on ANA's nonstop service surged +90% over the 50 days surrounding the start of the Iran war, to ~$3,010, according to Nikkei. Fuel surcharges on Japan-Europe routes are expected to exceed ~$503, per ticket if current kerosene prices persist, with JAL and ANA both considering raising surcharge caps. This is a crisis.

@DannyDayan5 Overheat was always there. The war just gave everyone an excuse to look past it for a few months.

Overheat is back as the key macro risk if the war is over.

@CryptoJelleNL Weekend sweeps are the ones that reclaim. Monday tape usually settles it.

$BTC testing the 100-day EMA, and potentially putting in a major sweep of the local highs - while also tagging the highs of a flag-like structure. Confirm the sweep over the weekend and it's an easy trade back down - with clear invalidation just above as well. Simple.

Iran just put a tollbooth on 20% of the world's oil supply. The price is $1 a barrel. And they want it in Bitcoin. On March 30, Iran's parliament passed a law called the Strait of Hormuz Management Plan. If you're a supertanker hauling 2 million barrels through that 21-mile stretch of water between Iran and Oman, you now owe Iran about $2 million to pass. In crypto. The IRGC (Iran's military, basically their Pentagon fused with a mafia) has reportedly been running this toll since mid-March. Accepted currencies: Chinese yuan, Bitcoin, and possibly USDT (a dollar-pegged crypto token). Public estimates put revenue at up to $20 million a day from oil tankers, and $600 to $800 million a month if you add in the LNG (liquefied natural gas) ships. The Strait of Hormuz is where one fifth of the world's oil flows. 138 ships a day, normally. After the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28, traffic collapsed to ONE vessel on March 7. Brent crude jumped from $71 to $128 in five weeks. The Bitcoin part is what I can't stop thinking about. Iran ran sanctions evasion through stablecoins for years. Their central bank alone held at least $507 million in USDT. Then Tether flipped the kill switch. Froze $37 million of Iran's central bank wallets in June 2025. Froze 42 more Iranian addresses in July. Since 2023, Tether has frozen $3.3 billion across 7,000 wallets. A stablecoin is basically a dollar with a compliance department attached. The company that issues it can freeze your money from a conference room in the British Virgin Islands. Bitcoin has no company, no office, no compliance department. Once a Bitcoin payment confirms, it is finished. Nobody on earth can reverse it. From a spokesperson at Iran's oil exporters union: tankers get "a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can't be traced or confiscated due to sanctions." Picture a supertanker captain off the coast of Oman, engine idling, email open, scanning a QR code to send $2 million in Bitcoin before Iran waves him through. That is the scene actually playing out right now on the jugular vein of global energy. For years the Bitcoin debate was about price. Will it hit $100K, $500K, a million. A sovereign nation just made the real question obvious: what happens when the PROPERTIES of the money matter more than its price. For scale, Bitcoin's market cap is $1.33 trillion. The US Treasury market is over $35 trillion. Bitcoin cannot replace the dollar in global trade yet. But a $2 million toll doesn't need that kind of depth. It needs to not be freezable. Bitcoin clears that bar. Iran isn't the only one reaching. Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 setting up a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve of roughly 200,000 coins. El Salvador is up to 7,565. A CCP-backed (Chinese Communist Party) think tank at Renmin University published a paper calling Bitcoin a strategic reserve asset. Taiwan is reportedly evaluating it as insurance against a potential Chinese blockade. The world's most sanctioned regime, the world's most powerful government, a tiny Latin American country, a Chinese academic institution, and an island nation staring down a blockade are all reaching for the same asset for the same reason. Bitcoin's mid-March rebound rolled over at $76,000. A clean break above and this story stops being academic.

@NYoungfarmer @zerohedge Damn good point

@MoMoMacro @zerohedge Rbi offer gold as payment Dollar will get Delhi belly.

India's Central Bank Tells Oil Refiners To Stop Buying Dollars On Spot Market zerohedge.com/commodities/in…

@SuperBitcoinBro Once a flag outlasts the pole it stops being continuation and turns into its own chop zone. The double bottom at prior ATH is a much more honest test of who actually wants to be long.

@firstadopter Happens with every model swap. The rough edges get patched way before the vibes recover.

Bad social news cycle

Anthropic running out of compute is hurting their brand among customers. Honestly? We're paying customers. We deserve the service (and reliability uptime!) we paid for.

@yieldsearcher Severance cohorts also sit in IJC way longer than they used to. By the time the series confirms anything the labor market has already moved.

While I maintain that IJC is a less relevant labor metric in the age of the gig economy and severance packages, I would note that few people extend the logic of a lower breakeven payroll threshold (due to pop decline) to a lower breakeven IJC.