ANGLES.

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...

The weekend newswires were obviously dominated by the abduction of Nicolas Maduro and his wife during a large-scale deadly US military attack on Venezuela. Trump bizarrely declared US remote sovereignty over the country that supposedly has the world’s largest oil reserves, with zero detail about how this would be accomplished but also refusing to rule out the deployment of American troops on the g...

Another holiday-shortened week began with Trump holding an apparently chummy meeting in Florida with Zelensky followed by a cozy phone call with Putin, but the desperate PR spin from all sides afterwards was unable to mask the reality that a workable peace deal is still well out of reach. Stocks retreated further on Monday from their Xmas Eve record highs on pitiful trading volume on the back of s...

The stock market was starting to run out of ammunition when it came to any meaningful remaining economic data releases this year with just PCE inflation and GDP to come and any Santa Claus rally would have to be built mainly on vibes. It would also be subject to geopolitical winds which don’t look great (Venezuela, Ukraine, Middle East) as well as the volatility that can often result from thin hol...

The last full trading week of 2025 followed a weekend which saw a temporary spike in the odds on the “other Kevin”, Warsh, being nominated by Trump as the next Fed chairman at the expense of Hassett whose potential chairmanship has not been well received by markets due to the perception that he could put the economy at risk by being so clearly deep in the president’s pocket. Stocks steadied on Mon...

The major highlight of the week was always going to be the final Federal Reserve meeting of the year and the Fed Funds Rate decision announcement with quarterly dot plots , followed by chairman Powell’s press conference on Wednesday afternoon ET, with the expected rate cut proclamation itself probably the least interesting part of the day. The central bank’s rate-setting committee ( FOMC ) has for...

After seven straight months of S&P 500 gains for the first time since 2021 carrying the index back to within 1% of more new all-time highs, solid Black Friday sales and Chat GPT’s third birthday with the Mag 7 names up a collective 300% in that time, markets began December in risk-off mode with profit-taking in vogue. Cryptocurrencies resumed their brutal plunge on Monday as the Chinese central ba...

As a rough November moved into the home stretch, the mood brightened for stocks as a holiday-shortened but data-packed week kicked off on Monday following a quiet weekend on the newswires. A sense that there may be some relative bargains to be found in certain names among the rubble of Tech/AI after the recent bloodletting and rapidly rising hopes of another Fed Funds Rate cut next month pushed th...