I was down twice in Miami over the summer on some of my many visits each year and each time I had to change my trip and was delayed returning up north because of the threat of tropical storms and hurricanes. The first storm I believe named Charlotte hit and made the weather bad for … Continue reading Storm Watch: Russia and Iran Sanctions and Market Volatility
Category: Ukraine War and Market Risk
Two Weeks and Counting: Trump’s Sanction Threat
One key question that emerges from the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is whether Russia's goals were actually to simply buy time and delay the major oil sanctions poised to go on for their sales or alternatively give the US a diplomatic defeat after ramping up global expectations for a peace deal. In this view so … Continue reading Two Weeks and Counting: Trump’s Sanction Threat
Post Monday: No Games from the Europeans and the Security Guarantees versus Territory Tradeoffs
Monday came and went uneventfully for market volatility in what is becoming another huge win for Trump. Let me de-compact some of the key macromarket factors at work here. First, and few people would have predicted this not so long ago Trump has not only not shattered the European--US alliance but strengthened it in ways … Continue reading Post Monday: No Games from the Europeans and the Security Guarantees versus Territory Tradeoffs
To Be or Not To Be or Why the Markets Might Not Like Monday
Tomorrow is the day that Trump meets with Zelensky and the Europeans to decide if a peace deal gets done. We have covered the oil markets quite a bit on this site, Higher level geopolitical or as I prefer to call them macro-political market factors. are the central concern of all my posts As such … Continue reading To Be or Not To Be or Why the Markets Might Not Like Monday
50 Days and Counting
The oil markets as usual are shrugging off key macro-political events. They have concluded as one misguided article put it that Trump's threat of extreme secondary tariffs of 100 per cent on Russian oil are an instance of TACO or "Trump always chickens out" since he has warned that they are coming if Russia does … Continue reading 50 Days and Counting
A Short List of Potential Black Swan Macro-political (geo-political) Risks
The market, of course, refers to black swan events (and you can get the full history of the term elsewhere) as, so to speak, unexpected, off the probability curve events that lead to extreme market volatility. But I would argue usually they aren't really actually that unexpected. Often in fact they are even quite predictable … Continue reading A Short List of Potential Black Swan Macro-political (geo-political) Risks
Dangerous Escalation of Ukrainian Conflict
I have written in earlier posts about the dangers of the US allowing Ukraine to use advanced US ATACMS missiles to attack in Russian territory. Well that has now occurred and Russia has formally and very publicly changed its nuclear doctrine to include such a use as a legitimate reason to use its nuclear arsenal … Continue reading Dangerous Escalation of Ukrainian Conflict