Markets head faked early on and I was wise enough to not be lured into the trap. The west has applied meaningless sanctions on Russia thus far, excluding the purchase of gas and oil and all of the things that are important. The reason for this is the west, namely Europe, are mostly interested in comfort and do not want to sacrifice anything for the sake of human lives, if we’re being honest. They will not hurt themselves to help the nation of Ukraine — period and end of story.
Here are some recent headlines worth of attention:
French FM LeDrian cancels meeting with Lavrov scheduled for end of the week
EC PRES. VON DER LEYEN: THE CRISIS DEMONSTRATES THAT THE EU IS OVERLY RELIANT ON RUSSIAN GAS AND THAT IT NEEDS TO DIVERSIFY ITS SUPPLIERS AND INVEST HEAVILY IN RENEWABLES.
EU’S BORRELL: PUTIN NOT ON SANCTIONS LIST
MILITARY CONVOY OF MORE THAN 100 TRUCKS WITH SOLDIERS SEEN ON ITS WAY TOWARDS UKRAINIAN BORDER IN RUSSIA’S BELGOROD REGION
EU’S FOREIGN MIN. BORRELL: SANCTIONS ARE ONLY ONE PART OF OUR RESPONSE
PUTIN RECOGNIZES ENTIRE AREA AS BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS. GREEN AREA IS CURRENTLY CONTROLLED BY UKRAINE pic.twitter.com/Qj9qPd00Be
Clearly Putin isn’t done eating up Ukraine. Markets were again disillusioned with the perverted idea that dips should be bought and enjoyed, whilst Russian troops were on the move.
Removing myself from all of this: How fucking fucked is this timeline — jumping out from the grill right into the boiling cauldron?
I think into the bell long oils, short small caps makes sense.
I cleared out all of my positions at the open, booking small gains in UVXY, SQQQ and my oils. I only tool small losses in SHOP and NVDA for an overall score of +90bps. While not exactly what I was looking for, it seemed the market had other ideas and wanted to rally. Since, I have placed just 3 positions on: SQ, MOS, with a TZA hedge. I am more or less done for the day, since I do not believe the rally nor do I have the appetite to fade it.
The market is now subservient to news flow and that news is wholly unpredictable, making this trade incredibly hard. There is some risk reward opportunities in Russian stocks — but fuck off if you think I’m interested in any of that.
The obvious play here is LNG/Oil — but even those are fading now because Wall Street is fucked in the head. The way it works, the way it always has worked, is a mechanism over supply vs demand. People took lots of oils in their inventory due to this conflagration and have now decided to sell, irrespective of the fundamentals. In the short term, price fluctuations is maddening; but on a long enough time frame the numbers and the letters all line up and make sense.
For now 85% cash, reading a book, keeping one eye on my newswire.
Last night on the news Russia recognized two breakaway republics in The Ukraine NASDAQ futs plunged over 300. There was blood in the streets, as Wall Street prepared for a long day of torment and torture.
But then they got over it — bid everything up, and pretended nothing ever happened. Classic Wall Street.
Here’s why.
A JPM note said with this geopolitical news, the Fed is less likely to hike so many fucking times. Also, the Germans stopped NORDSTREAM 2 (for now) and UK sanctioned 3 Russian billionaires, seized their assets and really showed them. Also, Biden sanctioned the two new breakaway republics and all of NATO is celebrating one another, propositioning to send troops to places like Romania and Latvia. There is a general consensus that Russia is done with Ukraine, satiated with just a small piece of clay and will go no further.
All of a sudden, we believe them!
As such, futures are barnstorming higher. But the real risk appetite is in the bond market. The 10yr had been lower by 8bps and now it’s up nearly 2bps, suggestive that MOAR inflation is around the bend because the Fed is going back down due to Russian fears.
Who fucking knows what any of this means or if any of it sticks. This is what markets do. Look at the Russian MOEX, down not even 2% for the session on what was supposed to be “crippling sanctions.” No one gives a flying fuck about Ukraine or Russia, as they both represent less than 3% of global GDP. What we do care about is being annoyed by tanks speeding through Europe en route for conquest. Markets do not like that at all.
Now if you watched the Putin speech last night and didn’t read the news today, you’d definitely think Russia was going to swallow all of Ukraine. It’s still a possibility and all you need is a few errant shells to start a conflict that can quickly boil over and burn everyone and everything. However, for now, markets seems to trust Putin and believe the Eastern part of Ukraine is meaningless trash and needn’t be concerned with it, at this present time.
If you’re still on the fence over whether Putin intends to capture all of Ukraine at this point, then I strongly urge you to watch his full statement on the matter.
As of now, Russian forces are STEAMING into Eastern Ukraine, a place, by the way, RICH with natural gas.
THE UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting tonight to discuss this all important matter.
PUTIN ORDERS PEACEKEEPING OPERATION IN EASTERN UKRAINE’S TWO BREAKAWAY REGIONS
GERMANY’S FOREIGN MINISTER BAERBOCK: WE DEMAND THAT RUSSIA RESCIND ITS DECISION TO RECOGNISE THE EAST UKRAINIAN DISTRICTS AS SEPARATE ENTITIES. (I cannot believe he said this)
WHITE HOUSE: BIDEN WILL SIGN AN EXECUTIVE ORDER PROHIBITING NEW INVESTMENT, TRADE, AND FINANCE BY US CITIZENS TO, FROM, OR IN UKRAINE’S SO-CALLED DNR AND LNR AREAS.
UKRAINE PRESIDENT SAYS WE ARE WAITING FOR CLEAR AND EFFECTIVE STEPS OF SUPPORT FROM OUR PARTNERS
ZELENSKY IN ADDRESS TO NATION SAYS UKRAINE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF
UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT ZELENSKY: REGARDLESS OF RUSSIAN STATEMENTS, UKRAINE’S INTERNATIONAL BORDERS WILL REMAIN AS THEY ARE.
WHITE HOUSE’S FINER SAYS WE FULLY EXPECT RUSSIA TO TAKE MILITARY ACTION *
BIDEN SAYS PUTIN’S ACTIONS IN RECOGNIZING BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS IN EASTERN UKRAINE THREATEN US NATL SEC *
MARKETS ARE DECLINING WITH VIGOR now, -320 NASDAQs, which is a notable deterioration since the open of futures at 6pm est. WTI is +2.4% and US 10yr is -7bps to 1.86%.
As for me, I closed the session on Friday with 21% weight in UVXY, 11% in SQQQ and 5% in TMF, adorned with an array of oil and coal stocks. I shall endure. What you need to figure out, long-tards, is how long this crisis might perpetuate and what sort of deleterious effects on western markets will Russian oil, or lack thereof, have on the price of crude? I would argue markets are NOT pricing in the worst case scenario here, which is armed conflict between Russia and NATO.
At the same time, if Russia quickly wraps this up and makes his intentions perfectly clear that he does not intend to expand into other areas of Europe, perhaps we could then focus on the Federal Reserve fixing to tighten 9 times on us for the duration of 2022.
Putin finally made his move and now we know why he was placing ground assets to the front instead of an air bombardment of Ukraine forces. He likely does not intend to “sack Kiev”, but instead “defend” the two new provinces of Eastern Ukraine, whom I am certain will soon vote to join Russia and Putin will annex them in short order.
Some headlines.
Putin informed Germany's Scholz and France's Macron he will sign decree recognizing independence of separatist republics in eastern Ukraine
Macron is calling an emergency national security meeting, as well as the comedian in Kiev, Zelensky. Everyone is up in arms over this but has little to nothing to do about it, for the simple and succinct fact that Europe is weak and has no military to defend its interests. So now here we have Russia and their seemingly robust military imposing their will. Let’s hope it ends here. Putin has always appeared to be a rational actor and it would make no sense for him to provide NATO with reasons to re-arm Europe.
And then there’s this.
PUTIN SAYS URKAINE IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR OWN HISTORY || SITUATION IN EASTERN UKRAINE IS CRITICAL AGAIN || MODERN UKRAINE WAS CREATED BY COMMUNIST RUSSIA
And this.
PUTIN CALLS EASTERN UKRAINE ANCIENT RUSSIAN LANDS
You get the gist. Russia was/is willing to die on this road because having NATO (US) denigrate their ancient lands and prohibit Russian from being spoken there is perhaps something deemed as unacceptable to Putin.
Last night when the fake news announced Biden would in fact meet with Putin, blue checked twitter ejaculated all over themselves — declaring Biden to be a “master statesman” in defeating the very weak and feeble Putin.
I am so grateful Joe Biden is President right now.
The Biden strategy is working. Putin seems perplexed: his false flag pretexts for invasion? Exposed! NATO? Increasingly unified! Ukraine? Determined and resilient! Not too late for Putin to withdraw, and be happy to survive the crisis he created.
President Biden has done a masterful job at consistently tripping Putin up by publicizing intelligence, in almost real time, as the United States gathers it.
Putin is fully aware the US Intel Community is the best in the world. Ever. The US collection is exquisite, deep, and without gaps, especially on Putin and his universe. He was not prepared, however, for how aggressive the US would be in sharing our collection to the world.
This arrogance might not spill into today’s twitter stream, as Putin flatly rejected a meeting with Biden, saying it was “premature.” The pressing matter, naturally, is to invade Ukraine. They’ve jimmied up enough hype where the separatist groups are begging for assistance. Russia also claims to have destroyed two Ukrainian vehicles and taken a POW. This is denied by Ukraine. It’s hard to believe Ukraine would provoke Russia now and provide them with pretext to invade. Then again, its fucking Foreign Minister went on 60 mins last night and smugly said his country insists on joining NATO.
The consensus is the same now as it was last month: War, gentlemen.
The Blue Checkers are going to be livid when their little make believe democratic play country squeaky toy taken away from them.
European markets have Mcplunged lower by 2%, the Russian MOEX -10.5% and US futures are enjoying a -233 NASDAQS in the futures markets — with natty +6.5%.
Macron did it again. He brokered a summit between Biden and Putin TBD to get us out of this quagmire, all of those vaccine headaches are about to go away once Biden, the master statesman he is, negotiates circles around Putin and is declared the winner of the world for averted a world war that was so heavily hyped every 10 mins by US intelligence agencies.
Macron Proposed Putin-Biden Summit, Accepted by Both Sides: AFP
Once he nails this down, Biden might very go down as one of the best Presidents in US history, all but assuring him a 2nd term and grande statue in DC.
I should’ve seen this coming — expertly crafted message of doom for weeks to finally come to a head vis a vie an all important summit where the US delegation, led by President Biden, signs a peace treaty with Putin, ensuring Ukraine fucks off for eternity and never gets a chance to join the very cool and stylish NATO club. Once this is signed, bullish traders will ejaculate with joy all over the bears — futures STEAMING higher in celebration of world peace and American greatness.
If he fails, however, I am almost certain US intelligence agencies will alert us to the fact that a Russian invasion is all but a foregone conclusion.
We ought to just appoint John Bolton special envoy to Russia and send him there to declare war on them. We could institute a draft and conscript 30 million American Zoomers and then send them into the meat grinder of Europe to duke it out with Russia over our dear and beloved friends, The Fucking Ukrainians. We haven’t had friends this good since The Fucking Kurds in Iraq.
NASDAQ futs are down 160 and natural gas is +5%, after Germany said Russia might use natty to wreak havoc upon the European economies and freeze them to death.
It’s important to remember that the main gripe Russia has with Ukraine is US meddling in their ancient lands. I am somewhat mixed in that statement since on one hand it implies we should cower to Russia and do their bidding. But on the other, let’s be reasonable about Kiev — it’s their fucking ancient capitol. The idea of having Ukraine in NATO and then placing our tranny Cherry Marine brigades there, teaching CRT to the Ukrainian children and, outlawing the Russian language is enough to start a world war, isn’t it? If it came down to it and we started a war with Russia, I’d have no choice but to cease shitting on our govt in favor of Moscow — because there’s nothing worse than a countryman siding with the enemy in a time of war. True, they are not my enemy per se. But how different would I be than say Jane Fonda during the Vietnam war who defiled this country because she was a communist sympathizer? I get it — our wars are more than wrong — bordering on evil. But short of having a Freedom Truck rally in DC, I see no end in this malevolent vicious cycle and I was born here for good and for worse — so at some point I’ll likely die in a designer mushroom cloud of vengeance — whilst listening to some degenerate rap song blasting in the background amidst looting and BLM riots.
If you’re net short, don’t get too excited until you start to see mechanized units spilling into Ukraine. If that happens, the knee-jerk will be sharply lower, but I would cover into that dump because if the war is short and our response nil — than this will be viewed as an isolated/unfortunate incident that likely only affects energy markets in the near term. I wouldn’t view it as a reason to get long, but perhaps a reason to cover on the news.
Longer term, sanctions on Russia will have a profound effect on oil prices, no matter how much we cajole The House of Saud to pump more. One way we could possibly offset lack of Russian crude is global recession/expanding energy exploration at home — via loosening of EPA regulations on deep water drilling and frackers. Both RIG and SLCA come to mind; but I would not gamble too heavily on that with Fucked Face Jim Biden at the helm, sleeping all the way towards that wall we’re about to smash into.
I am watching BTC-ETH as a proxy for risk since markets are closed here in America to celebrate racist Presidents whose statues are soon to be removed and donated to black colleges so that they could be re-purposed to create wonderful Elephantine sized George Floyd tributes.
The news up until an hour ago has been grim, with a sharp acceleration in attacks from Russian separatists into Ukraine. Two Ukrainian soldiers died last night and Russian mobilization continues to ebb towards war — with many vehicles now marked with the letter “Z”. Typically this is done during combat so friendlies can be identified easily.
The notion of talks is constructive, but I would not get too excited about them. Just today UK’s Truss said Putin would look to annex NATO’s Baltic allies next.
TRUSS: PUTIN MIGHT LOOK TO ANNEXATION OF NATO BALTIC STATES AFTER UKRAINE *
The idea of that is gruesome, since it would mean Ukraine is to Czechoslovakia what Latvia is to Poland, ushering in WW3 for the final showdown with Russia. This is of course what the Neo-liberal and Neo-conservatives wanted all along, spill blood in order to capture Mother Russia. It’s all so tiring and most of us just want to eat a sandwich, demand Netflix stops putting out shitty content, and play some golf/tennis. None of us give a fuck about Russia and their designs to “meddle” in our sacred elections or the fate of Hunter Biden’s slush fund inside Kiev. Fuck you — I am not spelling it “Kyiv.”
At any rate, BTC isn’t really moving on the peace talk news — but we can still hope for the best before markets open on Tuesday. Asian and European trade will be the best proxies after BTC-ETH tonight.
In the Summer of 2020, we were locked down and yet enjoying the full zest of markets — all provided by Federal governments in their attempts to avoid collapse. They printed more than ever, and since we were bored and some of us scared, we didn’t say a word in protest. Why should we? Stocks had risen and the advent of the SPAC was upon us, an asset class that had tried and failed innumerable times throughout history — but this time was different because they were led by quasi famous people who had lots of money and prior success. We bathed in their splendor and then took upon new people on Twitter, or Reddit, who also enjoyed wanton success. We were going to be those people too.
And then we were all going to space. Virgin Galactic, Space X, and Blue Origin were a few of many space companies that were going to extend the inquisitive reach of people out into the heavens, creating endless opportunities for humans and exploring the wonders we’ve always seen in movies.
SPCE
I recall very vividly wording some things out loud, along the lines of “maybe they just need to get people out of the way? Maybe we as a global society are on the way to reach new levels of innovation which was unthinkable 20 years ago and maybe things are about to get very very good.”
That was the top, February 2021 when things crested and the Chamaths of the world slipped by the way side back into their sewer holes leaving the rest of us without gurus to fend for ourselves. It was the best of times, trading at night long past the market’s close because rippers were on the move and we could not afford not to partake. There was a period of time when I’d wake up at 4am just to sell an array of rippers up 30%+, go back to sleep, and start the process all over again in the regular session. It was impossible to lose money and gains of 10% daily were very common. It felt good because it was good. The people who were left behind and angry at the world for entering a paradigm shift were relics, to be mocked and quarantined.
I’ve been down this road before, got my series 7 license in 1997 and traded through all of the crashes and the booms and the crashes again. I even wrote two short books about it. It always feels different — because humans want to be lied to. It’s not that we purposely want to be deceived per se, but we willingly acquiesce to fallacy over reason and logic in favor of ideals. We want and need purpose and sometimes it comes in the form of a lotto ticket, NFT, crypto, trip to the racetrack or casino. We believe, a least some of us do, that becoming extraordinarily wealthy is the answer to happiness, when in fact it’s not; but the glamor of it all is enough to risk freedoms and families and everything that is truly sacred because, in the end, we are all going to die.
So as we race against time chasing down our dreams just beyond our reach, fallacies are revealed and the truth always renders itself to be obstinate. Here we are in the throes of crisis again, stocks beclowned and traders in ruins. The shiny veneer of innovation and paradigm shifts now look like childish dreams of an overstimulated teenager, but that’s only because the adrenaline and dopamine have stopped pumping into our brains and the dark and sinister nature of some people are laid bare once again — shattering the future we were supposed to have.
