SmariesUpdates

Geopolitics • micro • macro • trade • Connecting events, policy, and markets • Christian

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

The Bigger America First Strategy Nobody Is Talking About https://t.co/XUc3LiKvJS via @YouTube

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Faith is a right. A competing legal system is not. Sharia law is incompatible with the Constitution wherever it claims to override equal protection, speech, or the courts. Protect worship. Block the legal takeover. The difference is not complicated.

[Larry Dean @larry_mcwethy]

The boundary is clear: religious practice is protected; a competing code that overrides constitutional rights is not. That distinction is not hostility—it is the minimum requirement for a free society to endure.

[Deep Leaks @DeepLeaksHQ]

Ready to have your mind blown?

Senator John Kennedy on Elon Musk and DOGE exposing USAID, “I'll tell you what Mr. Musk discovered. I find it fascinating. He discovered:

- The American taxpayers are giving money to Afghanistan
- He found that we are giving money to Yemen
- He found that we are giving money to Syria
- He found that the USAID has 10,000 people employees, and every year they give away $40 billion
- He found that the USAID gave money to support electric vehicles in Vietnam. Our money, taxpayer money
- He found that the USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India. “I didn't know that. I bet you the American people didn't know that”
- He found that USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group, they got $1.5 million to QUOTE, “advanced diversity, equity, inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities”
- They found that USAID spent $164 million to support radical organizations around the world
- They gave $122 million of that to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations
- According to this report in Mr. Musk, the USAID has given millions of dollars to quote organizations in Gaza controlled by Hamas
- He found that we gave $2 million, USAID did, for sex changes in Guatemala
- He found that we gave $20 million to produce a new Sesame Street show in Iraq
- He found that we gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat misinformation in Kazakhstan
- He found that we gave $10 million, USAID did, of meals to an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group called the Nusra Front
- Mr. Musk found that we gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid binary gendered language. (The USAID took 8 million bucks and gave it to a bunch of journalists in Sri Lanka to teach them how to avoid binary gendered language)
- USAID gave $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica
- They gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem
- They gave $1.5 million for quote, art for inclusion of people with disabilities in Belarus
- Another $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia
- $8.3 million for equity and inclusion education in Nepal

“I could go all night and many of my colleagues are upset. They're really mad at Mr. Musk. Hell, I think we ought to give him a medal”

[Deep Leaks @DeepLeaksHQ]

Americans Should Be Furious After Hearing This

Senator Marco Rubio says Americans “They've worked here their entire lives. They retire. They get $800, $900, a $1,000 a month from Social Security. — Somebody who just got here from Cuba 3 months ago — is given $1,500 a month”

“So imagine if you've been working here for 40 years and your Social Security check is smaller than the benefits going to a 28 year old, Able body person who just got here.
That's real. That happens. That's happening every day. That makes no sense.”

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Plain-English version of the Friday wrap, for anyone not in oil:

Think of the stock market and oil market as two different rooms in the same house.

On Friday the stock room was cheerful. The big indexes closed higher. Fear (the VIX) calmed down. Even gold stayed expensive. People felt a little safer.

In the oil room the raw ingredient got cheaper on the screen. WTI dropped. That usually gets reported as “oil is weak, so everything energy-related should be weak.”

It isn’t that simple.

A refinery buys the raw barrel and sells gasoline and diesel. The money it keeps in the middle is the “crack.” If the raw barrel gets cheaper but the finished fuel does not get cheaper by the same amount, the refinery’s profit actually gets bigger.

That’s why Valero, Marathon, and Phillips 66 did not fall with crude. The market is not just watching the price of oil on TV. It is watching how much money the companies make turning oil into fuel.

A crude inventory build sounds like “there’s more oil sitting around.” But if the factories (refineries) are already running hard, that extra crude does not automatically turn into extra gasoline on the shelf. The product side stays tight.

Hormuz matters because a huge amount of the world’s oil has to pass through that narrow waterway. If traffic stays limited, global fuel stays tighter than the WTI number implies. OPEC not adding more barrels in October means nobody is flooding the market to relieve that tightness.

Simple version of Friday:
Stocks = people felt a little better
Oil price on the screen = the headline
Refining profit = the actual money
Cheap crude + still-tight fuel = refiners can keep making good money even while the headline looks “soft”

Same question as before: does that refining profit stay high into Thanksgiving, or do high pump prices finally make people use less fuel?

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Friday close: stocks up, oil down, refiners still holding the line.

Dow +0.93% to 51,829. S&P +0.51% to 7,743. Nasdaq +0.48%. VIX faded to 14.9. 10-year eased to ~5.18%. Gold held ~$4,321.

WTI settled $92.44 (−2.3%). Brent ~$104. The tape treated that as “risk-off oil.” Underneath it, Hormuz talks flickered again and product markets did not ease the same way.

VLO $387 (+1.1%). MPC $394 (+0.7%). PSX roughly flat. That is the split: crude is the headline, refining is still the P&L.

EIA already showed a 3.0 million barrel crude build last week, but utilization is still high and inventories are not flooding the product side. Policy and the Strait are still doing more work than the print.

Crude chopped. Equities bid the relief. The crack did not roll over with it.

If Hormuz stays constrained into midterms, this is not a 2019 tape. It is a margin tape.

Where do you think the 3-2-1 is by Thanksgiving?

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Plain-English version of the post above, for anyone not in oil:
Think of crude oil as the raw ingredient and gasoline/diesel as the finished meal. The “crack” is the profit a refinery makes turning that raw barrel into fuel.
This week the raw ingredient got cheaper on the screen. That usually sounds bearish. It isn’t automatically. If fuel prices stay firm while crude dips, refiners make more money, not less.
That’s why Valero, Marathon, and Phillips 66 can hold up even when WTI looks “soft.” The stock market is not just pricing the barrel. It is pricing the spread between the barrel and the pump.
“WCS at a $20 discount” just means some heavy Canadian crude is still cheap to buy relative to U.S. crude. Cheap feedstock + tight fuel markets = fatter refining margins.
Hormuz matters because a lot of the world’s oil has to squeeze through that waterway. If ships stay limited, global fuel stays tighter than the WTI headline implies. OPEC holding October flat means producers are not flooding the market to kill that tightness.
So the simple read:
•Oil price on TV = the headline
•Refining profit = the actual trade
•High pump prices without a full inventory rebuild = demand has not broken yet
Question still stands: does that refining profit stay elevated into Thanksgiving, or do people finally use less fuel because prices hurt?

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Weekend tape check.
Crude faded again. WTI ~$92 / Brent ~$104. The print looks “softer.” The market underneath it is not.
Hormuz talks keep flickering and dying. OPEC+ held October flat. Midwest heavy-crude demand just took another hit from Joliet/Whiting outages. WCS is still sitting ~$20+ off WTI.
That is the trade: product tightness + heavy discounts + policy noise.
Refiners don’t need $110 WTI. They need the crack. Diesel has been carrying this complex for months. Gasoline is holding better than the crude tape implies. Inventory rebuild is slow because utilization is already stretched.
VLO, MPC, PSX are still pricing a mid-cycle that looks nothing like 2019. If the Strait stays constrained and U.S. product exports stay politically sensitive into midterms, the crack can stay elevated even while the crude headline chops.
Crude is the headline. The crack is the P&L.
Where do you think the 3-2-1 settles by Thanksgiving — still $50+, or does demand destruction finally show up at the pump?

[Reza Pahlavi Communications @PahlaviComms]

دانیال عیوضی، از بازماندگان شجاع جنایت دی ماه، در شورای حقوق بشر سازمان ملل، نماینده جمهوری اسلامی را به چالش کشید و از ابعاد هولناک کشتار دی‌ماه، قتل ده‌ها هزار نفر به دست رژیم و حمایت مردمی از شاهزاده رضا پهلوی سخن گفت.

نماینده رژیم تلاش کرد صدای او را خاموش کند، اما ناکام ماند. رئیس جلسه اعتراض نماینده جمهوری اسلامی را رد کرد و از دانیال خواست به سخنانش ادامه دهد.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🔥 LMFAO!! JD Vance just trolled the CRAP out of the fake news: "I have notes here that I'm supposed to take questions from CNN and POLITICO..."

"...anybody from CNN or POLITICO here? No? Alright!"

Dr. Oz is losing it in the back 🤣🤣

That's how you do it. JD is EMBRACING the meltdowns and not falling for the "1st Amendment" hysteria!

FACT: 1A DOES NOT GUARANTEE RIGHT TO ACCESS

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

@urf10 To your point — that’s the cleanest falsifier. Two or three weekly inventory rebuilds + crack compression and the tightness story is over. Until then I’m still treating these as margin names rather than crude proxies. Appreciate the framing.

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

VLO closed $413.28 Friday (+2.5%) while crude pulled back to $100.30 WTI / $103.37 Brent.
The crude print is noise. The crack is the trade.
WCS still sitting at a $19.75 discount to WTI. Global product inventories historically tight. Crack spreads expanding to multi-month highs. Complex USGC refiners are the ones capturing it.
Saudi East-West pipeline repairs advancing (Energy Sec: “soon”). Hormuz tanker traffic resuming under daylight conditions. Risk premium fading at the margin, but the product tightness has not.
Technicals: price well above the 50-day (~$322), MACD bullish since Sep 1. RSI has now cleared 70 — overbought. A short-term pause would not be surprising even with UBS at $450.

Does the distillate squeeze hold into Q4, or does $100+ crude start destroying demand first?

Events → policy → prices.

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

@KenPaxtonTX Objective clinical evidence should guide medical policy, not rushed timelines.
The independent @CassReview shows why a cautious approach matters for long-term health.
This evidence-based focus is why I'm voting for @KenPaxtonTX for U.S. Senate.
🔗 https://t.co/hTrIn3iNrY

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Two supply hits in 72 hours: Saudi East-West pipeline offline (was moving 4-5 mb/d around Hormuz) + Ukraine strikes on Slavyansk & Taneco refineries. Crude toward $108, but the real story is distillate. VLO is already running high-90s utilization, can swing more diesel, and has the St. Charles FCC opt coming online this quarter. Does this keep refining margins elevated into Q4, or does demand destruction hit first?

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

⚠️ TRIGGER WARNING: THIS CLIP CONTAINS MORAL CLARITY

Bill Maher roasts the MSM for dodging, even inverting, the reality of 9/11.

Maher went on to touch on how, in discussion, the left is treating “terrorism” like a dirty word when discussing 9/11—and political correctness has many dancing around the ideology of the 19 hijackers.

“We can’t anymore just say out loud who the bad guys were that morning? Those 19 hijackers. They shared something. Oh, let’s call it a worldview. And it wasn’t astrology.”

@billmaher

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

I don’t like to gamble.
I like knowing the table.
Treat the market more like a card counter at a blackjack table in Vegas: extra information, better read of what’s left in the deck, lower chance of going in blind and busting.
That’s the research. Events → policy → prices.

[SmariesUpdates @SmariesUpdates]

Tracking geopolitics, macro, micro, trade, and markets as they move.
Focus: connecting events → policy → prices, with the most current and accurate picture I can put together.
Follow for updates, not noise.

[Mark R. Levin @marklevinshow]

Pay attention, folks

[Tousi TV @TousiTVOfficial]

🇮🇷 NIGHT OF HORROR IN IRAN

A few hours ago, the Islamic occupation regime announced plans for the mass execution of January protesters in Iran.

The brave people of Isfahan took to the streets to save their lives.

Islamic forces began firing at protesters and the families of hostages.

Amirhossein Safari, Abolfazl Sepahi, and Alireza Sepahi have now been executed in public.

[Mahyar Tousi @MahyarTousi]

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