UPDATE (April 20): Energy secretary admits gas prices to remain high (above $3/gallon) until 2027. As usual, POTUS intervened and retorted that his energy secretary is “totally wrong”. Those who understand how all of this works have confirmed these disruptions will have long lasting effects (see the included video in this posting).
UPDATE (April 19): Told you so moment. Friday, market rallies and oil future prices continue to drop. Chaos continues over the weekend and now this Iranian cargo ship seizure by the U.S. Naval blockade (in violation of the ceasefire) plus Iran confirming they will not be taking part in this next round of negotiations (because of the ongoing coercion by the United States), has the U.S. futures down and oil prices back on the rise again.
The financial markets will NOT learn until this blows up in their face (like all past market shenanigans). By not treating this conflict seriously from the very start and just using all of this as trading opportunities, all it’s doing is allowing this insider trading that is happening while hiding true price discovery in this rigged market that already has two bubbles propping up those highs on the indices.
The U.S. futures are down minimally on a percentage basis (not enough to cause market sentiment to head into the wall of worry mode yet). We’re going to need to see market circuit breakers being triggered to maybe send a message that play time is over.
UPDATE (April 18): The Strait of Hormuz is “closed” again (that closed is a technicality since vessels approved for the coordinated route are still transiting). Iran confirms that POTUS lied (no surprise there), plus much of the media that simply parroted his “the strait is open again”, failed at reading comprehension because they did not read the entire message from Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi:
In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, on the coordinated route as already announced by Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep. of Iran.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the President of the United States made seven claims in the span of one hour where all seven were false. The media across the board, are also to blame for failing to fact check the POTUS who has consistently lied about many things since his days as a real estate businessman.
The following is the message broadcast to all ships in the Persian Gulf (the “idiots” in question refers to the United States and it’s president).
And there unsurprisingly has been oil trades that have been well timed (leading to claims of insider trading being performed by allies and/or family members) where huge profits have been made (on both the long and short side) whenever the president has made some of these announcements.
As per the subject matter of this post, Wall Street is in utter denial about the impact to the global economy this is going to have.
UPDATE (April 17): Still more Wall Street denial (when has Israel ever not found some way to violate a ceasefire?). And does anyone believe the statement that Iran has agreed to suspend and give up their nuclear program? How many times has POTUS lied?
UPDATE (April 16): More Wall Street denial (they aren’t even doing proper research and due diligence on what is actually happening – hypocrites as expected when that is the mantra they always preach to potential investors; why bother having prospectus and quarterly/annual 10K filings for companies if they are just going to ignore the actual details surrounding geopolitical issues that are being handled criminal regimes (which both Israel and the United States, are proving to be as bad/worse than the Iranian regime).
As noted before, jet fuel is going to become a global supply issue. I only mentioned the impact of tourism in that other posting. Air freight (DHL, FedEx, UPS, ECMS, Atlas, and all those other air cargo carriers) are going to be impacted which will affect everything else. Folks with disposable income can get through this without much issue. It’s the vast majority of everyone else that will feel that economic pain and pressure along with the supply chain impacts that will affect many businesses.
History repeating itself as usual. These folks are just sociopaths and will trade on everything just to make money in the moment. The stock market trades on emotion/sentiment and all they are doing is normalizing the psychotic delusions of an American president that is negotiating with himself and putting out lies to the public regarding most everything.
Right now, Wall Street market makers (aka market manipulators) are promoting hope instead of fear (because they also know the AI bubble is eventually going to start its deflation leading to that fear driven market — thus the need to find reasons to pump the market up and sell high to suckers who buy into this rally).
In pushing the market to even higher levels though, all that does is provide this ongoing permission structure of market manipulation at the expense of actual market visibility (which has been FUBAR with the “liberation day” tariffs since 2025). The ones who get hurt in the end are of course the regular people (retirement accounts, IRA’s, 401k’s, etc) and/or the ones foolish enough to invest in this market by purchasing into the highs while the smart money is dumping their positions in order to lock in actual profits (classic pump and dump).
I’ve remained transparent about my sell orders with AAPL (my largest holdings). The only thing I’m doing is constantly increasing the quantity in those orders (aka decreasing the amounts I am willing to hold) based on ongoing factors/current events. And I’m also hedging into gold since I expect the purchasing power of the USD to be eroded/devalued significantly as the United States becomes isolated by its actions. Again, the disclaimer applies.
I have no crystal ball on this market though and would like to be 100% wrong on this.
