More than a billion barrels of oil have not reached the market since February. The IEA calls it the largest supply disruption in history. This morning Iran sealed it, declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed to every ship on earth. Oil rose 2%.
That 2% is the most important number in the world right now, because it hides the others. Crude sits near $95 not because the shock is small but because the rich world has spent the months since February burying it, draining emergency reserves, rerouting tankers around Africa, letting savage prices kill its own demand. The IEA expects those buffers to run dry by mid-July. After that, there is nothing left to hide behind.
The countries that import their food never had anything to hide behind. Hormuz carries roughly a third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade, the urea and ammonia the Gulf ships to farms across Asia and Africa. With that line cut, fertilizer prices are up 30% and the World Food Programme projects 45 million more people driven into acute hunger. Its chief says aid agencies are now reduced to taking, in his words, from the hungry to give to the starving. The shock does not show up as a spike on a chart. It shows up as crop failure in a country already one bad season from famine.
And the safety net is fraying. The US has pulled 66 million barrels from its strategic reserve, down to 349 million, with no plan to refill until 2028, just as hurricane season opens. A reserve built to survive a crisis at home is being spent to disguise one abroad.
The story today is the calm, not the chaos. The most violent number is the one that did not move, and the silence it buys is being paid for in food.
New Yorker exposé of Andrew Tate is even more horrifying than what we already knew. According to it, he raped and beat a 15-year old girl and bought her off with teddy bears. Tate was promoted by Tucker Carlson, Don Trump Jr., and Musk suggested he should be UK prime minister
Haberman and Swan are not brave truth tellers. They are rank opportunists who are profiting off their access while simultaneously withholding information in real time to justify the book advance they received.
A nugget buried in the big NYT piece on how the Trump White House had an internal freak-out over the Epstein case....If Bondi didn't use DOJ email, what did she use? I recall a time when the right (and the NYT) went ballistic over a Cabinet official's use of non-gov't email.
I remember during Biden, the press combed through hundreds of pages of White House visitor logs, found a guy that was a Parkinson’s specialist, then accused Biden of having Parkinson’s disease and hung it from the country.
Are they going to apply that same energy with these 22 mystery specialists??
Hey Tim- go fuck yourself you sick and sad little vile man. Who harmed you so deeply that you feel it necessary to spew such hateful garbage. When does it stop. This irrational hatred- for people you’ve never met, simply because you don’t like the politics of their parents. Say whatever you want about me I can handle it. I’ve been dealing with douche bags like you for years. But leave President Obama’s children out of it. They are truly extraordinary people. That have more grace and intelligence than you could possibly imagine. Aim at me and leave innocent people out of your hateful mouth.
S&P 500 down 2.6%. Nasdaq down 4%. Nvidia down 6%. AMD down 6%. Micron down 6%. Marvell down 8%. Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down roughly 8%, one of its largest single-day drops this year.
Today’s selloff happened on three levels.
The first was the obvious one. Payrolls came in at 172,000. Unemployment held at 4.3%. Prior months were revised higher by another 93,000 jobs. The market immediately repriced the Fed path. Fewer cuts. Higher odds of further tightening. Treasury yields moved sharply higher and long-duration assets were repriced.
The second level was sector-specific. The real damage came from semiconductors. Nvidia, AMD, Micron, Broadcom, Marvell and the broader AI infrastructure trade sold off hard. Broadcom’s results were good, but not good enough for expectations that had already become extremely elevated. The AI story did not break. The valuation did.
The third level is the one most investors are missing. The market is not afraid that the economy is weakening. It is afraid that it isn’t. AI capex isn’t slowing. Power infrastructure isn’t slowing. Defense spending isn’t slowing. Treasury borrowing isn’t slowing. Labor demand isn’t slowing. Every data release this week pointed in the same direction: capital demand remains extremely strong.
The implication is simple. If capital demand stays elevated, long-term yields may stay elevated too. Today’s selloff was not a recession scare. It was the market being forced to confront a world where the cost of capital may remain higher for longer than expected.
Watch the futures after the cash close... that's the tell.
If futures rally, that's short covering. It shows today's selloff lacked conviction and force.
If further selling comes in, that means heavy liquidation hit ETFs and other markets, forcing this move. That tells us we're looking at multiple weeks of follow-through, especially if we close lower next Friday.
More on this in The Kendall Report, Sunday night.
I don't know about you guys, but watching Hunter Biden slay trolls with sharp wit and self-deprecating humor this week has made this site bearable.
Thank you, @HunterBiden.
Congrats on your sobriety milestone.
Give 'em hell, brother.🙏💪
I’ve taken a lot of hits, and I’ve deserved some of them. I beat myself up over them more than you can imagine.
But the grace people have shown me here is truly humbling.
Some of the kindest words have come from the people you’d least expect.
And for that I am so grateful.
This isn’t about me. It’s about every person in recovery who shows up and tries again.
And to everyone still in the fight tonight: you are not alone, I see you.
I watched every bit of Jan. 6th, live. I had 7 or 8 different feeds up throughout. At least half were from MAGA sources. I know exactly what went down. And the reality bears no resemblance to the nonsense Trumpists are spouting now. It's appalling how dishonest these people are.
Absolute bombshell. 60 Minutes exposes a massive insider trading ring making millions by betting on highly classified US military operations in Iran with a 98 percent win rate.
Washington insiders are literally using secret Pentagon intelligence to rig prediction markets!
SHOULDNT IT BE A BIGGER STORY THAT THE US PRESIDENT AND HIS FAMILY SOLD A NONE EXISTENT PHONE AND IS NOW TELLING EVERYONE THAT PAID FOR IT THAT THERE IS NO PHONE AND NO REFUND 🙄
THE US PRESIDENT IS RUNNING HIS CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE AND IT IS A HORRIFIC LOOK FOR AMERICA 🤷
Remember all the stories from @BarakRavid and @axios citing US Officials about how close US and Iran were to a deal?
It’s abundantly clear we never close to a deal.
It’s all been about manipulating markets and insider trading.
🚨 HOLY CRAP. A FOREIGN PRIME MINISTER just told American media YOUR war isn't over, and casually floated sending YOUR sons into Iran to grab uranium.
NETANYAHU: "It's not over."
"You go in and you take it out."
REPORTER: With what? Special forces from Israel? From the United States?
"I'm not going to talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, I want to go in there."
"I think it can be done physically."
REPORTER: How long?
"I'm not going to give a timetable."
So a foreign leader sets the mission, dodges the means, refuses a timeline, and YOUR kids fight it. YOUR taxes fund it. YOUR dollar inflates for it.
This is Israel dictating YOUR foreign policy. Reject it. 🟧🦍