Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the delay, a lot to cover with both Iran and the markets so let’s dive into things.

Word of the Week

Conspicuous (adj)

Easy to notice because it stands out in an obvious or striking way; attracting attention, sometimes in an unwanted or embarrassing way.

• The senator's conspicuous silence on the issue spoke louder than anything he could have said.

• She walked into the quiet library wearing heels, which made her entrance about as conspicuous as possible.

• The administration's conspicuous retreat from Minneapolis sent a clear message to protesters and agents alike.

• His conspicuous wealth, the sports car, the designer suits, the table at the front of every restaurant, suggested a man who very much wanted to be noticed.

New Class Article

The Most Respectable Way to Waste Your Day / Checking the News All Day Long

There is a version of procrastination so well-disguised that most people never recognize it as such. Checking the news, refreshing a feed, "monitoring the situation" all feel like adult responsibilities rather than time-wasters, which is precisely what makes them so effective at eating your day. The habit wears the mask of responsibility. Nobody ever coined a flattering term for watching cat videos, but spending the same hour reading analysis of events you cannot influence is called "staying informed." Sound familiar?

What’s Happening in the News

War with Iran Week 4

On Saturday, Trump issued what might be the most reckless ultimatum of the entire war. In all capital letters on Truth Social, he gave Iran 48 hours to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or the United States would "obliterate" Iran's power plants, starting with the biggest one first. Iran's response was immediate and predictable: if you hit our energy, we hit yours. Iran's foreign minister warned that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates would all be targeted, and for good measure, Iran threatened to hit desalination plants. If you're unfamiliar with the Arabian Peninsula, it's a desert. Those desalination plants are how tens of millions of people get drinking water. Without them, Gulf nations have roughly a month of supply before things get very serious, very fast.

Then, on Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., exactly thirty minutes before the New York Stock Exchange opened, Trump came out and said never mind. The deadline was being pushed back five days because the U.S. was having "very good and productive conversations" with Iran about ending the war. Iran flatly denied any talks were happening. Iran's parliament speaker said Trump's optimism was being "used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped." Arab countries acting as intermediaries privately told the Wall Street Journal not to get too excited either, noting the two sides remain far apart on basically everything.

The timing of Trump's announcements has become impossible to ignore. The war launched on a Friday at midnight. The bombing of Kharg Island happened on a Friday. This ultimatum was issued Saturday night. And the walk-back came Monday morning before markets opened. Every single time, the most destabilizing news drops after markets close, and the reassuring news arrives just before markets reopen. Saturday's ultimatum caused oil to spike and stocks to crash. Monday's reversal triggered a massive rally. The S&P 500 jumped over 1%, and oil dropped more than 10% within hours. Trillions of dollars moved on the strength of one Truth Social post in each direction.

This is now a pattern across four consecutive weekends, and it's worth asking who benefits. If you knew even ten minutes before one of these posts went out, you could make a fortune. Short everything on Saturday, go long on Monday, and collect. Multiple outlets have reported suspicious trading positions appearing right before these announcements. Whether people with access to the president are getting rich off advance knowledge of these market-moving posts is an open question, but the pattern is undeniable.

Every time Trump does this, whether it's with Russia, China, North Korea, or Mexico, the result is the same. He makes some enormous threat, everyone panics, and then he backs down. The problem is that in a hot war, credibility matters. If Trump is telling Iran he'll destroy their energy no matter the consequences, he needs them to actually believe it. It's a madman strategy. And every time he backs down, Iran grows more confident that their Strait of Hormuz strategy is working and the U.S. will eventually fold.

To understand why Trump keeps reaching for these dramatic threats, you need to understand the stalemate. The U.S. and Israel have destroyed Iran's air force, navy, anti-aircraft systems, and nuclear infrastructure, and killed senior leaders including the supreme leader. From a military standpoint, Iran is finished. But Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. One-fifth of the world's oil passes through that strait in peacetime, and Iran has shut it to Western-aligned shipping since the war began while allowing friendly nations like China and India limited passage and reportedly charging tankers a $2 million toll. Oil prices have surged nearly 50%, and the International Energy Agency has called this worse than both 1970s oil shocks combined.

Neither side can escalate without making things worse for itself. The U.S. can keep bombing, but Iran can still launch drones and missiles from mobile platforms and hidden positions along its 600-mile coastline. These weapons are cheap and plentiful enough that no amount of bombing can stop them all. If the U.S. hits Iran's energy, Iran retaliates against Gulf energy, and everything gets worse: oil and gas prices spike globally, fertilizer shipments get disrupted causing food shortages, and the fragile U.S. economy takes a hit it might not recover from for years. Iran doesn't want to go too far either, because if they destroy everything in the Gulf, they lose all their leverage.

So the U.S. is stuck. It can't win from the air alone. A full ground invasion is too ambitious and unpopular. Energy warfare is mutually assured destruction. Trump has been testing the boundaries, bombing Kharg Island's military assets two weeks ago as a warning shot, then authorizing Israel to bomb Iran's gas fields. Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar's natural gas facility and Saudi Aramco. The Gulf countries came to Washington and said they can't survive hits like that. Trump pulled back. Then this weekend he tried the ultimatum, and backed down again.

If the U.S. simply walks away without achieving anything concrete, Iran gets an unambiguous strategic victory. They'll say the U.S. and Israel threw everything at them and they survived. That becomes their justification to govern and sends a message to the world that there's nothing the West can do. That is the scenario Trump is desperately trying to avoid.

Which brings us to what's actually happening while everyone watches the ultimatum theater. The Pentagon is quietly moving a serious ground force into position. Approximately 5,000 Marines on assault ships are sailing toward the Persian Gulf and should arrive by this weekend. The 82nd Airborne Division, the Army's rapid-response force of about 3,000 soldiers who can deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours, has been ordered to send its commanders to the Middle East, with a full combat unit potentially following within days. Combined with forces already there, the U.S. could have over 10,000 ground troops available in the coming weeks on top of roughly 50,000 already in the region.

The likely target is Kharg Island, a tiny piece of land about 15 miles off Iran's coast that handles 90% of Iran's oil exports. The plan, as reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Pentagon sources, goes like this: Marines land on the island (whose military defenses Trump already destroyed two weeks ago), combat engineers repair the airfield, and then the Air Force starts flying in reinforcements and heavy equipment. Instead of destroying Iran's energy infrastructure, which would trigger devastating retaliation and take years to rebuild, the U.S. takes control of it. You deny Iran its oil money without blowing anything up. You get a real military victory to point to. You gain leverage for negotiations. And you do it with a few thousand troops on a small island rather than a full invasion.

Military analysts are not as optimistic as the politicians pushing this idea. The island could be rigged with explosives. Troops stationed there would face constant drone and missile attacks from the Iranian coast just 15 miles away. And Iran has thousands of sea mines it could deploy.

Now look at the timeline. Trump issues the ultimatum on Saturday. Iran doesn't listen. Monday, Trump pushes the deadline back five days to Friday. The Marines arrive by Friday. The 82nd Airborne is on standby. Markets close Friday. If the pattern holds, the ground operation launches over the weekend. The sudden surge in betting markets predicting a deal between March 31 and April 7 suggests that Kharg Island may be the intended climax of the war, the tactical win that lets the U.S. negotiate from strength rather than retreat in shame.

Even if the operation succeeds, though, the bigger picture hasn't changed. The U.S. and Israel haven't given up on regime change in Iran. They thought Iran would collapse after the opening strikes. It didn't. So now the plan appears to be: grab a tactical victory, get a ceasefire, withdraw, rebuild the weapons stockpile (which is why they're asking for $200 billion for the Pentagon), and quietly build an anti-government coalition inside Iran using Kurdish groups, Baloch fighters, and liberal opposition. Then, probably after the midterms, they go back in. This war isn't over. It's just one round. Midnight Hammer and Rising Lion last June was round one. Epic Fury is round two. Round three comes after the U.S. has restocked, Iran has partially rebuilt, and the midterm elections are safely behind them.

The constraint driving all of this is the midterms. Even if the war ended today, the oil crisis would take at least four months to normalize, which puts recovery right in the middle of campaign season. The administration needs this over fast enough for the economy to bounce back before voters go to the polls.

Meanwhile, the most interesting political development is Vice President J.D. Vance being pushed as the lead negotiator. Iran has reportedly refused to deal with Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner, who were leading nuclear talks when the U.S. bombed Iran on February 28, essentially attacking during negotiations. Iranian sources told The Guardian that Vance is the only person they'd consider talking to, because he's been publicly skeptical of the war and noticeably quiet throughout the conflict. Pakistan has offered to host talks in Islamabad, potentially as soon as this week, with Vance on one side and Iran's parliament speaker on the other, with Turkey as mediator.

The timing is suspicious. Last Tuesday, Joe Kent resigned from the government saying he couldn't send Americans to die in Iran. By Monday, he was on Twitter praising Trump's diplomacy. That's quite the reversal for someone who found the situation bad enough to quit over. Reports are now surfacing that Vance was "quietly against the war all along." Well, if he was quiet about it, that's not really being against it. What seems to be happening is the Vance team trying to turn the war from a political problem into a career highlight. If Vance brokers the ceasefire, he becomes the peacemaker. This conveniently sidelines Marco Rubio, who has been the preferred 2028 candidate for the major pro-Israel donors on Wall Street. There is effectively a power struggle inside the administration between the donor networks backing Rubio and the Vance circle, which includes David Sachs, Joe Kent, and Tucker Carlson, all now positioning themselves as the war skeptics who delivered peace.

The strategy is obvious: Vance flies to Pakistan, shakes hands with Iran's parliament speaker, comes home as the man who ended the war. His allies on the right, the same people critical of how U.S. foreign policy prioritizes Israeli interests, will celebrate him as proof the system works. And the growing number of Americans questioning whether their foreign policy serves their own country or someone else's will line up behind Vance the same way they lined up behind Trump, convinced that this time the person in charge actually agrees with them. Whether that turns out to be true or just another cycle of the same pattern is a question that probably answers itself.

As of today, the Trump administration has submitted a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran through Pakistani mediators, and Trump told reporters that Vance is involved in negotiations. Israeli officials were reportedly caught off guard by the ceasefire plan, which suggests it was put together without their full support. The other thing to watch: Netanyahu faces elections in Israel. If the Vance faction succeeds in ending the war and Netanyahu loses power, the cycle of escalation with Iran might actually pause, at least until the next Israeli prime minister decides the threat has rebuilt itself and it's time to start again.

What’s Happening in the Markets (Not Financial Advice)

🛢️ Oil & the Strait of Hormuz

The Iran conflict is now in its 25th day, with the Strait of Hormuz severely disrupted by attacks, diversions, and soaring insurance premiums on tanker traffic. Roughly 20% of global oil supply transits that chokepoint. WTI crude is trading in the high-$80s to low-$90s and Brent near $100, up from the mid-$60s before the conflict began. Diesel has crossed $5 a gallon nationally, feeding directly into food prices, transportation costs, and broad inflation. Thirty-eight countries are now considering releasing strategic oil reserves, with the U.S. looking to release approximately 175 million barrels and relieving sanctions on Russian oil to boost supply. U.S. energy companies stand to gain roughly $85 billion in additional annual free cash flow at $100 oil, but the drag on consumer spending is estimated at $50 to $150 billion annually, effectively wiping out those gains. Energy and shelter together make up 42% of CPI. Many economists estimate that a sustained move to $130 to $150 a barrel would very likely trigger a recession.

🏦 Fed Watch: Holding Steady, Boxed In

The Federal Reserve held rates steady at 3.75% at its March 18th meeting. The Fed raised its PCE inflation forecast from 2.4% to 2.7% and core PCE from 2.5% to 2.7%, yet the median dot still projects one rate cut in 2026, though several officials shifted from two cuts to one. CME FedWatch puts the probability of a cut at the April 29th meeting at essentially zero, with a very small probability of a hike. Powell was noncommittal on the oil shock, repeating that the Fed will "wait and see." The April 29th meeting will be Powell's last as chair. Trump nominated Kevin Warsh on January 30th, and his confirmation signals a more dovish regime ahead. The structural bind remains: the Fed targets 2% inflation while core sits at 3.1%, oil is pushing expectations higher, and the labor market is deteriorating. Cutting looks reckless; holding or hiking while jobs are lost risks deepening a slowdown. There are no clean options.

📉 Inflation & the Economy

CPI came in at 2.4% in February with core at 2.5%. PPI printed at 3.4% with core at 3.9%, both rising and reinforcing pipeline pressure. Core PCE ticked up to 3.1%. With oil surging more than 40% since the conflict began, fuel costs will begin feeding through inflation data over the next one to two months. First-quarter 2026 GDP is estimated at 2.3% and falling. Consumer sentiment is deteriorating, 401(k) hardship withdrawals have climbed to 6%, and delinquencies on credit cards, auto loans, and student loans continue trending higher. Private credit firms like Blue Owl are restricting investor withdrawals, a classic pre-crisis signal.

📊 Equities: Volatility Screams Distribution

The S&P 500 is seeing enormous daily bars and wild swings, a pattern consistent with macro distribution rather than accumulation. Since the October selloff, the market has been whipsawing within a broad range, failing to hold gains above the 50% retracement near 6,760. All major trends remain down on shorter time frames. Global indices are faring worse: the DAX, CAC 40, FTSE 100, and Swiss Market Index all fell sharply last week. The Nikkei is one of the few still positive year-to-date.

🥇 Gold: Capitulation, Not Collapse

Gold suffered its worst weekly performance in years, driven by a rising dollar, higher bond yields, and forced liquidation across asset classes. Investors dumped profitable positions to raise cash and cover margin calls, making gold a prime target. The selloff took gold from its January peak near $5,600 down to a low around $4,100, and it is now struggling to reclaim the critical 50% retracement at $4,400, currently trading in the low-$4,300s. Reclaiming $4,400 would keep the long-term bull structure intact. Continued failure with lower highs would change the picture, potentially opening the door to the mid-$3,000s. Mining companies are reporting blowout earnings (Barrick posted revenue of $16.96 billion with free cash flow up 194%), yet mining stocks are falling sharply alongside the metal. Historically, the gold-to-S&P 500 ratio has favored gold for roughly 14 to 15 years once the cycle turns, and that clock started in 2022.

🥈 Silver: COMEX Pressure Meets Cyclical Reset

Silver has been cut roughly in half from its $123 peak, now trading in the upper-$60s to low-$70s. The 50% retracement of the entire cycle sits right at current levels, and the market is testing that zone. A relief rally into the $80 to $90 range is plausible, but historical pattern analysis suggests rejection there is more likely. The critical structural level is the swing low near $60 to $61; a breakdown below would confirm distribution and signal much deeper downside. On COMEX, registered silver sits at roughly 79 million ounces while May open interest stands at 363 million ounces, nearly five times the available physical inventory. Most of that will likely be closed before the first delivery notice at the end of April, but the math is stark. U.S. silver smelters are reportedly backed up processing recycled silver, which may keep prices suppressed near term, while mine production has been declining for a decade and industrial demand continues to grow. Historically, the consolidation period from top to either breakout or breakdown has averaged roughly 18 to 24 months.

₿ Bitcoin: Searching for a Catalyst

Bitcoin is trading around $70,600 after a 5% bounce driven by Trump signaling a pause in strikes earlier this week. The relief rally briefly reclaimed the $71,000 pivot, but consecutive closes and higher lows above that level haven't materialized. Downside support sits at $67,000, with a break there opening the path to $63,000. Money continues to rotate out of crypto and into precious metals and hard assets. Until monetary policy shifts materially and leverage is flushed, rallies carry a high risk of failure.

🏠 Housing: No Crash, No Relief

The median U.S. home price stands at $429,226, up 0.9% year over year, with 1.29 million existing homes for sale and 3.8 months of inventory. Foreclosure starts are up 14% year over year but remain below 2005 levels. Mortgage rates are stalling around 6%, driven by the 10-year Treasury climbing to 4.38%. Hidden ownership costs are surging: insurance is up 72% since 2019 and property taxes up 31%. The NAR's affordability index has improved to around 118 but still reflects a market where a median-income family qualifies with little room to spare. Migration patterns show California and New York as the top states people are leaving, with Florida still the number-one destination.

🔄 Cycle Watch & Dollar

Multiple cycle frameworks are converging: the 18-year real estate cycle places us in the "autumn" phase, with "winter" (debt saturation, defaults, banking stress) next. War, fiscal chaos, and runaway inflation are all markers of the system breakdown stage. The Kondratiev wave is also aligning, with agricultural commodities, energy, and precious metals entering what could be the final explosive leg. The U.S. dollar index has risen sharply since late January, partly because Europe imports 96% of its oil and is suffering more from the shock. Bond yields are rising globally: U.S. 10-year from 4.15% to 4.38%, UK gilts from 4.5% to 5%. The Bank of England held at 3.75% but markets expect two hikes this year. The direction globally is tighter, not easier, until the oil shock resolves.

That’s all for this time, see you next week! (Hopefully lol)

Best,