FOMC Minutes Signal Fed Saw “Dual Sided” Risks From Iran War Since the last FOMC meeting (March 18th), a lot has happened (war, more war, and now less war), and rate-change expectations hawkishly surged, then dovishly normalized today… And given the last 24 hours, perhaps this information is more useful now, as we return to macro-fundamentals from geopolitical chaos running markets. Fed officials wrestled with starkly […]

Trader Makes $23 Million In One Day With Massive S&P Call Purchase Hours Before Ceasefire A trader who made a large bet on a stocks rocketing in the coming weeks is up about $23 million in paper profit today, according to Bloomberg. The unknown trader spent $12 million premium on 6800 lots of 6950 S&P 500 Index Options (SPX) calls for May 8 expiry, when the index was at 6556.21; the trade was executed around 10:20 a.m. […]

The Apple AI Strategy: Discipline Over Hype Authored by Michael Lebowtiz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, While tech giants invest billions in AI, Apple executives are quietly sitting on their hands and a mountain of cash. Given the massive growth in AI investments, as shown in the graphs below, executives of leading companies at the forefront of AI development must be ecstatic about the prospect of AI significantly boosting their […]

Blue Owl Stock Slides After Moody’s Cuts Outlook To “Negative” On Surging Redemption Requests Blue Owl stocks is getting slammed this morning, erasing all early gains, after Moody’s Ratings cut its outlook on a $36-billion Blue Owl non-traded fund to “negative” from “stable” on Tuesday, citing redemption requests that were significantly higher than at peers in the first quarter. Moody’s also said the change in the outlook on Blue […]

10Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Dips After yesterday’s impressive 3Y auction, moments ago the Treasury sold $39 billion in benchmark, 10Y paper, in what was a mediocre auction. The auction, a 9-Year 10-Month reopening of cusip CPX8, stopped at a high yield of 4.282%, up from 4.217% last month and the highest since last August. It also tailed the When Issued 4.280% by 0.2bps, the third consecutive tail in a row. The bid to […]

Watch Live: White House Addresses Fragile Iran Truce All eyes are on the very shaky Iran ceasefire, at a moment Tehran is already threatening to pull out due to heavy Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Iran says it has again halted Hormuz oil transit, and there’s much that’s still up in the air and uncertain. The briefing with press secretary Karoline Leavitt is expected to begin at 1300ET: Washington and Tehran have just entered a […]

Eric Swalwell About To Be Hit With ‘Shocking’ Number Of Sexual Harassment Allegations; Report Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness, A “shocking” number of former female employees and interns are preparing to come forward to accuse Rep. Eric Swalwell (|D-Calif.) of sexual misconduct, according to a Democrat activist. Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer, former congressional candidate and executive director of the left-wing […]

Iran Ceasefire Extremely Fragile As Trump Highlights Discrepancy In 10-Points; Direct Talks Planned ‘Soon’ In Pakistan Summary:  The Hegseth/Caine presser as expected declared ‘victory’ in Iran while Gen. Caine emphasized the ceasefire is a “pause” but US forces remain “ready to resume combat.” Pentagon is trying to put a bow on Operation Epic Fury. NYT: 10-point plan might differ between Tehran & Washington. US, Iran […]

US, Israel Insist Iran Ceasefire Doesn’t Apply In Lebanon, Which Suffers Huge Airstrikes Israel has made clear that it doesn’t see the newly declared US-Iran ceasefire as applying to its war in Lebanon, where it is still trying to destroy Hezbollah. The White House too has made its stance clear that it doesn’t apply, but President Trump has stated his intent to take care of a Lebanon ceasefire separately.  The military has […]

Anthropic Withholds Latest Model After It Went Rogue In Testing; Launches “Project Glasswing” To Secure Critical Software Still smarting from its embarrassing source code leak, Anthropic announced it will not release its latest frontier AI model, Mythos, to the public, saying the model is too powerful in ways that introduce elevated cybersecurity risk. In internal testing, Anthropic said the model surfaced thousands of […]

Delta Air Lines Erases All ‘Epic Fury’ Losses As In-House Refinery Cushions Fuel Shock Delta Air Lines soared in premarket trading on a combination of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and stronger-than-expected first-quarter results, with the carrier’s in-house refinery helping to lower the average jet fuel price for its fleet in the first quarter, making it appear to be one of the better-positioned carriers than most peers to withstand an […]

Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next By Michael Every and Bas van Geffen of Rabobank Ceasefire Yesterday, the US and Iran threatened to, respectively, “destroy Iranian civilisation” with “new tools” and other countries in the Gulf with old ones. Ahead of the 8PM deadline that Trump had set for “Bridge and Power Plant Day,” US and Israeli forces reportedly already destroyed some bridges and other infrastructure. […]

Iran Gives Approved Hormuz Shippers “Few Seconds” To Submit Payment In Bitcoin Iran plans to require shipping companies to pay transit tolls in Bitcoin for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to a Financial Times report. As Micah Zimmerman reports for BitcoinMagazine.com, this links bitcoin to one of the world’s most critical energy corridors and current events. The policy would apply to oil tankers […]

ASP Isotopes Offers Helium Alternative As Qatar Export Crisis Looms ASP Isotopes could provide timely relief for the global helium shortage. In a new research note from Canaccord Genuity analyst George Gianarikas, he highlights the company’s Virginia Gas Project in South Africa as a potential new source of supply just as Qatar’s helium exports face major disruption. The warning comes shortly after we reported on Qatar’s […]

Homeward Bound: Artemis II Leaves Lunar Space, Reveals ‘Earthset’ Photos Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times, The Artemis II astronauts are on their way home from the moon. NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen left lunar space just before 1:30 p.m. ET on April 7. After carrying humanity’s representatives to the farthest point in space ever […]

First Two Ships Pass Through Strait Of Hormuz Since Ceasefire As Iran Demands Payment In Crypto Last night we reported that no less than 800 ships were still trapped in the immediate aftermath of the US-Iran ceasefire agreement, unsure what the fine print of the deal meant for transits. This morning we are down to ~798, after the first two cargo vessels have crossed the Strait of Hormuz since the ceasefire, according to ship […]

Airline Stocks Soar On Iran Ceasefire As IATA Sees “Positive” Tailwinds, But Warns Jet Fuel Crisis Will Persist Airline stocks are flying high in premarket trading in New York after the overnight ceasefire between the Trump administration and Tehran. The truce is a positive for the aviation industry, which has been locked in turbulence for six weeks, as surging jet fuel prices have crushed the margins of major carriers, forcing […]

US Futures, Global Stocks And Bonds Soar On Ceasefire Relief, Oil Plummets US futures, global stocks and bonds are sharply higher while oil prices plunge the most in years as a wave of optimism swept through global markets after the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire in exchange for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz: JPMorgan’s Market Intel desk, which moves from Neutral to Tactically Bullish this morning, says to look […]

A Pause To Negotiate A Deal? Some Caveats… Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities, Basically we wound up at the better end of our “base case” in yesterday’s Spaghetti Western, and you could argue we made it all the way into our best case of “ceasefire” (I’m reluctant to label it that, as you will see, but it is touching on that end). I do think we are far from a “real deal”. In any case, markets are […]

Shares Of Infrastructure Developer Erupt On Gulf Energy Reconstruction Prospects The two-week U.S.-Iran ceasefire looks more like a pause in the six-week conflict than a long-lasting agreement, with language so broad and vague that it remains unclear who conceded what. The one clear point is that Iran’s reported willingness to allow vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz was enough to send crude prices tumbling from […]

Senate Democrats Might Not Have November In The Bag Based on various polls, Democrats are leading Republicans by roughly five to six points on the generic congressional ballot. While this certainly means they have an advantage, the numbers actually show real trouble for the Democrats for this year’s midterm elections. And even CNN isn’t trying to sugarcoat it for the Democratic Party. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten took […]

Evidence Points To Ukraine Being Behind TurkStream Attempted Sabotage (To No One’s Surprise) Via Remix News, Secret service documents allegedly prove that the Ukrainians planned to blow up the Turkish and Blue Stream pipelines years ago, permanently cutting Europe off from cheap Russian gas, reports Magyar Nemzet, citing a report out of Ellenpont. However, Serbia’s intelligence chief is denying that Ukrainians were the […]

US, Iran, Israel Agree To 2-Week Ceasefire; Tehran Will Allow Safe Passage Via Hormuz For Two Weeks Summary:  President Trump agrees to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, conditional on them “agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz” Iran accepts Pakistan’s two-week ceasefire proposal, with the deal approved by the New Supreme Leader; Iran also says safe passage via Hormuz “Possible” for […]

These Consumer Goods Could Be First To Vanish As “Supply Shock” Disrupts Asian Factories Goldman analysts warned that the petrochemical supply shock sweeping across Asia is now morphing into a full-blown COGS shock, hitting a range of industries with factories across the region. The immediate consequence is that manufacturers – from sofa makers to apparel producers – are being forced to dial back production and, in some cases, idle […]

Berlin Targets Entrepreneurs: Apprenticeships, Punishment, And Social Decay Submitted by Thomas Kolbe The German capital is hardly a hospitable place for entrepreneurs or founders. Ambitious individuals who aim to build a career outside the state subsidy system and establish their own livelihoods encounter, in this strangest of European capitals, an atmosphere of contempt and hostility. Berlin politics, regardless of who is […]