Ok, in the latest round of getting Russia — it appears the LME and CME are now targeting speculation in metals, specifically copper, aluminum and nickel. Bear in mind, this doesn’t stop real world transactions. It just will stop speculation or any trading of Russian metals on these exchanges. The interesting part about this conundrum is the fact that 91% of all aluminum trading on the LME now is of Russian origin. I would imagine once they get through all of the Russian stocks — there will be very little trading done on the LME.
Moreover, and this goes without saying, this is likely to cause a spike in those respective metals and apply inflationary pressures. At the moment, aluminum us +3%, nickel +1.4%, and copper +1.5% on an otherwise weak day.
Russian copper stocks on the LME is 62% of all trade and nickel 36%.
High beta stocks are down over 2% and the big story is the US 10yr +14bps to 4.63%. I haven’t formulated a cogent description of what I want to do just yet, as I view the Israel-Iran situation as fluid and I’ve been wrong in my positioning thus far, down 1.5% for the session. The collapse in $BTC has surprised me, since in the past Bitcoin served as a defensive measure against risk off. However, since then the price of BTC has risen a lot and I suppose the hands are a bit weaker now. Nevertheless, I am reticent to believe markets are going to collapse, which is ironic because I almost always feel that way and there is all of the prerequisites for it to happen happening right now.
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We have a riddle as treasury yields are headed up that isn’t risk-off action. There doesn’t seem to be a flight to safety in play. Probably still indigestion from inflation and the unprecedented bullshit front-running of Fed rate cuts we have been dragged thru.