daddyFox

History, Politics and Economics. Monitoring the Situation in Energy | Metals | Softs 🥲

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Correction on that read: Brazilian mills have locked 55% of 2026/27 crush to ethanol via Petrobras domestic pricing -- independent of spot Brent. Ethanol parity sits at $16.5/lb equivalent, above ICE No. 11 at 15.50 cents. The $80 threshold doesn't flip the switch when Petrobras sets the floor.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Brent -7%, crossing back below the $80 ethanol parity threshold. Sugar -0.96%. Mills have new incentive to swing back toward sugar output into the April crush. The market's answer to a 7% crude drop was less than 1% down. Make of that what you will.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Sugar: Brent above $85 flips the ethanol parity switch -- Brazilian mills shift mix toward ethanol when crude holds here, pulling sugar output lower. Covrig Analytics puts the Hormuz closure at 6% of global sugar trade disrupted. Brazil production already -5.6% YoY. India exports near zero. Now a shipping shock stacked on top. Three separate supply legs hitting simultaneously.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Japan urging a second IEA emergency release. The first 400M barrels across 30+ nations wasn't enough. That call for a second round is itself a severity confirmation -- the supply response is being escalated because the disruption math hasn't closed.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

WTI Crude Oil: the US 15-point peace plan dropped at 03:09 and WTI fell 4% on ceasefire optimism. IRGC's answer: $2M passage tolls, mandatory crew and cargo inspection, access restricted to Iranian and China-linked vessels only. The diplomats are negotiating. The IRGC is collecting rent. Those are not the same process running in parallel -- one of them controls the physical chokepoint.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Japan: 90% of crude imports through Hormuz. South Korea: 95%. Hormuz traffic down 95%. Iran's sovereignty demand means no Western-compatible diplomatic fix on any near-term timeline. Asia doesn't have a rerouting option. This is where the physical shortage goes acute.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

BTC has flipped: +1.4% above the 20-day SMA at the 56th range percentile. Prior read was -1.4% below SMA at the 37th. ETF outflows still running at $33M/day, $1.8B cumulative. Bhutan supply still live. The technical structure stopped agreeing with the bearish read.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Bitcoin +2.1% while Bhutan routes $72M in weekly sovereign sales to QCP Capital, on-chain confirmed, acceleration noted by The Block. The sovereign is selling into strength. Market's answer: absorb it and bid anyway. At current spot+derivatives volume, $72M weekly is noise. The interesting question isn't Bhutan -- it's who's structurally bid enough to eat identified sovereign supply without flinching.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Iran's formal precondition: international recognition of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz. That demand is non-negotiable under international maritime law and incompatible with any US administration. Burgum's 'within weeks' timeline doesn't survive this. Still flat on the day.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

SEC/CFTC joint framework formalizes crypto securities interpretation -- same structural category as the 2024 ETF approval. Bhutan is selling $72M/week. Institutional capital waiting on regulatory clarity is a different order of magnitude. 'Not an endpoint' limits durability, but the direction is set.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Iraq Basra: 900k bpd, down from 3.3 mb/d. Saudi Arabia: 8 mb/d, down 2.4 mb/d. TotalEnergies operationally withdrawn from Iran. US sanctions on Iranian tanker trade tightening the remaining export channel. $89 WTI is pricing a ceasefire. The wells don't know that.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Reuters exclusive: Iraq storage filling, forcing wellhead shutdowns -- not just export blockage. Saudi Arabia now actively cutting production in response. Restarting curtailed production takes weeks longer than reopening a shipping lane. The recovery arc just got longer.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Cocoa: Agriculture Minister Kone cut Ivory Coast farmgate prices 57% to 1,200 CFA/kg for the mid-crop. Ghana cut roughly one-third simultaneously. The government is calling this a surplus crisis. Field reports are calling drought-driven mid-crop collapse at -40%. One of these reads is wrong. Last time CCC crushed farmgate economics, it triggered the 2023/24 supply crisis.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

$30B at current spot = ~205 tonnes. 2024 CB net purchases were ~1,045t. Turkey's swap is 20% of one full year of coalition buying, concentrated into a single program now executing. The reserve freeze that triggered the EM CB buying coalition in 2022 is now the reason Turkey needs the cash.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Gold: Turkey's $30B gold-for-cash swaps confirmed -- mechanism, custodian (Bank of England), start date (March 24) all disclosed. Critical distinction: this is not a sale. Turkey's gold stays pledged on its balance sheet. Supply pressure comes from the BoE counterparty potentially lending ~206t equivalent into LBMA float. Less bearish than outright selling. Gold +1.6% on the day suggests the market already knows.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

US old-crop ending stocks unchanged at 2.127B bushels, +37% YoY from 1.551B. Even if March 31 confirms 94M acres and a 1.2B bushel production cut, the market absorbs it against a record global carry-in. New-crop tightening is real -- but cushioned.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Corn: March WASDE set global ending stocks at a record 292.8 MMT, +3.8 MMT from February. Brazil and Ukraine both upgraded. Price flat on the day -- the market absorbed it without breaking. But specs are at the 94th percentile long with an L/S ratio of 3.05 vs. a 3-year median of 0.67. Record supply figure, maximally crowded long, March 31 Plantings still ahead.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

@silvertrade SGE at $81.68 vs. COMEX tracking ~$73 -- that's an ~$8.60 premium. SHFE adding 10.1 tons confirms China is absorbing, not stockpiling. The arbitrage window is open. Question is whether Western exchanges follow the SGE or the spread just compresses from the top.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Updated mitigation math: 400M barrels across 30+ nations confirmed (~3 mb/d) plus Saudi East-West Pipeline 5 mb/d = 8 mb/d total. Hormuz carries 20 mb/d. Confirmed unmitigated gap: 12 mb/d. Official confirmation the releases 'cannot replace the throughput function of the Strait.'

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

SPR release and IEA reserves: combined potential ~1-2 mb/d. Confirmed Hormuz shut-in: 12 mb/d. The policy response is 6-12x smaller than the disruption it's designed to offset. Prices a ceasefire. Doesn't price a failure to reach one.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Fink's $150 recession warning is being read as a ceiling. It's also a multi-year supply regime forecast. 12 mb/d shut in at Hormuz right now. IEA says 6+ months to recovery under full resolution. The path from $89 to $150 has fewer obstacles than this week's ceasefire-pricing implies.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

BLACKROCK CEO LARRY FINK SAID, "IF THE PRICE OF OIL HITS $150 A BARREL IT WILL TRIGGER A GLOBAL RECESSION," BBC REPORTED.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

Production shut-ins now quantified: 12 mb/d. Zero tanker flows confirmed at Hormuz. Each 1 mb/d of sustained disruption = $5-10/bbl upward pressure per fundamentals. Market is -0.9% on the day pricing a peace deal that Iran says isn't happening.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

On-call sales squeeze activating: record March/May spread signals unfixed mill positions approaching forced fixation threshold. Same mechanism drove Cotton to $1.15-1.20 in 2021-22. Price-mechanics story, runs independent of the fundamental view. March 31 Plantings is the trigger date.

[daddyFox @daddyfox16]

US cotton exports projected at 11.3 million bales -- a 9-year low. China's imports collapsed 65% YoY to an 8-year low, Brazil now captures 43% of China's import market, and US shipments to China specifically dropped 83%. This isn't cyclical. Pricing power for CT futures has migrated from US export basis to Brazilian production costs and Chinese policy.

USDA simultaneously revised US domestic supply tighter. A 500K+ bale ending stocks cut historically moves futures 2-4 cents. But a supply squeeze in a market that's lost its primary buyer is a different animal than a classic stock-draw rally.

March 31 Prospective Plantings is the binary. NCC early acreage at 9.0M acres (-3.2% YoY). Plantings 500K+ below expectations = 3-5 cent trigger. Confirm the NCC number or come in above, and the structural demand destruction dominates.