VIOLENT PRICE SIGNAL AHEAD: WHY $150 OIL IS NOW THE ONLY PATH TO BALANCE
Energy strategist Eric Nuttall of ninepoint Energy Strategies just delivered his long-awaited weekly update. Instead of relief, the only measurable change has been the relentless drain of nearly 200 million barrels of forfeited production while the world clings to hope. The data from Kepler and the warnings from Exxon and Chevron reveal a structural crisis that tweets cannot fix.
THE STRAIT REALITY CHECK
➡️ Just 23 ships are getting through the Strait of Hormuz each day compared to the normal baseline of 40 to 45.
➡️ Daily claims of 35 to 40 ships passing were proven false when actual tracking data showed only two tankers making the transit.
➡️ Leading shipping companies like Maersk have abandoned the route completely because the risk outweighs any reward.
THE INVENTORY FREEFALL
➡️ Global inventories visible and invisible are now falling at a rate of 6 to 8 million barrels per day.
➡️ Almost 200 million barrels have already been sucked out of the system in just the past two weeks.
➡️ The cumulative forfeited production has already exceeded one billion barrels and is tracking toward two billion under even optimistic scenarios.
THE EXPERT ALARM
➡️ Exxon and Chevron have now corroborated the numbers and stated the market is heading into the danger zone within the next few weeks.
➡️ Inventories are approaching the point where refineries hit tank bottoms and can no longer operate without cutting demand.
➡️ Their models show that oil prices will have to rise to between 150 and 160 dollars to achieve the required demand destruction.
THE PRODUCTION TRAP
➡️ Middle East production has been curtailed by 13 to 14 million barrels per day because storage tanks are full and crude cannot exit.
➡️ Barnacle buildup on vessels that have sat idle in warm water will add 80 to 90 percent to fuel costs and further delay any recovery.
➡️ "The IRGC has figured out that having control of the strait is more powerful than actual possession of a nuclear bomb" — and there is no sign they plan to relinquish it.
THE COVID INVERSION
➡️ The current pace of inventory depletion is the fastest in history and stands as the direct opposite of the massive build that started in February 2020.
➡️ All previous safety buffers including the largest SPR releases in history have now been exhausted or are being drawn down in real time.
➡️ The market remains trapped in apathy and continues to price energy equities for oil in the high 60s to low 70s even as physical barrels trade near 95.
THE LONG-TERM BULL CASE
➡️ After the spike forces the necessary adjustment, the day after will feature years of incremental demand just to rebuild inventories and replace lost production from formation damage.
➡️ Even a sudden resolution would still leave lasting bullish effects because much of the generalist capital has stayed on the sidelines waiting for certainty that may never arrive.
➡️ Energy equities represent one of the strongest long-term investment opportunities precisely because the structural shortage is already in motion.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The market is betting that hope and tweets will somehow refill the tanks before they run dry. When tank bottoms arrive the price adjustment will be swift, brutal, and completely necessary to balance a system that has run out of buffers.
#OilShortage #StraitOfHormuz #InventoryCrisis #EnergyInvesting #OilPriceSpike #BullishEnergy #TankBottoms
Some Red Sox SPs the year after they were traded / walked (Breslow era):
2024:
🔺Chris Sale: 18-3, 2.38 ERA, won Cy Young
2025:
🔺Nick Pivetta: 13-5, 2.87 ERA, 6th in Cy Young
🔺Quinn Priester: 13-3, 3.32 ERA
2026:
🔺Kyle Harrison (so far): 7-1, 1.57 ERA, 8th in Cy Young odds
Google is raising $80 billion of equity a week before SpaceX is trying to raise $75 billion a few months before Anthropic and OpenAI are trying to raise $100 billion from investors and you’re laughing???
This is a cataclysmic exit liquidity avalanche
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 Desperate intermediaries are reportedly scrambling behind the scenes to salvage the halted U.S.-Iran backchannel talks.
Former U.S. Navy officer and intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance highlights that Donald Trump fundamentally only trusts people who wear suits, rather than military uniforms or traditional turbans.
According to Nance, these suit-wearing insiders are allegedly spinning desperate narratives today just to keep their jobs as the centuries-old geopolitical reality of Iran completely goes over the administration's head.
@MalcolmNance
Look what we got here... it's a box all the way from British Columbia!
The BC Lions of the CFL are some of the most fun football you'll ever watch... and they got a heck of a QB!
Thank you Coach Pierce and the @BCLions for this awesome box!!
Microsoft just banned its own engineers from using AI.
The tool was literally costing MORE than the humans it was supposed to replace.
They lied to you about AI adoption and now the whole narrative is blowing up:
Microsoft gave thousands of engineers access to Claude Code six months ago and encouraged them to use it.
Engineers loved it and adoption exploded. But then the invoices arrived.
Token-based pricing means every query, every code review, every debugging session costs money. At scale across 100,000 engineers, the numbers became so large that Microsoft issued an internal order to cancel nearly all Claude Code licenses by end of June and force everyone onto their own cheaper tool instead.
The company that invested $5 billion in Anthropic just told its own people to stop using Anthropic's product because it costs too much.
Uber's story is even worse...
Their CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga told The Information that the budget he planned for the full year was "blown away already" by April.
Uber had rolled out Claude Code in December 2025. By March, 84% of their 5,000 engineers were using it with 70% of all committed code coming from AI systems.
Heavy users were burning $500 to $2,000 per month each. Naga himself spent $1,200 in a single two-hour demo session.
The company had even built internal leaderboards ranking engineers by how much AI they used. They literally gamified the spending and then ran out of money.
Now look at what Nvidia's own VP of applied deep learning Bryan Catanzaro said to Axios last month. Direct quote:
"For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees."
This is a VP at the company that SELLS the chips saying that using AI is more expensive than paying humans.
Think about what this means for the entire AI narrative.
Every CEO on every earnings call for the past two years has said the same thing:
AI will make us more efficient, reduce headcount, and cut costs.
The stock market rewarded every company that said it.
Fired workers, stock goes up. Announced AI adoption, stock goes up.
But the actual companies deploying AI at scale are discovering the math doesn't work. The MORE employees use AI, the HIGHER the bill.
Goldman Sachs forecasts a 24x increase in token consumption by 2030 as companies adopt AI agents. Gartner just published a report showing that even though individual token prices will drop 90% by 2030, total enterprise AI costs will go UP because agents consume exponentially more tokens per task than basic tools.
Meta built an internal dashboard called "Claudeonomics" to track which employees use the most AI. Amazon started pushing engineers to "tokenmaxx," their internal term for consuming as many AI tokens as possible.
Both companies are spending hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure this year alone.
And Microsoft, the company that bet its entire future on AI, just told 100,000 engineers to stop using the tool they liked best because the per-token bills got out of control.
The companies building AI are telling investors it saves money. The companies using AI are finding out it costs more than the humans it was supposed to replace. And even the company that makes the chips just admitted it through its own VP.
This is the gap nobody on Wall Street is pricing in.
$725 billion in AI infrastructure spending this year across Big Tech. And the first companies to actually deploy these tools at scale are already pulling back because the economics don't work.
What do you think?
Man I just saw the craziest sight here in Vancouver. Some guy at the Shoppers Drug Mart filled up a shopping basket absolutely full of candies and chips and other snacks and things and then just confidently strolled right out the front door.
I told the old guy stocking the shelves, and he was like, “yeah and that’s not even the worst. I once saw someone walk out with a 50 inch TV.” He said sometimes the security guards do something, if they are authorized to make arrests, but usually not.
He was from the Philippines.
“Canadian law says you can’t touch them or that’s assault. Back home the guards have guns and they’d just shoot them.”
Man I just saw the craziest sight here in Vancouver. Some guy at the Shoppers Drug Mart filled up a shopping basket absolutely full of candies and chips and other snacks and things and then just confidently strolled right out the front door.
I told the old guy stocking the shelves, and he was like, “yeah and that’s not even the worst. I once saw someone walk out with a 50 inch TV.” He said sometimes the security guards do something, if they are authorized to make arrests, but usually not.
He was from the Philippines.
“Canadian law says you can’t touch them or that’s assault. Back home the guards have guns and they’d just shoot them.”
The Strait of Hormuz used to be one chokepoint. Iran built three more in fifteen days. One charges Bitcoin. One issues sovereign permits. One threatens to monetize the data cables that carry SWIFT.
Two of those cables run through Iranian territorial waters. Treasury Secretary Bessent declared “absolute control” over the strait on May 4. A drone hit the Arab world’s only nuclear plant on May 17. Trump postponed Tuesday’s strike at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Putin and Xi signed their multipolar declaration in Beijing this week. The protocol sovereignty trap is no longer theoretical.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council activated the Persian Gulf Strait Authority on Monday. The PGSA calls itself “the legal and official representative authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran responsible for managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz.” Ships are already receiving regulations. “Passage without permission will be considered illegal,” the PGSA posted. Windward AI reports $2 million per vessel transit tolls coming next.
Iran’s Ministry of Economic Affairs launched Hormuz Safe on May 16. The platform settles maritime insurance in Bitcoin for vessels transiting the Strait. Coverage includes detention, inspection, and confiscation. The Ministry projects up to $10 billion in annual revenue. The $344 million Tether freeze on April 23 demonstrated stablecoin issuers can freeze at OFAC direction. Bitcoin cannot. Hormuz Safe pivoted twenty-three days later.
Seven major intercontinental cables run under the Strait of Hormuz. They carry global internet traffic and SWIFT financial messaging. Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on May 9 that Iran would “impose fees on internet cables.” Parliamentary member Mostafa Taheri put potential revenue at $15 billion. IRGC-linked Tasnim proposed requiring Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to operate under Iranian regulations.
Bessent froze $500 million in Iranian crypto under Operation Economic Fury. OFAC banned digital asset payments for Hormuz transit on May 1.
President Trump postponed Tuesday’s strike at the unified request of Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Gulf message per Axios: “give negotiations a chance because if you hit Iran, we will all pay the price for it.” Pakistan delivered Iran’s revised proposal: long-term nuclear freeze with enriched uranium transferred to Russia. The US military stands ready for “a full, large scale assault on a moment’s notice” if no deal is reached.
Putin arrived in Beijing this week with five deputy prime ministers, eight ministers, and the central bank head. He and Xi adopted a “declaration on the formation of a multipolar world and a new type of international relations.” Forty documents were signed. The visit coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Sino-Russian friendship treaty. Pakistan separately deployed 8,000 troops and Chinese HQ-9 air defenses to Saudi Arabia.
Brent fell 1.9 percent to $110.01 per barrel after Trump’s announcement. Both Brent and WTI have advanced more than 54 percent since the war began on February 28.
The Strait of Hormuz used to be one chokepoint. Iran built three more in fifteen days. The Bessent doctrine of absolute control meets the multipolar declaration this week. The Gulf is no longer just an energy theater. It is the strategic competition’s first three-layer protocol battlefield.
https://t.co/FRwSI1w8WU
There’s a generation a lot of people forget exists. We were born at the tail end of the Boomers, but we are not culturally the same as people born in the 40s and early 50s. We are Generation Jones.
And honestly, it explains a lot.
We grew up in a world that still felt fundamentally analog, but we were young enough to be dragged headfirst into the digital revolution. We are the bridge generation between rotary phones and smartphones, between slide rules and AI, between Walter Cronkite and algorithm driven media.
We remember when there were only a few television channels and the entire country watched the same thing at the same time. We also adapted to the internet, email, forums, social media, streaming and now artificial intelligence. We lived before and after the technological singularity hit everyday life.
That is not a small thing.
People born in the 40s came of age in a post World War II America that was still industrial, deeply hierarchical and institutionally stable. Their formative years were shaped by the Cold War, Vietnam, the civil rights era and a society where information moved slowly.
Generation Jones came later. We inherited the aftermath of all of that.
We were the kids who watched Watergate destroy blind trust in government. We watched manufacturing begin to collapse. We saw divorce rates explode. We were the first truly latchkey generation in massive numbers. We learned independence early because many of us had to.
We grew up with one foot in old America and one foot in whatever this new thing was becoming.
We played outside until the streetlights came on but we also learned DOS commands. We learned cursive and keyboarding. We had card catalogs and Google searches. We went from vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s to streaming in one lifetime.
We remember maps. We remember memorizing phone numbers. We remember life before GPS and before every human interaction became filtered through a screen.
And because of that, I think Generation Jones developed a very unique perspective. We are adaptable because we had no choice but to adapt. We learned technology as adults instead of being born into it. We remember a slower world but were forced to survive in a rapidly accelerating one.
That creates a very different mindset than either older Boomers or younger Gen X and Millennials.
A lot of us also reject the caricature people now associate with “Boomers.” We were not buying houses for the cost of a sandwich in 1965. The interest rate on my first house was over 14% and that was after buying down a point. Many of us got hit by recessions, outsourcing, pension collapses and economic instability just like younger generations did. We watched promises evaporate in real time.
We understand older generations because we were raised by them. We understand younger generations because we had to evolve alongside them.
That’s why the Jones generation often feels culturally homeless. We are rarely discussed, rarely defined and usually lumped into categories that don’t actually fit us.
But we exist.
We are the human transition point between the industrial age and the digital age.
And frankly, there will probably never be another generation quite like us again.
This is wrong & needs a solution. @FarhanLaljiTSN is 100% right. FIFA coming to Vancouver shouldn’t sacrifice jobs or shelve BC’a Sports history as people flood into Vancouver to consume sports. We should showcase our sports history. This is absurd. https://t.co/wBuHgnmBTv
"That's the marquee moment of his career. I can't recall a bigger one in Toronto." - Hayes
The guys on Mitch Marner's incredible goal against the Ducks and his dominant run with the Golden Knights.
#ForgedInGold
The last time the United States government paid five percent interest to borrow money for thirty years was August 2007, months before the financial system began to crack. Debt-to-GDP was sixty percent. On May 13, 2026, the Treasury auctioned $25 billion in 30-year bonds at a high yield of 5.046 percent. Debt-to-GDP is now 100.2 percent. The government is paying the same rate on a debt pile sixty-seven percent larger relative to the economy. And roughly $9 to $10 trillion of existing debt matures this year and must be rolled over at these higher rates.
Demand was weak. The bid-to-cover ratio came in at 2.303, below the ten-prior-auction average of 2.40 and down from 2.66 in February. The auction tailed the when-issued yield by half a basis point, meaning the government had to pay more than the market expected to attract enough buyers. This was the third weak auction in the same week. Investors are not refusing to lend to the United States. They are demanding more compensation to do so.
The cause is not a mystery. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported April consumer prices rising 3.8 percent year over year, the highest since early 2023. Energy drove more than forty percent of the increase. Gasoline prices surged 28.4 percent in a single month. Producer prices rose 6.0 percent year over year with energy costs up 7.8 percent month over month. The Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz disruption that began in February pushed Brent crude above $100 and those costs flowed through every layer of the supply chain into the prices consumers pay.
The TIPS breakeven data reveal what the market actually believes. The 10-year breakeven inflation rate sits at 2.47 percent. The 30-year breakeven holds steady at 2.25 percent. The market views the energy inflation as temporary, not structural. Long-run inflation expectations remain anchored. That means the 5.046 percent nominal yield is driven primarily by the real yield component, nearly 2.8 percent after subtracting the 30-year breakeven. Investors are demanding almost three percent in real, after-inflation return to lend to the US government for three decades. That is the highest real yield in years and it prices something deeper than an oil spike. It prices the structural cost of lending to a sovereign borrower that owes $31.27 trillion, runs a projected $1.9 trillion deficit in fiscal year 2026, and faces interest payments approaching $1 trillion annually as the fastest-growing line in the federal budget.
This auction happened the same week Trump arrived in Beijing with seventeen CEOs to negotiate trade with Xi Jinping. The same week the Iran ceasefire sat on “massive life support.” The same week five hyperscalers committed $700 billion in AI spending, much of it debt-funded through investment-grade bond issuance competing for the same long-duration capital the Treasury needs. The bond market is pricing all of it simultaneously: the war, the deficit, the trade dependency, and the largest private capital expenditure cycle in history arriving at the exact moment the government’s borrowing costs have returned to pre-crisis levels on a post-crisis debt load.
At sixty percent debt-to-GDP, five percent was manageable. At one hundred percent, every basis point adds roughly $3 billion in annual interest expense. The 2007 rate on the 2026 balance sheet is a fundamentally different equation. The rate is the same. The denominator is not.
https://t.co/xmK0gJ0lqa
If Toronto ever chose the nuclear reset:
Auston Matthews becomes San Jose’s franchise centrepiece.
William Nylander gives Chicago another elite winger beside Bedard.
In return, the Maple Leafs walk away with a future core built around Gavin McKenna, Michael Misa, Easton Cowan, Matthew Knies, Sam Rinzel, Cameron Reid and Noah Chadwick.
It would be painful now.
But Toronto would go from capped-out contender to the NHL’s most loaded young pipeline almost overnight.
I am the Chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust. Eighty-four years old. Seven buildings in Midtown Manhattan. I said what I said.
I said "tax the rich" is the equivalent of a racial slur. I said it at REBNY. Into the microphone. Eight hundred people. Median net worth in that room was north of $240 million, I know because our CFO ran the guest list through a Bloomberg terminal as a joke, and then it wasn't a joke. And when I said it, twelve people applauded. The rest nodded. One woman in the third row mouthed, "Finally." I saw her.
Sharon, my communications advisor, Columbia, $430,000 a year, very bright, Sharon wants me to walk it back. She drafted something. "Mr. Roth's comments were intended to highlight the emotional impact of political rhetoric on business communities." I read it. I put it in the trash can on my desk. Not the recycling. The trash. Here's my clarification: I understated it.
"Tax the rich" is worse than a slur. A slur is just a word. It doesn't come with a CBO score. Nobody is introducing a bill called the Racial Slur Implementation Act of 2026. But there are seventeen active proposals in Congress, I had Sharon count them, seventeen proposals designed to take more of my money. My money. Mine. Money I acquired by being better at acquiring Manhattan commercial real estate than anyone alive for four consecutive decades. That is not a crime. That is a record.
I pay property taxes on $18.2 billion in assessed assets. $412 million a year. Say it again: four hundred and twelve million. I carry that number. It's the first thing I think about when I see a protest sign. I think: I pay more in property tax than the entire annual budget of the city of Fort Lauderdale. I looked this up. Fort Lauderdale: $408 million. Steve Roth: $412 million. I am a small city. And the city doesn't get screamed at.
My effective tax rate last year was 11.4 percent. I say this because I believe in transparency and because I'm not ashamed of it. The rate reflects the legal structure of real estate investment trusts, depreciation schedules Congress established in 1986, and carried interest provisions that both parties have voted to preserve for forty years. I did not write these laws. I organized my entire financial existence around them with the help of nine full-time tax professionals who have offices on the 38th floor of 888 Seventh Avenue, which I also own. Their office is in my building. Their work protects my buildings. This is not a loophole. Sharon calls it a loophole. I've told her: a structure maintained by nine attorneys across four decades is not a loophole. A loophole is something you slip through once. This is architecture. This is the foundation. This is the building.
Last Tuesday, same as every Tuesday, I walked past 1290 Sixth Avenue. My building. And there was a man. Same man as last week. Same sign: "Billionaires Pay Your Fair Share." He was standing on my sidewalk. My literal sidewalk — my company owns the ground lease. He was maybe thirty. He was wearing a jacket I would estimate cost $60. My lunch that day was $114. For one. I am telling you this not to boast but because these are facts. He has decided I'm his enemy. Based on a number he saw on a Forbes list. He doesn't know what I pay. He doesn't know what my buildings cost this city in construction jobs and lease revenue and foot traffic. He knows one number. He has made one judgment.
I see him every Tuesday. I've started to notice things. He brings coffee from the cart, not the Starbucks. He has a backpack that looks heavy. He doesn't look unhealthy. He looks like he probably works somewhere, but not on Tuesdays. I've wondered: does he have a job? Does he have a building? Does he have anything that depends on him the way 4,200 employees depend on me? I suspect not. And yet he has opinions about my tax rate.
I gave $22 million to charity last year. The Met. NYU Langone. Mount Sinai. I gave a building to NYU. Not money for a building — a building. The Steven Roth Residence Hall. It houses 400 students. That man with the sign has never housed 400 students. He hasn't housed one. He gives cardboard. I give structures. This is not a comparison I'm making to flatter myself. It's just arithmetic.
When I said what I said at REBNY, I was saying what every person in that room believes and none of them will say publicly because they have communications advisors and the communications advisors all went to Columbia and they all say "unhelpful." I'm eighty-four. I'm too old for helpful. I'm too old to perform restraint for people who hate me for something I can't change.
I didn't choose to be rich. I chose to be good at one thing for a very long time, and this is what happened. You don't punish someone for that. You don't legislate against someone for that.
My net worth fluctuates between $3.8 and $4.1 billion depending on the quarter. I fluctuate more in a fiscal week than that man on my sidewalk will earn in his life. Both of these are facts. Only one of them is considered polite to say.
They want me to apologize.
I'll be dead in ten years. Twenty if I'm lucky. And they'll still be renting my buildings.
In 458 BC, Rome was on the brink of collapse.
An invading army had trapped the Roman consul and his legion in a mountain pass. Panic spread through the city. The Senate did the only thing they could think of:
They sent messengers to find a 60-year-old farmer plowing his field.
His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He had once been a senator, then lost his fortune paying his son's bail. Now he worked his own four-acre plot just to feed his family.
When the Senate's envoys arrived, they found him sweating behind a plow. They asked him to put on his toga so they could deliver an official message.
The message: Rome was making him dictator. Absolute power. Total command of the army. No checks. No oversight. No term limit.
He accepted.
Within 16 days, Cincinnatus had raised an army, marched out, surrounded the enemy, and forced their surrender. The republic was saved.
He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have stayed. He could have expanded his power. He could have done what every other ruler in human history did when handed unlimited control.
Instead, he resigned on day 16.
He took off the toga, walked back to his farm, and finished plowing the field he'd left half-done.
Twenty years later, when Rome faced another crisis, they called him back. He was 80 years old. He took command, crushed the conspiracy, and resigned again, this time after just 21 days.
He died poor. On his farm.
2,200 years later, when George Washington was offered a kingship after winning the American Revolution, he refused and went home to Mount Vernon. The reason he was hailed as "the American Cincinnatus" is because Europeans literally could not believe a man who had won would willingly give up power.
King George III, on hearing Washington would resign rather than rule, said: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
The lesson isn't that Cincinnatus was humble.
The lesson is that for most of human history, the people most qualified to lead were the ones who didn't want to. And the moment a society starts rewarding those who chase power instead of those who flee from it is the moment the republic begins to die.
Cincinnati, Ohio is named after him.
Most people who live there have no idea why.
The refineries would process oil into diesels , jet & other products are being shut down by tree huggers in G-7 nations , destroyed by drones via Ukraine, Iran, USA.& Israel.
Simply put crude is the pasta & dough for making pizza & the pizza ovens are the refineries.
No pizza
HOLY COW.
Same oil price.
Totally different reality.
2014: $100 oil → $1.30/L gas
Today: $100 oil → $1.85/L gas
That’s a 50¢ jump with NO change in global price.
What changed?
Higher taxes
More debt
Weaker dollar
They didn’t fix affordability. They BROKE IT
🇺🇸🇮🇷 Lindsey Graham's latest plan for Iran: arm civilians and let them overthrow the regime. He calls it "a Second Amendment solution."
"We don't need American boots on the ground.
We've got millions of boots on the ground in Iran.
They just don't have any weapons."
This man thinks arming a civilian population in the middle of a war zone is like a Fortnite supply drop.
Just scatter weapons across a country of 90 million people with dozens of ethnic groups, active IRGC militias, and a government that just promised to shoot anyone who protests.
What could possibly go wrong?
BTW, this is him being LESS hawkish.