ANGLES.

The truce between the US and Iran came under severe stress over the weekend with both sides firing on one another and each blaming the other. But there was some geopolitical de-escalation on Monday that pushed stocks higher to start a holiday-shortened week, despite interest rates climbing steeply on the back of ongoing Fed rate hike fears. There was a flurry of Supreme Court decisions, including...

Over the weekend, we were treated to the bizarre sight of the US and Iran delegations chummily sitting down together in Switzerland against a backdrop of the Strait of Hormuz being closed again after being sort of open for all of two days, Israel continuing its deadly assault on Lebanon and Trump again taking to social media to threaten more and more violence. By the time US markets opened on Mond...

A 60-day extension of the ceasefire, a conditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a suspension of the US blockade was announced on Sunday but it seems nothing has been resolved when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, its frozen assets, war reparations or the lifting of sanctions, which would all be the subject of “further discussions” over the coming months. Despite lots of missing detail...

Alive and well, the US/Iran war, which we were told would last about four weeks, entered its 100th day over the weekend despite weeks of multiple fake reports of its demise and a Trump declaration back on April 17th that the Strait of Hormuz had re-opened (still waiting for that one). The odds of a swift resolution lengthened further as Iran and Israel exchanged fire on Sunday for the first time s...

Following another weekend of zero trustworthy information on the war and peace front, financial markets were hoping to be able to focus their attention for a few days on the more tangible reality of earnings, economic data and evolving narratives surrounding interest rates and AI etc. as a banger of a month of May for stocks gave way to the final month of Q2 on Monday . Energy traders ignored Trum...

Trump and Rubio spent last Saturday teasing that a US/Iran agreement including a re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz was “95% done” and was hours away from being finally announced. Iran quickly denied that anything was imminent and indeed there was nothing substantial to report by the time Asian and European markets opened on Monday , which was a holiday in the US and a number of other countries. N...

Another weekend, another complete lack of progress or even any useful information related to the Iran war as the paralysis continued with both sides wasting everybody’s time and effort by offering up proposals that are clearly non-starters since they know full well the other side won’t accept them. Wall Street loves itself a corny acronym and while bulls are tending to still hold on to the long-st...

Trump decided over the weekend that he “didn’t like” Iran’s response to the US proposal to end the conflict but yet again there was little of substance regarding the war for Wall Street to focus on, with markets continuing to view the situation as slowly trending towards some kind of ceasefire. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for ten weeks now with no prospect of reopening, a once-unthinkable...

It was yet another weekend of nothing of substance war-wise for markets to chew on, apart from both sides ramping up the rhetoric and Trump posting some kind of characteristically detail-free vague promise called “Project Freedom” to somehow help guide tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Markets were unimpressed. Oil prices and interest rates spiked higher on Monday and stocks fell back from the...

A potentially blockbuster week laced with pivotal earnings reports from almost $30 trillion-worth of S&P 500 names including five of the Magnificent Seven, key economic data and central bank interest rate decisions at home and abroad began following a weekend of no discernible progress on the Iran War. With limited credible conflict newsflow, Wall Street eased gently into the first half of the wee...

The cozy feeling of optimism that had carried stock markets to new all-time highs the previous week began to unravel over the weekend. Within hours of Trump boasting that "Iran has agreed to never again close the Strait of Hormuz”, Iran again closed the Strait of Hormuz, in response to the US refusal to lift its blockade. The oil price jumped but stocks remained steady in Asia and Europe on Monday...

To the surprise of almost no-one, the fleeting US/Iran talks in Pakistan over the weekend were a dismal failure. Sometime in between attending UFC fights, unsuccessfully interfering in Hungary’s election, posting an AI image of himself as a messiah and picking fights with the pope, Trump still found time to announce a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in a move designed to cripple Iran financ...

A clearly exasperated Trump put out a series of unhinged expletive-ridden social media posts over the weekend threatening the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iran starting on Tuesday evening which pushed oil prices deeper into triple digits, but there was very little in terms of credible clarity for traders to chew on at the weekend. A week including some key economic data and the start...

Reports predicting an imminent US ground invasion of Iran intensified over the weekend, triggering an apocalyptic response from the Iranians. The Houthis in Yemen joined the ever-expanding conflict, likely at the behest of Iran, complicating the increasingly chaotic picture further. Trump ramped up his attempts to gaslight markets with a flurry of detail-free promises of an imminent deal one minut...

Over the weekend Trump threatened to massively raise the stakes by bombing Iranian energy plants if the Strait of Hormuz (which had been closed for 24 days and counting) wasn’t open by Monday night, alarming Asian markets and US stock and bond futures. Just three hours before markets opened in the US on Monday , however, he posted that there were direct negotiations going on between an unidentifie...

Global energy markets braced for another week of turmoil after a weekend US attack ( “for fun” according to Trump) on Iran’s vital oil export facility on Kharg Island further exacerbated supply disruption. This kept the oil futures price above $100 to start the week continuing the downward pressure on Asian and European stocks on Monday . Wall Street was beginning to tune out Trump veering incoher...

The oil price blasted through $119 over the weekend with the Strait of Hormuz still closed to traffic, forcing major producers to curb production with storage facilities full to the brim. Iran signaled no let-up in its reaction to being bombed by selecting a continuity hardliner as its new leader. Asian stocks collapsed on Monday in response with Japanese equities entering an official correction ....

The US and Israel teamed up to launch a large scale attack on Iran over the weekend killing many hundreds including the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The entire Middle East moved onto a war footing as the Iranians retaliated by firing missiles across the region. Energy prices naturally skyrocketed in response and stocks gapped severely lower in Asia and Europe on Monday . US markets initi...

Upon further review, a recalibrating , not retreating, Trump decided at the weekend that his 10% supplemental temper tantrum tariff on the whole of planet Earth under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 was somehow not enough and he raised it to 15% and also vowed to use the manipulation of trade licenses to “do terrible things” to countries around the world, following the Supreme Court verdict t...

US markets were closed on Monday for Presidents’ Day after an unusually uneventful weekend on the newswires. Asian and European equities were quiet, but gold, silver and crypto all continued to skid lower and futures trading indicated a shaky open for Wall Street the next day. The rotation out of certain tech sectors resumed on Tuesday morning and the indexes in general, but the NASDAQ in particul...

A jam-packed week of major economic data and more earnings reports began on Monday with Japanese stocks reaching all-time record highs after the weekend’s landslide election victory of prime minister Takaichi’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the sprawling Epstein scandal engulfed Commerce Secretary Lutnick and the related political crisis in the UK drove local interest rates meaningfu...

The weekend’s headlines were dominated by yet more repulsive Epstein slime which has thankfully (so far) not seeped into the consideration of US financial markets, although UK Prime Minister Starmer is certainly feeling the heat about probable related diplomatic cover-ups. The recent gold and silver party came to a crunching halt and prices utterly collapsed in what was the biggest precious metals...

The weekend’s appalling events in Minnesota provoked Congressional maneuvering that triggered the very real risk of another federal government shutdown by the end of the week (the prediction market odds rocketed from a 9% likelihood to 80% in a matter of hours) which could toss financial markets into another economic data slop bucket. Nevertheless, following a choppy Asian session, New York trader...

Trump weaponized tariffs again over the weekend but this time in order to pursue his global territorial ambitions. He proposed tariff-based sanctions on allied countries voicing concerns over a proposed illegal US annexation of Greenland, including the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands as well as the Nordic bloc, who reacted by forcefully reiterating their “non-negotiable” support for Greenland...

Three potentially significant market-impacting stories developed over the weekend. * Firstly, Trump’s desperation to do away with Fed chairman Jerome Powell, demolish the independence of the central bank and take personal control of US interest rate policy resulted in an obvious intimidation tactic of a criminal prosecution threat. Incredibly, a haggard-looking Powell was forced onto YouTube on Su...