Well, folks, I just woke up and took a glance at the most important chart for me, the /RTY, and I can tell you whatever feelings I had about the mandatory shut-down of markets yesterday has been amplified ten-fold, and permanently.
The reason is simple: yesterday, errr, Juneteenth, the /RTY was doing the following:
This morning, on the heels of the all-too-predictable reversal of Trump (sort of like, oh, the entire Liberation Day fiasco), the /RTY has absolutely roared higher and, as of this moment, is above its Fibonacci line and again in "no man's land". I could absolutely spit.
So, whereas we had survived the CPI, the PPI, and, most recently, the FOMC, and had found ourselves with the opportunity to completely ruin the bullish breakout, we are once again in the extremely risky zone between the bearish setup (everything above the green line) and the bullish setup (everything below the 2150 Fib).
It truly sucks, and I'm going to have to fight every instinct I've got to sit tight with my IWM puts. One thing I'll mention, and I'll need to remind myself of, is that these suckers don't expire for almost 100 days, so I'm not really quite sure what I'm freaking out about. Still, it's really discouraging.
In spite of Trump's big-man, just-you-wait-Iran bluster, he has shown as much commitment to all this tough talk as he did to his solemn vows on marriages number one and number two (and number three, I'm sure, although that one is still gasping along). This has roiled markets, sending all-red equities into an all-green state, and erasing the big gains oil was experiencing.
Even more pronounced is gold's $40 tumble since it seems no such safe haven is required with Mr. Noodle Spine in charge. As for oil and gold, I am short energy the energy producers COP, EOG, HAL, and OXY, and I am also short GDXJ. Here is /GC:
In any case, I had been pretty jazzed about trading on Friday, but the constant "we'll see in two weeks" schtick that stable genius always yanks out has poured water all over this campfire. In case you're wondering if the administration has anything to say about the constant "two weeks" thing, here is the blonde, bubble-headed cheerleader (married to a guy more than twice her age, so, ewwww) doing what she does:
So, yeah. Try to process that, if you can.
The following should be made into a bumper sticker and put on every trader's workstation. The guy has never said a thing in his life that he actually honors, whether it's paying a subcontractor, honoring his marriage vows, replacing the IRS with the ERS (what with all those beautiful tariffs), or solving the Ukraine War on Day One.
It just isn't his nature to keep his word, and I've got to do a better job remembering that.
Sooner or later every error you have made in life turns out to be the right thing, but at a different time. In this instance, Pres Trump's reticence to unleash the dogs of war is exactly the right strategic posture.
The Israelis are doing the heavy lifting right now.
The targets aren't going anywhere any time soon.
The Iranians are running out of launchers -- launchers are their Achilles heel.
Denying logistical support, air, HVAC, electricity to infrastructure deep underground has the same impact in the short term as using deep penetrator strikes -- the enrichment operation is kaput.
Centrifuges -- UF6 gas is fed into a a device that spins at high speed forcing the heavier U238 isotope to the exterior and the desired U235 is then "purified" -- are notoriously delicate. A centrifuge is rotating at 50-150,000 RPM and any delicate change in the balance will destroy the centrifuge.
In the Stuxnet attack 15 years ago, the Israelis inserted malware that exploited this sensitivity by manipulating centrifuge rotor speeds, causing excessive vibrations that destroyed about 1,000 IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz. The Iranians are using far more advanced (and sensitive) centrifuges today.
In 2021, the Israelis knocked out the power at Natanz resulting in extensive damage to more modern IR-8/9 centrifuges.
Perhaps the bigger issue is how does this end when the Ayatollah is no longer in power. The real problem is it is the IRGC who is running the country down to the day care level.
Nobody ever adequately prepares to run the defeated country after a war. In WWII, we bloody well occupied Germany for decades from 1945 until 1994. Germany started zero wars during that time period.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com