<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Just Another Tuesday
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And so here we are: The U.S. president threatens &ldquo;a whole civilization will die tonight&rdquo; and the U.S. stock market sees it as just another Tuesday.
As we write, the president&rsquo;s 8:00 p.m. EDT deadline remains in place.
We&rsquo;ll get to the war and the markets in Bullet No. 2. But first&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s essential to zoom out and observe the mainstream is catching on to something we&rsquo;ve warned about for years.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7dB1ufMhrd8m8FiQUhCdAb/31d0a74736a2f217e652a2d42b80c6d9/FMF-Issue-040726-1.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
As a reminder, the &ldquo;petrodollar&rdquo; arrangement is what emerged in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo in late 1973 &mdash; a response to U.S. support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Oil prices quadrupled in a matter of weeks.
The following year, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger midwifed a system under which Saudi Arabia prices oil in U.S. dollars and uses its clout to get other OPEC nations to do the same. In return, the U.S. government protects Saudi Arabia and its allies against foreign invaders and domestic rebellions.
Starting in 1974, anyone who wanted to buy oil needed dollars to do so. The Saudi and other Gulf governments then took those dollars and invested them in U.S. Treasury debt.
The petrodollar greased the wheels of world commerce and underwrote Uncle Sam&rsquo;s decades-long debt bender.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For more than 10 years, we&rsquo;ve been chronicling signs that this arrangement was slowly coming apart. 
A turning point came in 2022 &mdash; after Russia invaded Ukraine and Washington responded with a raft of sanctions aimed at curbing Russia&rsquo;s energy revenue.
Russia soon began selling oil to China and India in exchange for yuan and rupees. And Saudi Arabian leaders started talking publicly about selling oil to China for yuan.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If 2022 was a turning point, 2026 is the breaking point.
In a Bloomberg opinion column, Aaron Brown &mdash; the former head of financial market research at AQR Capital &mdash; describes the dynamic of the last 39 days:
<blockquote>Turkey, India, Thailand and other oil-importing nations are caught in a brutal arithmetic: Oil priced in dollars has surged past $100 a barrel while their currencies weaken against the greenback. To limit depreciation &mdash; which would push domestic oil prices even higher, forcing either fiscal subsidies or household pain &mdash; central banks intervene in currency markets. That requires dollars. The most liquid dollar asset any central bank holds is Treasuries. So they sell.</blockquote>
Result: Foreign central banks have been net sellers of Treasuries for five straight weeks. That&rsquo;s pushing Treasury prices down and Treasury yields up. The yield on a 10-year T-note was 3.9% when the war began and climbed over 4.4% by late March.
Typically during moments of geopolitical turmoil, Treasuries are a safe haven for scared money. No more. Brown again:
<blockquote>The flight-to-quality trade has always rested on a political premise: That in a global crisis, the United States is a stabilizer or bystander, not a combatant. But the calculus changes when the U.S. itself is the belligerent; when the conflict is partly America&rsquo;s war, driving the oil shock, straining Gulf relationships and generating the fiscal pressure that has bond investors worried about U.S. budget deficits. Not completely. Not permanently. But enough.</blockquote>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It was inevitable. If it wasn&rsquo;t the Iran war, it would be something else. Interest rates tend to move in long 80-year cycles &mdash; 40 years up, 40 years down.
They&rsquo;ve been headed up since the summer of 2020 &mdash; not in a straight line, but the trajectory is in place. Long-term Treasuries are no longer a safe haven. (Your editor ditched all his long-term Treasury holdings in 2024 once it was clear 2020 marked the bottom in rates.)
Gold fulfills the safe-haven role from here. Yes, it&rsquo;s taken a tumble in recent weeks. That too is a function of the global dash for liquidity Brown describes above. &ldquo;Weak hands&rdquo; are selling. Strong hands are scooping up a (relative) bargain, getting ready for the next phase up.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Countdown
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Amid Donald Trump&rsquo;s latest threats, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up nearly four bucks, over $116.
We must caution once more: That&rsquo;s just the futures price. Real barrels for export to oil-starved customers overseas are fetching much higher prices.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1li78WYXxyNsljx9K4LUoP/ac646a6dec4538a29469c7f12c69c80f/FMF-Issue-040726-2.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The post above prompted the following reply from a self-described &ldquo;captain of an offshore drilling asset&rdquo;:
<blockquote>The physical market is telling a much different story than paper. The scary part is that markets don&rsquo;t seem to care right now. It really feels like Feb of 2020 all over again. You could see the world shutting down yet everyone in the U.S. just turned a blind eye to it.</blockquote>
&ldquo;The last ship from Hormuz is arriving in Europe in three days,&rdquo; says a tweet from commodities analyst Lukas Ekwueme. &ldquo;In the U.S., eight days. Australia in two weeks.&rdquo;
If the Strait of Hormuz reopened today, it would take at least 40 days before any more oil comes into port.
&ldquo;What we&rsquo;re seeing now is still the front edge of the shock,&rdquo; Ekweume concludes. &ldquo;The full extent of the supply shortfall hasn&rsquo;t even hit yet.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And the war grinds on as the deadline approaches: After U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on an Iranian petrochemical hub, Tehran hit back &mdash; hard.
Iranian airstrikes torched the kingdom&rsquo;s Jubail petrochemical facility &mdash; which accounts for 7% of Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s total economic output.
There&rsquo;s considerable doubt about the provenance of the video footage accompanying most of the social media posts about this attack. The Gulf sheikdoms have been cracking down hard on video footage of attacks on their countries.
NASA&rsquo;s fire-mapping platform called FIRMS, on the other hand, is more reliable&hellip;
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Meanwhile, on the Paradigm Press mobile app, our own Byron King spotted a chart from Katusa Research that reminds us the supply squeeze isn&rsquo;t just about oil&hellip;
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<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The stock market reaction seems to be one of &ldquo;fearing the worst and hoping for another Trump TACO.&rdquo;
At last check, the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.8% at 6,557. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are narrower, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s steeper.
Gold is steady at $4,646 but silver has shed nearly two bucks to $70.62. No excitement in crypto &mdash; Bitcoin a little under $68,000 and Ethereum at $2,070.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Medicare Climb-Down
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The health insurance stocks are defying today&rsquo;s modest sell-off &mdash; because of a climb-down by the Trump administration.
In January we told you the administration was proposing to hold its 2027 compensation for Medicare insurers at 2026 levels. The announcement hammered the share prices of UnitedHealth and other big companies providing Medicare Advantage plans.
But that was just a proposal and not a final announcement. The final announcement came after the market close yesterday: Next year&rsquo;s payments will be 2.48% higher.
That&rsquo;s nowhere near the 4&ndash;6% that Wall Street analysts were counting on at the beginning of the year &mdash; but it&rsquo;s enough to send UNH shares up 8% today, and CVS nearly 5%.
Why the change of heart by the administration? &ldquo;We have to be wise stewards of the tax dollar,&rdquo; says Medicare program director Chris Klomp &mdash; but &ldquo;we need to make sure that plans aren&rsquo;t pulling out of markets, that they&rsquo;re not cutting benefits that beneficiaries are relying on,&rdquo; he tells The Wall Street Journal.
Well, OK. But this issue will rear its head again next year. And the year after that.
Something&rsquo;s got to give, eventually. The U.S. health care system is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/health-care-on-trial">ruinously expensive</a> &mdash; consuming 35 cents of every dollar spent by the federal government.
Our guidance from January stands: If you&rsquo;re on a Medicare Advantage plan right now &mdash; more than half of Medicare beneficiaries are &mdash; it&rsquo;s not too early to start thinking about what your world will look like if the system can no longer sustain these plans and your only option is a more costly Medicare supplement or &ldquo;Medigap&rdquo; plan.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We get our yuks where we can find them&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7HPdi5ErG5vtFJvjl1qxt2/128a994be867a4d15b94b830ef5514ed/FMF-Issue-040726-5.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Tough Jobs, Propagandists
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Dave, as usual your response to my note was very well said,&rdquo; a reader writes back after the mailbag in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/lights-out-iran-edition">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;I know that you guys have a very tough job in helping investors maximize their returns without setting them up to take massive losses when markets shift. I think you guys do it better than almost any other investment service I&rsquo;ve encountered but don&rsquo;t quote me on that because I don&rsquo;t have the data to back it up 😉.&nbsp;
&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very good at your job and I get lots of value from your missives so I hope that you plan to continue (as I do as long as I think I still bring value) for some years yet.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Mr. Gonigam, I&rsquo;ve noticed a concerning trend in the X accounts you choose to highlight in your daily newsletter,&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;It took me a couple minutes to swipe through Brandon Weichert&rsquo;s X feed to realize he is a hack and media propagandist. Not the worst by any means, but he reposts garbage accounts that push misleading and hyperbolic narratives. It&rsquo;s a credibility issue.
&ldquo;But we can&rsquo;t follow the likes of Loomer, Bongino and now Hannity for fear of falling into a closed loop of information gathering. I understand the shortcomings of MAGA and political idolatry, but the American political system is broken. Progressives took over the Democrat party and their policies have destroyed a debt-laden West. We have to choose sides. I&rsquo;ll never vote Democrat again, and Democrats will never vote for a Libertarian. I don&rsquo;t think they are well versed in Mises or Tocqueville.
&ldquo;Trump was an extreme choice, but the fatal flaw in party politics is you have to pick somebody who can win. We are stuck, at least until the union breaks apart; or election outcomes become compulsory and predetermined.
&ldquo;In the meantime I will support and follow those who rightfully skewer the progressives and radical left. Which at times has been Mr. Gonigam himself! That&rsquo;s when I like him best.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Well, thank you. To address your first concern: Even hacks and propagandists have a worthwhile point to make now and then.
Everyone&rsquo;s mileage will vary but I can&rsquo;t bring myself to take sides. If we&rsquo;re to take the president at his word, he&rsquo;s on the verge of taking a catastrophic step tonight or tomorrow. And rather than put up any resistance at a moment it&rsquo;s most needed&hellip; the Democrats are standing aside so they can win the midterms.
We&rsquo;ll give the final word today to Charlie Kirk, from the grave&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/rw6ZBLu5rBnEZ4omuXc46/0a5f5020d7d4858e5ecaa06d92dc53a0/FMF-Issue-040726-6.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />

FMF-Issue-040726-Featured

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Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

Just Another Tuesday

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Lights out (Iran Edition)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The latest deadline for the start of U.S. attacks on Iran&rsquo;s power grid is 8:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow night. 
Subject to change, that is&hellip;
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The current deadline is attached to a demand that Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll remind you was open for all to transit before Washington and Tel Aviv launched this war.
Should the president follow through, the Iranian response will be severe.
&ldquo;Iran will retaliate and destroy critical power plants in nations where US forces are operating,&rdquo; writes ex-Navy SEAL Matthew Bracken. That includes Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
&ldquo;Iran is 95% water self-sufficient. On the other side of the Persian Gulf they are 90% dependent on desalinated water. Millions may perish from lack of water. It will be impossible to fly them all out in time to prevent a massive human disaster.&rdquo;
But about the electricity&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Iran's power grid is very robust and redundant compared to the American grid,&rdquo; Bracken writes on his Substack page.
&ldquo;90% of Iranian households are connected to gas pipelines and a mostly gas-powered electric grid. Iran's natural gas is virtually unlimited for many decades to come. Destroyed sections of natural gas pipelines can be fixed in hours, or days at most. Gas and electricity can be rerouted around Iran's vast interconnected grids as individual power plants are struck, and then repaired.
&ldquo;Iran&rsquo;s gas and electric grid networks were designed this way for a purpose. The eight-year war from 1980&ndash;1988 is not a distant memory. Iran has remained on a war footing ever since, planning for damage control.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In contrast, &ldquo;the USA is far more vulnerable to catastrophic cascading power failure than Iran,&rdquo; Bracken continues.
He invokes the still-unsolved sniper attack in 2013 targeting the Metcalf transmission substation near San Jose, California &mdash; operated by Pacific Gas and Electric. The saboteurs fired on 17 electrical transformers.
The impact on the grid was minimal &mdash; as electricity was rerouted from other power plants around Silicon Valley. But by many accounts, that was just a lucky break.
&ldquo;10 Metcalf attacks at the same time could take out the power across entire regions of America,&rdquo; Bracken writes.
That&rsquo;s not hyperbole &mdash; <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2014/03/13/the-18-month-nationwide-blackout/">as we&rsquo;ve chronicled previously</a>. The same year as the Metcalf attack, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission performed a computer-model stress test of the national power grid.
The findings were summarized in a memo prepared for the FERC's commissioner: "Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer."
That&rsquo;s just nine substations out of 55,000 total nationwide.
The good news is that leaders in Tehran know how unpopular this war is in the United States. The last thing they&rsquo;d want to do at this time is anything that would create a &ldquo;rally &rsquo;round the flag&rdquo; effect.
Unfortunately, all the problems that existed with the U.S. power grid before the war remain. An update about that is coming in Bullet No. 3.
But for the moment, we turn to the latest war developments and the markets today&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />If It&rsquo;s Monday, It Must Be Ceasefire Buzz&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Threats notwithstanding, it seems the market is pricing in another TACO &mdash; which, to refresh your memory, is short for &ldquo;Trump always chickens out.&rdquo;
It being Monday, there&rsquo;s renewed chatter from Washington about a ceasefire &mdash; chatter that Tehran denies has any validity.
Crude shot higher as the new week began last night &mdash; past $115 briefly &mdash; but at last check a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is now down slightly from Friday&rsquo;s close at $111.26.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But those are oil futures &mdash; &ldquo;paper barrels,&rdquo; as it were. Real barrels being delivered to Asian refiners cost anywhere between $130-170, according to Carlyle Group&rsquo;s Jeff Currie.
When it comes to commodities, Currie is a vital voice outside of Paradigm that we follow closely.
&ldquo;You look at the paper markets, they&rsquo;ve entirely disconnected from the physical markets,&rdquo; Currie told Bloomberg TV last Thursday.
&ldquo;The supply shock [now] is almost equal to the demand shock during COVID. And we know what that did to global supply chains. So I think at $100 a barrel, this thing&rsquo;s mispriced.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the meantime, more vessels are transiting <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/rush-for-the-exits/#3">the &ldquo;tollbooth&rdquo; that Iran has erected</a> in the Strait of Hormuz.
&ldquo;Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has climbed to its highest levels since the early days of the war, as more countries secure apparent safe-passage agreements with Iran,&rdquo; Bloomberg reports. &ldquo;The waterway saw 21 ships transit over the weekend.&rdquo;
But that&rsquo;s still a far cry from the prewar daily average of 135 ships. Analysts at Morgan Stanley project the strait will be more or less shut through the end of this month.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Amid that backdrop, the ceasefire chatter is driving the major U.S. stock indexes up slightly from last week&rsquo;s close.
The S&amp;P 500 is up a little less than a quarter percent, about four points shy of 6,600 &mdash; the highest since March 19, The Dow and the Nasdaq are also in the green.
The stock market&rsquo;s seeming indifference to the disruption in global oil flows brought forth this bit of grim humor&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/Kqv3mqdbRwbezl8wjwHgg/efc7e841de00b1b7a7940cb5a33d0362/FMF-Issue-040626_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Gold begins the new week down slightly at $4,665 and silver down about 1% at $72.19. Crypto is staging a modest rally &mdash; Bitcoin less than $300 away from the $70,000 mark again and Ethereum at $2,165.
Speaking of data centers&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />About That Data Center Buildout&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The breakneck buildout of data centers is running into severe real-world restraints &mdash; namely a lack of transformers.
&ldquo;Almost half of the U.S. data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled,&rdquo; warns a Bloomberg dispatch. &ldquo;One big reason is the shortage of electrical equipment, such as transformers, switchgear and batteries.&rdquo;
That gear accounts for only about 10% of a data center&rsquo;s total cost &mdash; but &ldquo;if one piece of your supply chain is delayed, then your whole project can&rsquo;t deliver,&rdquo; says Andrew Likens of Crusoe Energy Systems.
Privately held Crusoe is a fortunate exception to the rule: It managed to secure enough gear that it expects to complete a data center campus on schedule for OpenAI in Abilene, Texas.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This supply crunch affects not only data center construction but the buildout of the power grid necessary to support those data centers.
We saw it coming nearly a year ago: The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned last May that a shortage of &ldquo;parts, materials and skilled technicians&rdquo; is holding up both maintenance of existing transformers and installation of new ones.
&ldquo;We can talk about tens of gigawatts of new potential electricity demand,&rdquo; energy journalist Robert Bryce told the Financial Sense podcast &mdash; &ldquo;but if we don't have the turbines, transformers and the people to build the capacity, well, that simply won't be realized. That capacity, that new electricity availability, just simply won't be there.&rdquo;
Ironically the slowdown in data center construction might put a crimp in projected electric demand as the year goes on.
But the long-term supply crunch remains real. Most of the biggest power transformers are imported. And many of the most important parts come from China.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Follow-up: Private Credit
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the record: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warns that losses from private credit will be greater than much of Wall Street expects.
We&rsquo;ve been sounding the alarm about private credit for the last six months &mdash; <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/rush-for-the-exits">most recently Friday</a> with the help of Paradigm macro authority Jim Rickards.
As a refresher, private credit is a term covering a wide variety of loans that used to be offered by banks but now are offered by the likes of Blackstone, Apollo and KKR.
Many of these private credit providers lent to companies with high levels of debt relative to their earnings &mdash; and they&rsquo;re now sitting on losses. In some cases these providers have prevented investors in these loans from withdrawing their funds.
In his annual shareholder letter, Dimon warns: &ldquo;I do believe that when we have a credit cycle, which will happen one day, losses on all leveraged lending in general will be higher than expected, relative to the environment&hellip; This is because credit standards have been modestly weakening pretty much across the board.&rdquo;
Yes, Dimon <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wartime-sacrifice">represents everything wrong</a> with our &ldquo;financialized&rdquo; economy that relies on moving money around instead of creating new wealth&hellip; but we&rsquo;ll take his warning at face value here.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: SpaceX and Market Manias
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times">Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a> in which we briefly unpacked the case against buying SpaceX once it goes public&hellip;
&hellip; we heard from a reader who says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a 60-year-old certified management accountant. I&rsquo;ve been involved with several M&amp;A transactions and currently have a minority equity stake in a group of businesses that does around $200 million in revenue.
&ldquo;When I hear that an IPO is valued at 117X revenues ($1.75 trillion versus $15 billion) this is a clear sign that we are in mania territory.
&ldquo;You guys are usually straight shooters but I&rsquo;m disappointed that you weren&rsquo;t more explicit in your denouncement of this deal. In the real world, guys like me analyze earnings (not revenue) as proper fundamental technical analysis. And we mortgage our houses to make deals for companies that are 3&ndash;6 times earnings not 117X revenues. You want to get laughed out of my office, come to me with that deal.
&ldquo;I understand new tech and IP, and Space X is not that&hellip; it is a well-established company with years of financial reporting (albeit internal not external).
&ldquo;My humble opinion is that people are going to lose their shirts if they invest in this IPO. Now, I think that you guys try to look after your customers but I&rsquo;m disappointed that you&rsquo;re not more explicitly pointing out that we&rsquo;re clearly in a mania. Somehow it has become normalized that future revenues have become recognized as a valid way of valuing a company which is complete bollocks unless you are talking about a true new technology IPO.
&ldquo;OK, rant over. I&rsquo;m worried about what happens to people when this bubble bursts. Please do what you can with your team to prepare them for the worst if it happens.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for sharing your concerns. It&rsquo;s rare when a reader calls us out for not being emphatic enough!
My colleague Davis Wilson expanded on his case against SpaceX <a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/spacex-the-math-is-ugly">in Friday&rsquo;s edition of </a><a href="https://million-mission.com/posts/spacex-the-math-is-ugly">The Million Mission</a>. Drawing on his experience in investment banking, he concludes, &ldquo;Great companies and great investments are not the same thing&rdquo; &mdash; and with that in mind he urges readers in no uncertain terms to &ldquo;stay AWAY from this IPO.&rdquo;
As for the broader issue of a &ldquo;mania&rdquo; or &ldquo;bubble&rdquo;... the problem is that manias and bubbles can go on way longer than sober-minded folks like you and me reasonably expect.
Lots of very smart people bailed from the dot-com boom and took profits at the end of 1998 &mdash; missing out as the Nasdaq proceeded to double over the next 14 months.
I suspect many of those people slept soundly and did not kick themselves for the profits they gave up. But that&rsquo;s because they were very early to the party and already booked huge gains.
As editors and publishers, we have an exceedingly tricky task &mdash; mindful that even as a mania or bubble is underway, we&rsquo;re also writing for an audience of retail investors, many of whom were not early to the party and who will not forgive us readily if our guidance leads them to miss out on 1999-style gains.
So we collectively watch everything from company fundamentals to chart action to events in Washington. At this time it&rsquo;s the assessment of our chief investment director Enrique Abeyta that the &ldquo;mania&rdquo; is not yet approaching its end.
But he &mdash; and all of us &mdash; are on watch for signs telling us when it is. So stay tuned&hellip;

shutterstock 1069671815

Lights out (Iran Edition)

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Rush For the Exits
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a massive financial crisis heading our way, and it has nothing to do with Iran,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards.
We first alerted you to this looming crisis six months ago &ndash; when the auto parts maker First Brands Group filed for bankruptcy.
First Brands financed its operations through the &ldquo;private credit&rdquo; market &mdash; loans that were once the province of banks but are now dominated by players like Blackstone, Apollo and KKR.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Private credit funds are a $2.5&ndash;$4 trillion market in loans to companies that offer financing for software start-ups, subprime auto loans, tech equipment and more,&rdquo; Jim explained this week to Strategic Intelligence readers.
&ldquo;Even a 20% loss rate, which some analysts project, could translate to almost $1 trillion in losses.
&ldquo;The subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008, if you recall, involved about $1 trillion in subprime loans. The S&amp;L crisis of the 1980s involved about $800 billion of bad commercial real estate loans. Today&rsquo;s private credit crisis could be even worse and it&rsquo;s just getting started.&rdquo;
Yesterday, Blue Owl Capital &ndash; which is quickly becoming the poster child for this phenomenon &ndash; disclosed that its investors asked to pull $5.4 billion from a pair of Blue Owl funds during the first quarter. &ldquo;The redemption requests amounted to 22% of its $36 billion private-credit fund and 41% of a technology-focused fund,&rdquo; says The Wall Street Journal.
A few weeks ago, Blue Owl told some of its investors they would not be allowed to withdraw their money on demand. They&rsquo;d get their money back on Blue Owl&rsquo;s schedule, once Blue Owl sold off assets to raise cash.
This week also brought less dire but still concerning disclosures from Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock and Cliffwater.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> So&hellip; once the losses materialize, who will eat them?
The losses &ldquo;begin with fund investors,&rdquo; Jim continues. &ldquo;Then they move to managers, whose fees shrink as net asset values fall. But they do not stop there.
&ldquo;These vehicles often rely on leverage &mdash; secured loans, warehouse lines and other funding facilities provided by banks. When collateral values weaken and borrowers cannot refinance, losses move from the funds to the lenders.
&ldquo;Moody&rsquo;s now estimates bank exposure to private credit may be $300 billion in direct lending to providers, $285 billion in lending to funds plus $340 billion in unutilized bank lending commitments. That&rsquo;s a total of $925 billion in direct credit exposure to the private credit sector.&rdquo;
And while the big banks no longer do much lending to private business, they do lend to the private credit lenders. Wells Fargo has by far the most exposure ($60 billion) with Bank of America in second place ($33 billion) and the other major players not far behind.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;In my experience, financial crises are rarely the product of one shock alone,&rdquo; says Jim.
&ldquo;They come when several stresses that seem separate suddenly converge. Those events may not be correlated when the economy is steady, but they become correlated in a crisis. This is known as conditional correlation.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s what happened when the Russian credit failure landed in the lap of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. And it&rsquo;s happening again as the software-stock implosion, Iran war and the prime-credit meltdown start to feed off each other.
&ldquo;For reference, if one compares this to the global financial crisis (2007&ndash;2009), we&rsquo;re closer to the Bear Stearns credit-fund stage (July 2007).&rdquo;
In other words, the &ldquo;Lehman moment&rdquo; (September 2008) might still be more than a year away.
Consider yourself on notice. And of course, we&rsquo;ll stay on top of the situation, seeking profit opportunities along the way. (Some of our readers bagged 462% gains with Lehman put options in the summer of 2008).
We&rsquo;ve been a good three months ahead of the mainstream on the private credit car wreck &ndash; and we aim to keep that leg up.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />While the Markets are Closed&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> With the markets closed for Good Friday, there&rsquo;s a lot going on that markets can&rsquo;t react to&hellip;
For one thing, an American F-15E has been shot down near the Iran-Iraq border &ndash; no word yet on the fate of the crew at last check. Going into the three-day weekend, oil closed last night over $112 &ndash; the highest close since 2022.
For another thing, after the market closed yesterday the Trump administration announced a wicked-complicated new tariff scheme for pharmaceuticals. The tariff rate could be as high as 100%, but there&rsquo;s a host of carve-outs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For a third thing, the wonks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered the March jobs report this morning. 
They conjured 178,000 new jobs for the month &ndash; way more than Wall Street economists were expecting, and more than enough to offset February&rsquo;s losses. The official unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3%.
Whatever. These numbers are so manipulated and noisy that we try to find a lodestar in figures that the statisticians can&rsquo;t game.
With that in mind, the labor force participation rate &ndash; the percentage of the over-16 population that&rsquo;s either working or looking for work &ndash; was 61.9% last month. That&rsquo;s down from 62.5% a year earlier. Aside from the pandemic plunge and recovery, the last time the number was this low was early 1977 &ndash; when women were still entering the workforce en masse.
And there was this tidbit from the jobs report&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/PLF70kDAehqQZ0R387GW7/3b7fa39e02e531b0e005594db557905d/FMF-Issue-040326_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<a id="3"></a>
The report also shows that federal government employment is now down 11.8% from its peak in October 2024.
If only declining federal payrolls translated to lower federal spending and a less intrusive federal government&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Iran&rsquo;s New Tollbooth
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Strait of Hormuz is slowly reopening &ldquo;under new management.&rdquo;
Just in from Bloomberg this morning: &ldquo;A container ship signaling French ownership has exited the Strait of Hormuz, in what appears to be the first known transit by a vessel linked to Western Europe since the Iran war all but shuttered the vital waterway.&rdquo;
No comment from the French government, or from the ship&rsquo;s owner CMA CGM &ndash; the world&rsquo;s third-biggest container line.
As we try to mention every time the subject comes up, Iran hasn&rsquo;t closed the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, it&rsquo;s enforcing a selective blockade whereas before the war ships could transit freely.
Tehran has more or less set up a tollbooth.
&ldquo;Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is exerting control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, extracting tolls from vessels passing through and giving preferential treatment to ships from countries it deems friendly,&rdquo; said an earlier Bloomberg dispatch this week.
&ldquo;Ship operators have to contact an intermediary company linked to the IRGC and provide information about their vessel to negotiate a toll, which typically starts at around $1 per barrel of oil, and receive a permit code and route instructions to safely pass through the strait.&rdquo;
With oil trading well north of $100 a barrel, a $1-per-barrel fee seems modest.
To be sure, traffic through the strait is still a trickle relative to what it was pre-war. But as we prepare to hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on this edition, a Japanese vessel has transited the strait along with the French one mentioned a moment ago.
What fee are they paying? And in what currency?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2u35AER6fNZSuVvaaJzpWP/85e02e0476d18f2b4feb19930361bcd3/FMF-Issue-040326_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
But that&rsquo;s a story for another day&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Note well: The following was posted nearly a month ago and became newly relevant yesterday.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/32T78RFBw2SMuwab5cFbdp/e4744794885c3f018adda5646d4cdce3/FMF-Issue-040326_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
And the Dow has shed another 1,000 points since&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" /> Mailbag: Alex Jones?!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times">Yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> prompted the following reader feedback&hellip;
&ldquo;I realize that you have a point of view about the war. I respectfully disagree with it. But citing Alex Jones as an example of a pundit souring on the President is laughable.
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s next &ndash; observing that Trump has lost the Nick Fuentes wing of the MAGA movement, all three dozen of them?&rdquo;
Dave responds: On the contrary, Jones has immense value as a weathervane.
I&rsquo;ve never followed him very closely, but he&rsquo;s been on my radar for a long time. I can remember when it was easier to hear him on a shortwave radio than on a laggy dial-up internet connection.
Key point: He&rsquo;s never really had a fixed set of beliefs. In his earlier years, for example, he aligned with the &ldquo;Cop Block&rdquo; movement, frequently denouncing the excesses of militarized law enforcement. Then he flip-flopped in 2014 during the riots in Ferguson, Missouri &ndash; when he figured he could get more clicks and engagement by saying that policing has never been more dangerous, yada yada.
So for him to be turning on Trump now? Yeah, it&rsquo;s an interesting signpost.
But never mind a crank like Jones or a white nationalist like Fuentes. Pretty much the entire universe of &ldquo;podcast bros&rdquo; who put Trump over the top with younger male voters in 2024 has turned on him&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2GNi9sujU1NgcFHgrUywjR/d3b2e8820516e28475513fbe025cefcb/FMF-Issue-040326_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&hellip;excepting, of course, the execrable Dan Bongino.
The financial newsletter business has always been about tackling ideas that challenge conventional wisdom &ndash; even if, now and then, it means taking readers out of their own comfort zone.
If in the present moment that means piercing the boomercons&rsquo; Hannitized echo chamber&hellip; so be it.
Better that you learn about this now than wonder next November why throngs of under-50s who voted for Trump in 2024 sat on their hands in the &lsquo;26 midterms.

FMF-Issue-040326(Featured)

Rush for the Exits

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />About That Iranian Proposal&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />So here&rsquo;s the scorecard: On the eve of U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude fetched $66.75. Today, amid a ceasefire, $92.58.
As you&rsquo;re probably aware, Donald Trump did not follow through last night on his casual threat to commit crimes against humanity &mdash; or as he put it yesterday, &ldquo;A whole civilization will die.&rdquo;
A fragile two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan is now in place.
We&rsquo;ll get into the terms of that agreement momentarily. For now, suffice to say that whatever you think of Trump, this development is undeniably a good thing.
If you&rsquo;re a Trump critic and think it was another &ldquo;TACO&rdquo; on his part, you&rsquo;re welcome to believe so. If you&rsquo;re a Trump partisan and want to believe he engineered a deal for the ages, have at it. The point is we can all breathe a sigh of relief at this outcome.
(Except Mark Levin. By one account he&rsquo;s been &ldquo;crying and throwing up on-air.&rdquo; This too is a good thing.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The most notable item in Trump&rsquo;s announcement is this: &ldquo;We have received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.&rdquo;
Tehran&rsquo;s terms have been public for a couple of days. As far as we know, this is a reliable translation&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1sXmIxgXhANbK1qd5No2AQ/054a91c8872e100a7026159897c7f41c/fmf_iran_10pt.png" alt="Iran's 10-pt peace plan" />
Hmmm&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Let&rsquo;s zero in on points 5&ndash;10 &mdash; seeing as the Strait of Hormuz was open to all before Washington and Tel Aviv launched the war on Feb. 28.
The Associated Press cites &ldquo;a regional official&rdquo; as saying Iran and Oman will both charge fees on ships transiting the strait while the ceasefire is underway.
&ldquo;The strait is in the territorial waters of both Oman and Iran,&rdquo; says the AP story. &ldquo;The world had considered the passage an international waterway and never paid tolls before.&rdquo;
Furthermore, social media statements from Iran suggest that while the ceasefire is in effect, &ldquo;only about 10&ndash;15 ships will be permitted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran&rsquo;s approval, in coordination with the IRGC Navy and after payment of tolls&hellip;&rdquo;
For perspective, before the war began the strait accommodated 100&ndash;120 ships a day.
For its part the giant shipping line Maersk says it&rsquo;s nowhere near resuming normal operations: &ldquo;At this point, we take a cautious approach, and we are not making any changes to specific services,&rdquo; says a company statement to the Reuters newswire.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Even if the ceasefire holds and leads to some new modus vivendi between Washington and Tehran, it will take months for the supply-chain kinks to work out. 
For instance, many of the oil tankers that departed the Gulf region shortly before the war are now approaching their destinations. Once they arrive, that&rsquo;s it: There&rsquo;s at least a 40-day gap before the next tankers show up.
And that doesn&rsquo;t even get into the oil installations that have been blown up&hellip; or the disruptions to shipments of liquefied natural gas, fertilizers, helium, sulfur, aluminum&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Less than 18 hours after the announcement, the truce is already looking shaky.
Either U.S. or Israeli jets fired on an Iranian refinery at Lavan Island. Tehran has fired back on a series of targets in the region &mdash; including the East-West pipeline that Saudi Arabia counts on to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani negotiators say the ceasefire includes a provision for Israel to end its attempted Gazafication of southern Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli military says it&rsquo;s launched the &ldquo;largest coordinated strike across Lebanon&rdquo; in over a month.
And in the bigger picture, Israel&rsquo;s objective in attacking Iran &mdash; not necessarily regime change but merely the destruction of Iran as a functioning nation-state &mdash; has not been attained.
But until another profanity-laden Trump tirade on social media accusing Iran of violating the ceasefire, the narrative in the markets is that peace is at hand and it&rsquo;s party time&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Everything Rally
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Call it the everything rally: Aside from oil and the U.S. dollar, every asset class is ripping higher on the ceasefire news.
For the record, West Texas Intermediate crude traded over $116 when we wrote to you yesterday. At last check this morning, it&rsquo;s under $93.
The dollar, relative to other major currencies, is also down: The U.S. dollar index sits at 98.74 &mdash; a level that&rsquo;s been a floor since the war began.
Elsewhere, though, everything is green: In early trading the S&amp;P 500 leaped 2.3% higher. At 6,771 the index has recovered well over half of the losses it registered since late February. Today&rsquo;s gains in the Dow and the Nasdaq are even stronger.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Several key sectors are on the move this morning,&rdquo; Paradigm trading pro Greg Guenthner writes on the Paradigm Press mobile app.
(If you haven&rsquo;t downloaded the app, it&rsquo;s the easiest way to access all your paid-subscriber content &mdash; along with content we don&rsquo;t post anywhere else. <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download here.</a>)
&ldquo;The MAGs are cruising here, jumping a collective 4%. That should be good enough to dispel some of the bigger market worries as the MAGS ETF successfully retested its December 2024 highs.
&ldquo;Software stocks are also jumping this morning, lending more ammunition to those who were looking for a potential double-bottom in IGV. Semis are also rocketing higher. Even the lagging tech-growth stocks are waking up.&rdquo;
Bonds are rallying alongside stocks, pushing yields lower. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is under 4.27%, the lowest in three weeks.
Meanwhile, gold has rallied to its highest in three weeks &mdash; up $81 to $4,786. Silver has added $3.55 to $76.41.
And crypto is breaking out &mdash; Bitcoin at $71,654, Ethereum at $2,235.
&ldquo;Keep in mind,&rdquo; says Greg Guenthner, &ldquo;Bitcoin is still below its March 17 highs following last night&rsquo;s snapback. It&rsquo;s been steadily moving lower for six months, but has recently been hammering out a potential floor near $67K.
&ldquo;If Bitcoin can finally get moving in the right direction here, it will be yet another risk-on signal we can add to the list.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />California Screamin&rsquo; (Fuel Prices)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />As noted above, it&rsquo;s going to take weeks if not months for supply chains to unscramble &mdash; and that&rsquo;s bad news for California.
Even with the shale-energy bounty of the last 15 years, the United States still imports about 8% of its crude from the Middle East. And nearly half of that 8% goes to California.
Time was that California sourced the lion&rsquo;s share of its crude from either within the state or from Alaska.
But for most of this century, the Golden State has become increasingly reliant on oil from overseas &mdash; as you see in this chart from the California Energy Commission.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/W3QlyulvAzO1eIKk7QUxx/26c7b8eb5b17423a44dbc133c2d47d65/fmf_crude_california.png" alt="California Crude" />
What changed? &ldquo;California has taxed, litigated and regulated primary oil exploration and production down to bare bones, despite significant hydrocarbon potential in the state,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s resident oil field geologist Byron King.
&ldquo;In other words, California has grown in population (well&hellip; until the past couple of years, as people left due to toxic politics). And as anyone who has recently been there can tell you &mdash; just ask me! &mdash; there are way more cars, trucks, trains, airplanes and everything else out there and burning fuel, despite the state&rsquo;s so-called &lsquo;green&rsquo; efforts.&rdquo;
Between tight supply and high taxes, California gas prices are the highest in the country. And in some spots, diesel has surpassed $8 a gallon.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />An additional bottleneck: California also has to import a great deal of refined product &mdash; gasoline, diesel, jet fuel &mdash; because the number of refineries in California has dwindled from 40 in decades past to six today.
&ldquo;Until recently,&rdquo; says Byron, &ldquo;much of California&rsquo;s diesel fuel was imported from South Korea (yes, seriously). That is, oil would go from, say, Saudi to Korea, get refined and then move across the Pacific Ocean to California. But considering the Iran war, that&rsquo;s all coming to a halt.
&ldquo;Another source of refined products for California is the U.S. Gulf Coast, although it&rsquo;s a circuitous route via Bahamas (due to the Jones Act &mdash; long story) and then a transit through the Panama Canal.
&ldquo;California is a geographically isolated market. What makes it worse is that many of the refined products in Arizona and Nevada also originate from California. So looking ahead, the West Coast and adjacent states can expect much higher prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.&rdquo;
➢ Energy stocks are a bargain this morning after the beat-down in crude prices. As long as you steer clear of companies with substantial exposure to the Middle East, Byron says you&rsquo;ll do well &mdash; America&rsquo;s Chevron (CVX) and Brazil&rsquo;s Petrobras (PBR), for example. Likewise for the oil services names such as SLB (SLB) and Halliburton (HAL).
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Recognizing that energy prices will not revert to prewar levels, this is still relevant&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1CoWQavU0jyIG6GPExpKIO/3701a04d2ba6be01e6d1135e26ff14a0/fmf_meme_petrol.jpg" alt="Petrol Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Turkey, Charlie Kirk
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />A parenthetical mention in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last Thursday&rsquo;s edition</a> that &ldquo;after Iran, the war hawks have their sights set on Turkey next&rdquo; prompts a reader&rsquo;s objection&hellip;
&ldquo;With that nutty statement (never gonna happen), you have suddenly made me aware of a certain angle I didn&rsquo;t know you had, and I&rsquo;m not a fan. I love reading your stuff, but that one did some damage I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
Dave responds: &ldquo;Turkey is the new Iran,&rdquo; <a href="https://themedialine.org/headlines/the-new-iran-bennett-warns-of-emerging-axis-at-conference-of-presidents/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett two months ago. Bennett described Turkey&rsquo;s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan as &ldquo;sophisticated, dangerous and he seeks to encircle Israel.&rdquo;
Former Pentagon official Michael Rubin, now with the American Enterprise Institute, has <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/10/israel-should-openly-support-the-pkk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">argued</a> that Israel should arm Kurdish separatists in Turkey &mdash; on the grounds that the Erdogan government is &ldquo;a Hamas-sponsoring, Islamist and increasingly anti-Semitic country.&rdquo;
Bradley Martin of the Near East Center for Strategic Studies penned an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal last month <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/an-urgent-need-to-contain-turkey-f5aa3435" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asserting</a> that, &ldquo;While neutralizing the regional threat posed by Iran, the U.S. and Israel must ensure that Turkey doesn&rsquo;t take its place.&rdquo;
No, these aren&rsquo;t direct calls to topple Erdogan from current U.S. or Israeli government leaders. Still, these are influential voices demanding interventions that if carried out are bound to climb the proverbial &ldquo;escalation ladder&rdquo;...
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Wise words by Charlie Kirk,&rdquo; a reader writes about the conclusion of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/just-another-tuesday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Trump's style of negotiation doesn't work with fanatics who think God is waiting to welcome them when they are &lsquo;martyred&rsquo; by their own insanity. This ain't the art of the deal Trump thinks he can always win.
&ldquo;Yet he keeps raising the stakes. Can he really think the threats will work? Insanity all around! We will never really know why he joined Israel in this war. But it's hard to believe he has a larger goal here &mdash; you know, 4D chess LOL.&rdquo;
From another reader: &ldquo;Of all the anti-war comments from celebrities the best you can do is Charlie Kirk thanking Trump for his restraint during his first term?
&ldquo;He had us in Afghanistan for four years. And campaigned to get us out in 2016. And the new CEO of Turning Point has yet to criticize Trump for the new mess he started. Just saying.&rdquo;
Dave: Not entirely sure what you&rsquo;re getting at. I cited Charlie Kirk not because he was a perfect embodiment of Ron Paul non-interventionism but because of the respect he commanded and still commands from a wide swath of &ldquo;the right.&rdquo;
As you might know, Kirk offered his approval when Trump bombed Tehran&rsquo;s civilian nuclear sites last June &mdash; on the presumption that it was a &ldquo;one and done&rdquo; thing.
What might he have said about the events of the last 40 days? One wonders &mdash; especially in light of the <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-netanyahu-israel-assassination/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bits</a> and <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2025/09/22/israel-tpusa-donor-terminated-kirk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pieces</a> we&rsquo;ve learned about how he was losing backing and funding in the weeks after the airstrikes and before his murder.

fmf hero 040826

About That Iranian Proposal...

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Artemis and SpaceX
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This really is a &ldquo;best of times, worst of times&rdquo; sort of moment here in early April 2026. Let&rsquo;s start by accentuating the positive&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3g1rab9ErHEqBRHKk1Jfbj/5453607d71aba55ef9cb3a93568dc9e4/FMF-Issue-040226_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
So far, so good for the Artemis II crew&rsquo;s goal to circumavigate the moon &ndash; NASA&rsquo;s first moon mission since 1972.
As noted here yesterday, Elon Musk figured the hours before launch was as good a time as any to file for SpaceX&rsquo;s IPO.
For the moment, SpaceX&rsquo;s financials are still a black box. We won&rsquo;t know more until we get closer to the actual IPO day &ndash; and that day is not yet set in the calendar.
&ldquo;One date I&rsquo;ve heard floated,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech-investing specialist Ray Blanco, &ldquo;is Musk&rsquo;s birthday &ndash; June 28, when he turns 55. Another is earlier in the month, a rare planetary alignment June 8 and 9.&rdquo;
June 9 has the added advantage of indulging Musk&rsquo;s penchant for juvenile humor. 6/9. Get it?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The excitement about SpaceX is palpable &ndash; but how does it stack up as a viable play for retail investors?
The IPO values the company at $1.75 trillion, while SpaceX generates about $15 billion in annual revenue.
&ldquo;Now compare that,&rdquo; says Davis Wilson of our sister e-letter The Million Mission, &ldquo;to some of the other largest companies in the world:
<ul>
<li>Amazon &mdash; $2.3T valuation with $717B in revenue</li>
<li>Meta Platforms &mdash; $1.5T valuation with $201B in revenue</li>
<li>Broadcom &mdash; $1.5T valuation with $68B in revenue</li>
<li>Tesla &mdash; $1.4T valuation with $95B in revenue</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no denying it,&rdquo; says Davis. &ldquo;SpaceX is pricey.&rdquo;
The market data firm PitchBook says the $1.75 trillion valuation is &ldquo;not so crazy &ndash; under certain conditions.&rdquo; PitchBook forecasts SpaceX will generate $150 billion in annual revenue by 2040.
&ldquo;That means SpaceX IPO investors are paying ~12x revenue on numbers 15 years away.&rdquo;
Again, we still don&rsquo;t have SpaceX&rsquo;s financials. &ldquo;But if SpaceX isn't forecasting to hit $150B in revenue until 2040,&rdquo; says Davis...
&ldquo;&hellip;I'm running (not walking) away from this IPO.&rdquo;
[Editor&rsquo;s note: As this e-letter hits your inbox, James Altucher and Ray Blanco have convened an urgent briefing for Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network subscribers. &ldquo;Something is happening with the SpaceX IPO that I don't think most people fully appreciate yet,&rdquo; says James &mdash; &ldquo;and I'm not willing to let it pass without saying something.&rdquo;
If you&rsquo;re a current subscriber and you&rsquo;re missing the live event, watch your inbox later today for a link to the replay and transcript.]
More to come about SpaceX in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, we pivot to the worst of times&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />War&rsquo;s Almost Over (Not)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Well&hellip; your editor&rsquo;s skepticism yesterday about the &ldquo;War&rsquo;s Almost Over&rdquo; narrative has been vindicated.
As you&rsquo;re probably aware, the president drove a stake into the heart of that narrative during his televised speech last night &ndash; begging many questions along the way.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1sWdWFnOHInpjUuo5goxKT/1e637e21e63bd3ab059f8afa2795df9c/FMF-Issue-040226_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The reaction in the oil price was instantaneous. Here&rsquo;s a 24-hour chart of West Texas Intermediate starting at noon EDT yesterday.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6d1ja5R4d2rywOq1pndhxn/db6892bf0ccdc7f386041db0095edf3e/4.2_5_Bullets_Chart.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Stock futures, meanwhile, took an immediate nosedive &ndash; and the S&amp;P 500 tumbled 1.5% on the open at 9:30 a.m. EDT this morning.
Then around an hour later came a headline&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/uy5eNE5tmpxqftcYfyMYL/8b32b4bff06331b6889c0dd7e1d4e97c/FMF-Issue-040226_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
It&rsquo;s Oman that sits on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. In response to the news, the S&amp;P leaped higher &ndash; erasing all of those early losses &ndash; while the oil price pulled back a bit.
Too bad nobody bothered to actually read the statement from Iran&rsquo;s semi-official Tasnim news agency more carefully: &ldquo;An Iranian deputy foreign minister said Tehran and Oman are working toward establishing a joint protocol to ensure safe maritime passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the post-war period&hellip; He noted that Iran is currently in a state of war and that it is unrealistic to expect peacetime rules to apply under such conditions.&rdquo; [Emphasis ours]
At last check, the S&amp;P is down about a quarter-percent on the day. The losses in the Dow and the Nasdaq are a little steeper while the small-cap Russell 2000 is in the green.
As you can see above, the reaction to the Iran-Oman talks was more muted in the oil market: As we get closer to hitting &ldquo;send&rdquo; on today&rsquo;s edition, a barrel of West Texas Intermdiate still fetches just under $111.
Precious metals sold off hard on the president&rsquo;s speech &ndash; gold off $105 on the day at $4,652 and silver down three bucks to $71.85. In the bigger picture, gold is still in conoslidation mode after that hyperbolic move in January.
Bitcoin is back below $67,000 but Ethereum is still comfortably over $2,000.
With the markets closed tomorrow for Good Friday, there&rsquo;s an additional day in which Washington can escalate the conflict and hope that the market reaction come Sunday night and Monday will be more muted than it would be otherwise.
But let&rsquo;s look beyond the next three days and into the next three weeks&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Next Three Weeks
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Wow! That was awful. Was Trump sedated? His monotone, delusional delivery reminded me of the character Dustin Hoffman played in Rainman,&rdquo; writes the former CIA officer Larry Johnson on his blog.
Only Trump&rsquo;s most fervent devotees like Mark Levin and the New York Post editorial board thought it was a good speech. Even partisans like Alex Jones are turning into panicans&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5EVmDTtqrDNzA1DqOrPVEP/5ffde46c860810ce5fe0697fdc3ba96d/FMF-Issue-040226_5_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
&ldquo;Trump plowed no new territory,&rdquo; Johnson continues. &ldquo;Instead, he provided a Reader&rsquo;s Digest summary of his recent Truth Social posts&hellip; i.e., Iran is defeated, the Iranian Navy and Air Force are destroyed, victory is ours, but we&rsquo;re going to bomb the hell out of them over the next three weeks.&rdquo;
In that same time frame, &ldquo;Iran will continue to degrade and demolish the US bases and equipment that is in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.&rdquo;
The president also repeated his previous threat to immiserate everyday Iranians by taking out the country&rsquo;s power grid.
Johnson again: &ldquo;If he does that, along with Israel, Iran will turn off the lights in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait.
&ldquo;Iran&rsquo;s ability to do this is a direct consequence of the depletion of the US air defense systems &mdash; i.e., the Patriot missile batteries and the THAAD. Iran also will retain its choke hold on the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; even if the US decides to put troops on Kharg Island or some other piece of Iranian territory.&rdquo;
This outcome is not yet priced into markets.
Leave aside the news: Just from a chart standpoint, if West Texas Intermediate breaks above $120&hellip; it&rsquo;s blue sky all the way to $160.
➢ By the way, just putting this on the record: The headlines this week about Trump wanting to exit NATO? That&rsquo;s because after Iran, the war hawks have their sights set on Turkey next. (Turkey has belonged to NATO since 1952). Like Iran, Turkey never did anything to threaten Americans in America &ndash; but it does stand in the way of Israel&rsquo;s aim for hegemony in the Middle East.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Great Moments In Advertising
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The government of Scotland has beclowned itself with a new ad campaign promoting bus tours in the Highlands&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7xlQg8mTbj7HfYndMDqFhh/181ccf2d7ec9f218202cf3668db0c1c6/FMF-Issue-040226_6_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The scenery is breathtaking&hellip; wondrous&hellip; and not Scotland.
&ldquo;Eagle-eyed social media users noticed that the road had bright green crash barriers and a green bus - sights which are not familiar in the north of Scotland,&rdquo; reports the BBC.
&ldquo;They suggested it appeared to be the Changbai Mountain area near the border of China and North Korea.
&ldquo;Transport Scotland confirmed that an incorrect image was provided by an external marketing agency and has now been removed from communication packs.&rdquo;
The head of Scotland&rsquo;s leading tourism nonprofit is appalled at how the government threw its ad agency under the (tour) bus. "Blaming a marketing agency is shameless,&rdquo; says Willie Cameron, director of Highland Tourism.
"Why did nobody in the marketing team at Transport Scotland ask where the picture was taken?"
Why indeed. Betcha nobody pays for this with their job&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Wisdom From a Veteran Reader
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After a few days of complaints from newer readers, some of our longer-term customers are chiming in and rising to our defense. To wit&hellip;
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how anyone who is only paying, say, $250, for a financial newsletter can expect specific recommendations that are going to make them a bunch of cash in short order. At that price all I can reasonably expect is general commentary on market trends and some guidance on how generally to invest. Any specific recommendations are icing on the cake.
&ldquo;On the other hand, I expect to pay $1,500 or more for counsel and recommendations that are going to make me real money as a trader.
&ldquo;All that said, I do find your marketing approach (shared by many other newsletter publishers) quite obnoxious. Just tell me up front that you&rsquo;ve got another product to sell that is pricey and not for everybody but could make me a lot of money with a certain strategy or whatever, and I&rsquo;ll decide whether to subject myself to the endless sales pitch. Don&rsquo;t make me sit through endlessly repetitive hype before finally telling me what it is you&rsquo;re selling. I find that manipulative and insulting.
&ldquo;I do appreciate those companies that, after a couple minutes of the video, allow the option for reading a pdf, which I can scan in much less time and see what you&rsquo;re selling much quicker. (I can&rsquo;t recall that you do that.)
&ldquo;But I also understand that your marketing works, as I suppose my many expensive newsletter subscriptions prove! So I know you&rsquo;re not going to change your tactics just because some of us whine about them.
&ldquo;In any case, I do value your work and believe every penny I&rsquo;ve spent with Paradigm is worth it!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thank you for the kind words.
Even our $50-a-year entry-level newsletters offer at least one investment recommendation a month. But as I said earlier this week, the plays have a months-long or even years-long timeframe &ndash; and they&rsquo;re not intended as moonshots. Moonshot plays are limited to the higher-priced advisories.
About our marketing approach: As you concede, it brought you in the door. I can relate &ndash; I was once a customer like you before deciding to make the newsletter industry my second career. (As it happens, today marks the start of my 20th year in the biz.)
As far as I know, we offer transcript options on many, though not all, of our sales presentations. As for their length, it comes back to one of the truisms of direct marketing: &ldquo;The more you tell, the more you sell.&rdquo;
A/B testing has proven it out over time. It held true in the days of printed sales letters sent via the Postal Service &ndash; and, shocking as it might seem, it still holds true in the short-attention-span TikTok era.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Right on point about Jamie Dimon,&rdquo; a reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/wartime-sacrifice">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;Do not need a lecture from a financial federal money bailout boy.&rdquo;
Another reader appreciated your editor dunking on Fed chair Jerome Powell <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/pontius-pilate-powell">the day before</a>. &ldquo;Thanks for calling out Powell as he embarks on his revisionism tour.
&ldquo;I posit that he gets away with it because memory is a vestigial organ in America. Thanks for &lsquo;exercising yours and your readers. (P.S. great comparison to Pontius Pilate in this, the holiest of weeks.)&rdquo;
Dave: Thank you. I had qualms about the subject line &ldquo;Pontius Pilate Powell&rdquo; given the proximity to Easter. I don&rsquo;t mind offending people when it comes to politics now and then &ndash; but religion is another matter!
But I ran it past our VP of Research Aaron Gentlzer, and he was fine with it. And after the issue went out, the subject line won raves from Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring, a cradle Catholic. Can&rsquo;t ask for more validation than that!

FMF-Issue-040226(Featured)

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Wartime Sacrifice
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />This boomer billionaire has an important message for the little people about wartime sacrifice.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7pZoelxQi0xSM9RoIHQLAd/bb9c83cea6b8815778e193b6528f3281/FMF-Issue-040126_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Say this much: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has balls to go with his billions.
He oversees a bank that was <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2015/06/03/the-impunity-of-the-market-riggers/">lavished with bailouts</a> in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis&hellip; <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2021/07/21/economic-warfare-update-pipeline-and-tanker-edition/#315">copped pleas to five federal felony counts</a> between 2014&ndash;2020 (three of them involving market-rigging)&hellip; and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/jpm-epstein-and-the-virgin-islands">conducted business with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein</a> long after supposedly dumping him as a client.
A real model citizen there.
So yes, Mr. Dimon, please tell us in flyover country how we should be grateful for our $4-a-gallon gasoline to transport us to the second and third jobs we need to to make ends meet!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />As it happens, JPM shows up on a new &ldquo;hit list&rdquo; of U.S. corporations supposedly in the crosshairs of Iran&rsquo;s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The IRGC issued a statement yesterday after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes killed a member of the IRGC&rsquo;s general staff. We&rsquo;ve seen a couple of translations. This one seems reliable&hellip;
<blockquote>From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Our repeated warnings about the necessity to stop terrorist operations were ignored, and today, following your terrorist attacks and those of your Israeli allies, several Iranian citizens were martyred.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Since the main element in designing and tracking assassination targets are American ICT [information and communication technology] and AI companies, in response to these crimes, from now on the main and effective institutions involved in terrorist operations will be our legitimate targets.</blockquote>
<blockquote>We advise the employees of these institutions to immediately leave their workplaces to preserve their lives. Also, residents of areas around these terrorist companies in all countries of the region, within a one-kilometer radius, should leave their homes and workplaces and seek safe places.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Companies actively involved in terrorist designs will be subject to retaliatory action for every assassination.</blockquote>
And then came a list of 18 companies. And a deadline&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1unlrxSSDHeh8SkV488GbV/ce9a2aa745fd1b371ef534658d0c3e13/FMF-Issue-040126_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
That deadline translates to 12:30 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast. In other words, it&rsquo;s already passed by the time you&rsquo;re reading this.
&ldquo;We are taking steps to safeguard and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation,&rdquo; said a spokesperson for Intel &mdash; the first company on the list.
CNBC sought comment from every company on the list. JPM declined.
For whatever it&rsquo;s worth, social media is rife with reports of short-dated put options on the companies in question, expiring today.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The &ldquo;War Is Almost Over&rdquo; Rally
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The narrative in corporate media today is that oil is down and stocks are up because the war is almost over.
&ldquo;Stocks are higher to start the month as optimism around Iran war ending grows,&rdquo; says a CNBC notification.
Donald Trump will deliver a big televised speech at 9:00 p.m. EDT tonight. Ahead of the speech he declared once again that Tehran is asking for a ceasefire. Once more, Tehran denies it. (Trump said the ceasefire request came from Iran&rsquo;s &ldquo;new&rdquo; president; Iran has had the same president for nearly two years.)
This much we know for sure: Comparing the enemy with Nazis doesn&rsquo;t seem like the sort of rhetoric you engage in when an end to the conflict is at hand&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/241p4LU06BiUQjTMfjPFz3/a7d71fba2d4d192d6548a01d7e3d6bd5/FMF-Issue-040126_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But hope springs eternal: A barrel of West Texas Intermediate is back under $100, sinking toward $99 in fact.
And the major U.S. stock indexes are solidly in the green once more today &mdash; the S&amp;P 500 up nearly 1% at 6,589. The Dow&rsquo;s gain is a little weaker, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s a little stronger.
&ldquo;We need to watch to see if this recovery is the real deal, or just a short-lived relief rally,&rdquo; says Trading Desk editor Greg Guenthner. &ldquo;Now that we&rsquo;ve seen a sharp move off the lows, we&rsquo;ll need to see continued upside follow through to confirm that this is indeed a significant low.
&ldquo;What does that entail? For starters, I&rsquo;d like to see continued afternoon strength in the averages. We need buyers stepping in during power hour (between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m.) to continue to push stocks higher into the close. Gap-up moves followed by late-day reversals aren&rsquo;t going to cut it &mdash; and could likely lead to more chop. Every day doesn&rsquo;t need to be like yesterday. But in order to build investor confidence again, we can&rsquo;t have a bunch of ugly retracements.&rdquo;
The precious metals rebound is gathering momentum &mdash; gold up another $100 and only $16 away from $4,800, while silver has crested $75.
Crypto is trying to get traction, Bitcoin approaching $69,000 and Ethereum back over $2,100.
The big economic number of the day is the ISM Manufacturing Index: Chalk up three-straight monthly readings over 50, suggesting a growing factory sector. The March number is 52.7 &mdash; better than expected and indeed the strongest performance since August 2022.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />War Disruptions
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The Chinese economy appears better positioned amid the oil supply shock than its global peers,&rdquo; says a new report from Goldman Sachs. Better than the United States, too.
The report says crude oil and liquefied natural gas made up 28% of China&rsquo;s primary energy consumption during 2024 &mdash; &ldquo;one of the lowest in the world.&rdquo; Meanwhile&hellip; nuclear, hydro, wind and solar make up 40% &mdash; up from 26% a decade ago.
What&rsquo;s more, if China&rsquo;s crude imports fell to zero, its crude reserves are good for well over three months of consumption (assuming government reserve figures are accurate).
Put it all together and Goldman&rsquo;s economists figure the supply shock wlll knock about 0.2 percentage points off China&rsquo;s GDP growth &mdash; compared with 0.4 for the United States.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Once more, the mainstream is playing catch-up on a major theme &mdash; the helium shortage resulting from Iran&rsquo;s selective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
&ldquo;The global supply of helium &mdash; the natural-gas byproduct better known for keeping party balloons aloft &mdash; is being squeezed by a halt in natural-gas exports from Qatar, the source of about a third of the world&rsquo;s total,&rdquo; The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Gee, you don&rsquo;t say: Paradigm natural resource pro Matt Badiali <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute">tipped us off here in </a><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute">5 Bullets</a> almost two weeks earlier &mdash; including the impact on everything from semiconductors to MRI scanners.
There is one tidbit in the Journal article that advances the story: Helium has a limited shelf life. Because stored liquid helium absorbs heat, it eventually turns back into gas and can escape its containers. That process starts between 35&ndash;48 days after helium goes into liquid storage.
Clock&rsquo;s ticking&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Artemis, SpaceX and a Slew of Space ETFs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We desperately need something fun and celebratory. Fortunately, as an 8-year-old Floridian tells the BBC, &ldquo;People going up to the moon is kind of cool.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5j5psYOProPnELlHh0kHlW/c8d015b0122b3298abecacdd6ea8a6fc/FMF-Issue-040126_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
About 400,000 people will be jamming Florida&rsquo;s Space Coast for NASA&rsquo;s launch attempt of Artemis II this evening at 6:24 p.m. EDT. On a 10-day test flight, four astronauts will aim to fly around the moon and perhaps even travel farther from Earth than anyone has before.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About six hours ahead of the scheduled launch, Elon Musk &mdash; always with a knack for timing &mdash; filed the IPO for SpaceX.
It&rsquo;s one of those &ldquo;confidential&rdquo; IPO filings &mdash; which means we learn about it only because someone tells the media the paperwork has been sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission. That&rsquo;s allowed for &ldquo;emerging growth companies&rdquo; under the JOBS Act of 2012.
Thus, the contents of the filing &mdash; especially the company&rsquo;s financial performance &mdash; won&rsquo;t become public until 15 days before the roadshow in which companies planning to go public try to woo potential investors.
(Although in the case of SpaceX, Musk is looking to have potential investors come to him &mdash; visiting the company&rsquo;s facilities such as its Starbase near Brownsville, Texas.)
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that SpaceX hopes to raise as much as $80 billion with this offering. The company could be valued at $1.25 trillion.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The space buzz is such that &ldquo;three new space ETFs launched last month,&rdquo; says Paradigm tech specialist Ray Blanco.
March 5 brought the launch of MARS by Roundhill. Then came VanEck with an ETF with the ticker JEDI. And finally Tema debuted NASA &mdash; the first space ETF with direct SpaceX exposure.
&ldquo;The ETF product cycle is one of the most reliable institutional confirmation signals in all of finance,&rdquo; Ray says. &ldquo;Fund companies don't build dedicated vehicles around a theme unless the allocator class &mdash; the pension funds, the wealth advisers, the endowments &mdash; has decided the sector is durable enough to justify permanent capital flows.
&ldquo;And the mechanism is self-reinforcing. Every new space ETF becomes a passive bid underneath the stocks in that fund.
&ldquo;Money comes in, managers buy the holdings. It's mechanical. NASA launches with SpaceX as the hook, which pulls in a whole new wave of retail and adviser capital. And those investors discover the public pure plays sitting right underneath &mdash; names that may be still relatively small-cap and thinly traded.
&ldquo;That's a structural supply/demand imbalance in the making. Wall Street isn't debating whether the space economy is real anymore. The machinery is already in motion.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: &ldquo;Just What Did I Pay For?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />We heard from still more readers who want to get a thing or two off their chests, following our mailbag sections yesterday and the day before.
&ldquo;When I signed up for Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence, I thought I was getting some information that would help identify some companies that the investor may want to consider. Instead all I get is someone pitching over a long redundant video that urges me to buy someone else&rsquo;s subscription annually, usually at $1,500.
&ldquo;Unless I am missing something I really don&rsquo;t know what I paid my $250 for.&rdquo;
Dave responds: If all you&rsquo;re getting are sales pitches for our high-end advisories, something is seriously wrong.
For a $250 pro-level subscription to Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence, you should be getting monthly issues complete with at least one investment recommendation (often two or three)&hellip; updates at least twice a week from Jim and his team&hellip; twice-a-month briefings for pro-level subscribers only&hellip; and regular conference calls for pro-level subscribers only.
I&rsquo;m sure there are more benefits &mdash; those are just the ones off the top of my head. If you&rsquo;re missing out on any of those things, please get in touch with our customer care team. <a href="https://paradigmpressgroup.com/contact-us?vid2=f7584bb8d0f8b4ef03ea4a2a79cb9ffebd5601637dfb4b221b21055bfe10aa56fb9565c7166c12ea93687031263ed97489aead8f437e4ddd1cfcbcd5e6a6bb06&amp;utm_campaign=FMF_Issue_01.08.26_&amp;utm_source=Iterable&amp;itbl_templateId=21337652&amp;itbl_campaignId=16396665&amp;utm_medium=Email">Use this web form</a> or call 1-844-731-0984.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And to the reader who accused us of &ldquo;pump and dump&rdquo;... we never engage in such practices.
If you bought a stock recommended in Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network and the share price happens to be down from the time of recommendation, follow the guidance from James and his team.
If they still have conviction in the stock&rsquo;s long-term viability, it will be listed as either a &ldquo;buy&rdquo; or &ldquo;hold&rdquo; on the portfolio page. If they personally hold a position in that stock, we disclose that up-front. More to your point, if they believe it&rsquo;s time to sell, they will tell you first before selling their own position.
That&rsquo;s the policy at all our publications &mdash; because it&rsquo;s the only honest way to do business.

FMF-Issue-040126(Featured)

Wartime Sacrifice

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Pontius Pilate Powell
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Fed chief Jerome Powell has begun his farewell tour by saying everything that happens from here on is NOT. HIS. FAULT.
From the front page of today&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal&hellip;
<blockquote>Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Monday the central bank is inclined to hold rates steady and look past the energy shock from the war in Iran but cautioned that it might not be able to sit on the sidelines if rising prices shift the public&rsquo;s expectations about inflation over time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Powell, speaking to students at Harvard University, laid out the textbook case for patience: Energy disruptions tend to be short-lived, and monetary policy works too slowly to counteract them in real-time. He added a critical caveat, however, by noting how five years of above-target inflation made it harder to assume the public would simply shrug off another round of rising prices.</blockquote>
<blockquote>&ldquo;You can have a series of these supply shocks and that can lead the public generally &mdash; businesses, price setters, households &mdash; to start expecting higher inflation over time. Why wouldn&rsquo;t they?&rdquo; Powell said.</blockquote>
On the one hand, Powell is right. Monetary policy can&rsquo;t offset rising energy prices. It&rsquo;s that old saying about how the Fed can&rsquo;t print barrels of oil.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But c&rsquo;mon. It&rsquo;s plain as day. Powell is using the Iran war as cover to slough off responsibility for every boneheaded decision on his watch for the last eight years &mdash; decisions you&rsquo;re living with right now.
Powell has about six weeks left as Fed chair &mdash; maybe more if there&rsquo;s a struggle in Congress over the nomination of his successor.
Time flies: The narrative surrounding Powell when he ascended to the chairmanship in 2018 was that he&rsquo;d be different from his predecessors.
Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke? They were haunted by the 1930s and the Great Depression &mdash; which is why they printed money to a fare-thee-well and kept short-term interest rates pinned near zero for seven years once the 2008 financial crisis reached critical mass.
You wanted safe, reliable income in T-bills or CDs? Go pound sand they said &mdash; we&rsquo;ve got to do a solid for our cronies on Wall Street.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Powell, we were told, was haunted instead by the inflation of the 1970s. He&rsquo;d be a more responsible steward of monetary policy.
Powell raised short-term interest rates in baby steps for the first several months of his term &mdash; until Wall Street threw a hissy fit at the end of 2018, sending the S&amp;P 500 down 20%.
And that was the end of his first rate-raising cycle. It went down in history as the &ldquo;Powell pivot.&rdquo;
He started cutting rates a few months later. Then he started printing money anew in the fall of 2019 amid a crisis in financial instruments called repos, or repurchase agreements.
Once more the Fed was riding to the rescue &mdash; fixing a crisis made on Wall Street, at the expense of everyday Americans.
Coming barely a decade after the 2008 bank bailouts, there was real potential for a torches-and-pitchforks moment &mdash; <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2022/03/11/countdown-to-cover-up/">until COVID conveniently came along</a>.
The Fed could bail out the system once more &mdash; this time with the excuse of You don&rsquo;t want a financial collapse on top of a pandemic, do you?
The rest of the story follows in Bullet No. 2&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Powell&rsquo;s Inflationary Legacy
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the 2020s, the guy who supposedly was haunted by the 1970s started following the Fed&rsquo;s &rsquo;70s playbook, page by page.
Powell&rsquo;s mad money printing from 2020&ndash;2022 dwarfed anything Yellen and Bernanke had done in the wake of 2008. Here&rsquo;s a chart of the Fed&rsquo;s balance sheet, with both recessions highlighted in the gray bars.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2h787HQfd3A2QYmRvKnS2X/ab6d5db944753e23529a454ae171e626/FMF-Issue-033126-1.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Pressed throughout 2021 about the likelihood that Fed money printing would manifest as consumer price inflation &mdash; as happened in the 1970s &mdash; Powell was nonchalant.
The official inflation rate sailed higher all year &mdash; from 1.7% in February to 6.9% in November. The whole time, the word Powell invoked to describe any inflation was &ldquo;transitory&rdquo; &mdash; right up to the moment he acknowledged to the Senate Banking Committee that it might be time to &ldquo;retire transitory&rdquo; as a descriptor of how the Fed viewed consumer price rises.
To combat the mess he made, Powell embarked on an epic interest rate-raising cycle in 2022 &mdash; the steepest in over 40 years.
Yes, that did have the effect of bringing the inflation rate down from its insane 9.0% peak in mid-2022 to a range between 2.3&ndash;3.0% in the last year.
But all the price increases of 2021&ndash;22? They never reversed. They were locked in permanently.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Worse &mdash; and we can&rsquo;t emphasize this often enough &mdash; once inflation sails past 5%, it takes a decade on average to get back to &ldquo;normal&rdquo; 2% inflation.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/declare-your-independence-from-inflation">The historical evidence is overwhelming.</a> If you&rsquo;re hoping for a return to pre-COVID inflation levels, it probably won&rsquo;t happen until the early 2030s.
But as he saunters off into the sunset, Jay Powell has let it be known: Any inflation you experience from March 2026 onward is strictly a knock-on effect of the war and it&rsquo;s got nothing to do with him. It&rsquo;s just supply shocks fueling people&rsquo;s expectations.
Really, Pontius Pilate&rsquo;s got nothing on Jay Powell. We&rsquo;re washing our hands of this thing! Not our problem! We didn&rsquo;t start the fire!
To be sure, Powell doesn&rsquo;t bear sole responsibility for the price increases that burden you this decade. There&rsquo;s Joe Biden&hellip; Donald Trump&hellip; free-spending congresscritters of both parties&hellip;
But for Powell to point a finger at the war and dodge his share of the blame? Just revolting.
<a id="3"></a>
[Program note: This might not be the first exercise in Powell-bashing you&rsquo;ll see in our publications this week. On the Paradigm internal e-chat yesterday, a handful of us got on a roll. Byron King in particular might have a few choice words&hellip;]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Team Trump&rsquo;s Trial Balloon
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After hitting their highest levels since 2022, oil prices edged downward overnight thanks to a trial balloon someone in the Trump administration floated to The Wall Street Journal.
&nbsp;Back to the paper&rsquo;s front page&hellip;
<blockquote>President Trump told aides he&rsquo;s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran&rsquo;s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.</blockquote>
<blockquote>In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran&rsquo;s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.</blockquote>
Huh. Iran never had much of a navy to begin with. As for its missile stocks, U.S. officials told Reuters this week that it&rsquo;s likely only one-third has been destroyed with certainty. Tehran is launching fewer missiles than at the outset of the war, but they&rsquo;re still hitting valuable and seemingly undefended targets.
But as for the main point, the memo-o-sphere is already weighing in&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6NdfHfj2jarVBLJcpIdbmh/393163fb059ab5b0cb57057f33814d5f/FMF-Issue-033126-2.png.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" />
It&rsquo;s at this point we have to emphasize: Strictly speaking, the strait is not closed. It&rsquo;s a selective blockade. Tehran is letting limited traffic through, especially if it&rsquo;s oil paid for in Chinese yuan instead of U.S. dollars. And Tehran has suggested more traffic might be let through if shippers pay a fee.
All of which contrasts with the fact the strait was freely navigable before Washington and Tel Aviv launched their war.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In any event, the effect of this trial balloon on the oil price was short-lived.
Last night, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate fetched $106. When the Journal published its story online, it instantly plunged to about $101. As we write, it&rsquo;s back above $104.
Meanwhile, stocks are staging an honest-to-goodness rally &mdash; one that will likely stick through day&rsquo;s end, unlike yesterday. At last check, the S&amp;P 500 is up nearly 1.6% to 6,444. The Nasdaq is up 2%, the Dow about 1.25%. Even small caps are sharing in the cheer, the Russell 2000 up about 1.4%.
Gold might have finally broken through the $4,500 barrier that proved to be overhead resistance for about 10 days &mdash; the bid up to $4,619. And silver&rsquo;s roared over 5% higher to $73.71.
No joy for crypto, though &mdash; Bitcoin a little over $67,000 and Ethereum a little under $2,100.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Cost of War Update
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> For the record&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1bmUP9RND5abhYjkrWW9TZ/a7b67199cd37304a8a5cbbf369351699/FMF-Issue-033126-3.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
A month into the war, the Iran War Cost Tracker site pegs the taxpayer cost at nearly $37 billion. That&rsquo;s based on various estimates the Pentagon has informally issued either to Congress or the media &mdash; $11.3 billion the first six days, $1 billion a day after that.
Which reminds us of a peculiar line of argument coming from the administration the last 48 hours&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5xgGX06oQSyvU52XBazyKs/e76304f0b55f1f54687807b70c6f19f9/FMF-Issue-033126-4.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
According to the World Bank, Iran spent about 2% of its GDP on the military during 2024. The United States, 3.4%. Projection much?
It&rsquo;s here we&rsquo;ll remind you the previous round of forever wars in the Middle East, from 2001&ndash;2021, cost $8 trillion. And that&rsquo;s just the direct monetary cost. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/usd1-5-trillion">The prosperity we gave up along the way? And the costs to our freedoms? Incalculable</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Sympathy Pangs
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Yesterday&rsquo;s mailbag section brought pangs of sympathy from one reader.
&ldquo;I feel like the retiree waiting for the ticker so she has a chance to push up that $1,000 nest egg. That&rsquo;s the whole idea. Is it Dave's prerogative to determine that she should be a more conservative trader?
&ldquo;One listens to these long videos with the hope you are giving a tidbit and only get this redundant over-and-over long, drawn-out video that ends with buy something.
&ldquo;I don't remember this when I signed up with Rickards. This group has changed &mdash; not sure for the better.&rdquo;
Dave responds: I hear your frustration. Let me approach this from a different angle &mdash; because looking from the inside, I&rsquo;m not sure what&rsquo;s changed. Our MO has been the same for the nearly two decades I&rsquo;ve worked with Paradigm Press and its predecessor firms.
The entry-level publications &mdash; Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence, Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network &mdash; are where the editors usually spotlight companies with larger market caps and a risk profile that&rsquo;s suitable for someone with limited capital. The recommended hold time is usually months if not years.
The premium publications &mdash; such as Rickards&rsquo; Insider Intel or Altucher&rsquo;s True Alpha &mdash; frequently entail either options or microcap stocks. The profit potential is greater, usually much greater. The time frame in which those profits could materialize is shorter, sometimes much shorter.
But much bigger profits in a much shorter time frame inevitably involves a greater level of risk.
In the case of our current campaign for Microcap Millionaire&hellip; it would be the height of irresponsibility for us to recommend a company this size to over 200,000 Altucher&rsquo;s Investment Network readers. Doing so would artificially pump up the share price &mdash; only to have it sink back to Earth in short order.
Again&hellip; the idea is that you have a good experience with an entry-level newsletter, racking up gains that then allow you to step up to a higher level of service, amplifying and accelerating those gains. That&rsquo;s how we get happy long-term customers. Win-win!

FMF-Issue-033126-Featured

Pontius Pilate Powell

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Diminishing Returns
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Ummm&hellip; Cause and effect?
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3gHOk2CyzKtWZbOl63RKMO/2ba30d8e8803ab32b19f90de8338d260/FMF-Issue-032726_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5M0bLvxhg0zfOh1hPjPEsx/b54ea2a3c86686f783492d6b575e11b5/FMF-Issue-032726_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Shortly after the market closed yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform: &ldquo;As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant Destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time.&rdquo; He said talks are &ldquo;ongoing&rdquo; and &ldquo;going very well.&rdquo;
So here&rsquo;s a pithy summary of how the situation has evolved since Trump&rsquo;s initial announcement last Saturday&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/14yRBM4u3US5MyGlzFoGxq/8964493649bb5c2fd98b252e8125ac3e/FMF-Issue-032726_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
It&rsquo;s been hard to keep up, no doubt. Recent days have brought a whole new meaning to the term &ldquo;headline-driven market&rdquo;&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4QuWWIVGO12v1WirPnlXqn/41d39c405c065f8fc0a33f79c60b8d78/FMF-Issue-032726_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
We&rsquo;ll get to today&rsquo;s follow-on action in stocks momentarily. But what about oil?
If the president&rsquo;s objective is to once more talk down the oil price, yesterday afternoon&rsquo;s announcement didn&rsquo;t work.
A wag on X going by the handle &ldquo;professional hog groomer&rdquo; put together the following chart of West Texas Intermediate this month, annotated with Trump Truth Social posts. (Click to enlarge&hellip;)
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/mBOm6lY8ICdlmi8hOnNho/8f13d80144d47839200094664a7538d7/FMF-Issue-032726_Enlarged_.jpg" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" /> <a href="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/enlarged-images/FMF-Issue-032726(Enlarged).jpg">Click here to Expand</a>
Diminishing returns, for sure.
Checking our screens, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up over three bucks on the day at $97.78 &mdash; the highest since the president&rsquo;s post about &ldquo;productive conversations&rdquo; with Iran on Monday.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And while oil is rising, stocks are falling &mdash; again, presumably not the intended result.
Yesterday the S&amp;P 500 cracked below the 6,500 level that had been a floor going back more than six months &mdash; closing at 6,477. At last check, it&rsquo;s down another three-quarters of a percent to 6,426.
For the moment, the S&amp;P and the Nasdaq Composite have avoided entering &ldquo;correction&rdquo; territory &mdash; a 10% drop from their most recent peak. Not so, however, for the more concentrated Nasdaq-100 and the Dow. And the small-cap Russell 2000 crossed that barrier a week ago.
Still&hellip; opportunity is there to be found. This morning, readers of The Situation Report booked 72% gains playing call options on the chemical firm Olin Corp. And Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence booked 30% gains on the energy name APA Corp.
The big economic number of the day is consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan. It sank big-time from 56.6 in February to 53.3 in March &mdash; a bigger drop than Wall Street economists were expecting.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Also not reacting the way the president would like &mdash; the bond market.
The financial corners of social media are chockablock with observations that each of Trump&rsquo;s adjusted Iran deadlines coincided with the yield on a 10-year Treasury note rising to 4.4%.
But while the yield pulled back after Monday&rsquo;s &ldquo;productive conversations&rdquo; announcement, that wasn&rsquo;t the reaction this time. The yield popped to nearly 4.5% this morning &mdash; although it&rsquo;s since pulled back to 4.4% on the nose.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In a welcome reversal for precious metals bulls, gold and silver are rallying strong to end the week.
Gold is up over $150 or 3.5% &mdash; back over $4,500. And silver has rallied over three bucks, nearly 5%, to back over $71.
Still, gold was at $5,200 four weeks ago today, just before the first U.S.-Israeli airstrikes.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The declining price of gold and some gold sales by some central banks do not tell you much about gold,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards.
&ldquo;What it says is that there is a global dollar shortage underway. The world needs dollars to pay for much higher priced energy and to cover losses and margin calls arising from the private credit crisis. In addition, stocks are declining sharply, which gives rise to margin calls for leveraged positions.
&ldquo;In short, the whole world wants cash.
&ldquo;When you want cash and you don't have it, you have to sell something to get it. The two most liquid assets are gold and Treasury notes and bills. You see gold being sold (lower gold prices) and Treasuries being sold (higher interest rates) to raise cash to cover the dollar shortage.
&ldquo;There's hard evidence for this in the fact that bank dealers are increasing reverse repurchase agreements (meaning they're lending cash to needy borrowers in exchange for Treasury note collateral) and the TIC report, which shows foreign sovereign holdings of Treasuries in decline.
&ldquo;Or, as Tom Cruise would say, &lsquo;Show me the money!&rsquo;
&ldquo;This will get much worse, although I expect gold to find a bottom in the coming days.&rdquo;
➢ Lest we overlook it, crypto is moving in the opposite direction from precious metals. Bitcoin is in danger of breaking below $66,000 for the first time in nearly a month. And Ethereum has cracked beneath $2,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Other Notes From the War
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Washington Post is confirming something we first told you over two weeks ago.
&ldquo;The U.S. military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in four weeks of war with Iran, burning through the precision weapons at a rate that has alarmed some Pentagon officials and prompted internal discussions about how to make more available, said people familiar with the matter.&rdquo;
Back on March 10, Jim Rickards warned in this space: &ldquo;The U.S. and Israel are running low on offensive and defensive bombs and missiles.
&ldquo;This is the result of the massive bombing attacks on Iran, the need to fire thousands of anti-missiles to shoot down thousands of incoming drones and missiles, the fact that the U.S. has allowed its military industrial capacity to atrophy and the large number of weapons wasted in Ukraine.
&ldquo;U.S. industrial output of 800 cruise missiles per year cannot keep up with Israel and the U.S. launching 100 per week. Ships need to reprovision. Repairs cannot be neglected. Diego Garcia is days away from the battlespace. The U.S. will be badly stretched.&rdquo;
The Post article says Tomahawks cost $3.6 million each.
Hmmm&hellip; A generation ago when Bill Clinton was firing his &ldquo;Monica missiles,&rdquo; Tomahawks cost $1.2 million. Even if you adjust for inflation, the cost to the taxpayer should have &ldquo;only&rdquo; doubled by now &mdash; not tripled.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Iran&rsquo;s oil exports have not collapsed and are fetching much higher prices than before the war,&rdquo; says a report from the OilPrice website.
Iran now has sole access to the Strait of Hormuz. Thus, its volume of crude exports is steady &mdash; and it&rsquo;s collecting a higher price.
Per Bloomberg calculations, Iran has earned $139 million a day so far in March &mdash; up from $115 million in February.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The War Enters Week Five Tomorrow
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> If Mr. Market isn&rsquo;t buying the president&rsquo;s latest pronouncement, maybe that&rsquo;s because of what&rsquo;s become a familiar pattern &mdash; big U.S. military action while the market is closed Friday night and Saturday, so that the market reaction is muted come Sunday night and Monday.
Sure enough&hellip; &ldquo;The Pentagon is developing military options for a &lsquo;final blow&rsquo; in Iran that could include the use of ground forces and a massive bombing campaign,&rdquo; says a new dispatch from Axios reporter (and former Israeli intelligence officer) Barak Ravid.
The possibilities include an invasion or blockade of Kharg Island, Iran&rsquo;s main oil export hub. (This is the third Friday we&rsquo;ve had to bring up Kharg Island, just in case something goes down over the weekend.)
Ravid&rsquo;s report doesn&rsquo;t put a timeline on things. But as we mentioned earlier this week, Trump is skipping out on a previous engagement scheduled for tonight &mdash; a charity fundraiser in Palm Beach. He&rsquo;s also missing the CPAC gathering in Dallas for the first time in a decade.
At the same time, the usual suspects who&rsquo;d been braying for this war since the start of Trump&rsquo;s second term are now pulling the ol&rsquo; bait-and-switch.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5gxn0bzUmtZdWt67rL1AZE/7fed0f4bb37549a06d7579221bd6c80f/FMF-Issue-032726_6_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The Strait of Hormuz was free before Washington and Tel Aviv launched this war &mdash; but why quibble over details?
By the way, at age 42 Ben Shapiro is now eligible to serve under the U.S. Army&rsquo;s recruiting rules that were relaxed this week &mdash; up from the previous age limit of 35. Just sayin&rsquo;...
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />No Internet, No Funds
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It seems Russians are starting to revert to a world without digital payments &mdash; or, for that matter, the internet.
We worry about such things in this space now and then &mdash; internet shutdowns by governments, which have the effect of shutting down most non-cash payments.
<a href="https://5minforecast.com/2023/03/07/shock-therapy-total-surveillance/">India has been in the vanguard for the last decade</a> &mdash; but we haven&rsquo;t forgotten what the late Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) once said: &ldquo;Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.&rdquo;
Which brings us to current events in Russia. From a report by the Singaporean outlet SBS News&hellip;
<blockquote>Pagers, walkie-talkies and portable radios have reportedly been flying off the shelves of Moscow after the city's roughly 13 million residents were hit with week-long internet disruptions, which some believe could be part of the Kremlin's trial of a nationwide internet censorship system.</blockquote>
<blockquote>The blackout, which was first reported on 5 March, occurred initially in some out suburbs in the capital, Moscow, before later spreading through the city's downtown areas.</blockquote>
<blockquote>During the disruption, many foreign websites were blocked on mobile phones, while online government services, top banks and taxi apps also stopped working.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Russian media outlet Kommersant estimated that a five-day shutdown cost the city's businesses between $54 million and $89 million.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Shutdowns were also later reported in Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city.</blockquote>
It appears that broadband access has been unaffected so far &mdash; just mobile. Thing is, many service businesses rely on the wireless network to process card and digital payments. So they were out of luck.
For the same reason, many parking meters were disabled &mdash; and even ATMs. (Want cash to circumvent the outage? Too bad&hellip;) Of course, ride-sharing apps were disabled and folks reverted to hailing taxis.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Russian authorities are justifying the shutdowns on the grounds that they need to disable incoming drone attacks from Ukraine. But everyday Russians suspect more sinister motives.
The article continues: &ldquo;There have been reports the mobile internet blackout has come as Russia tests a so-called &lsquo;whitelist&rsquo; system, which would permit access to government-approved websites, apps and services. Moscow officials have reportedly said previously it would include &lsquo;all resources needed for life.&rsquo;
&ldquo;But many observers expect such a system could cost Russians access to the global internet.&rdquo;
No wonder walkie-talkies and portable radios are in demand now.
Oh, road maps too&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Toilet Paper Shortages
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Geez, this has been a heavy edition of 5 Bullets, especially for a Friday. Let&rsquo;s try to inject some levity before we go.
Our closing bullet in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/elon-musks-very-busy-week">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> about toilet paper hoarding in Japan &mdash; and our recollection of a similar episode in this country during the 1970s &mdash; brought forth this comment from a longtime reader&hellip;
&ldquo;OMG! I've just returned from Costco with three cases of TP! The market might not be treating me well, BUT I've got TP!!!
&ldquo;I remember Covid. I also remember the oil embargo in the &rsquo;70s&hellip; LOL! Have a good weekend.&rdquo;
Another reader was more reflective about supply chain snags &mdash; but I&rsquo;m pretty sure he was also invoking the toilet paper thing&hellip;
&ldquo;We Americans are such an insular, uninformed and miseducated bunch. We are conditioned to just consume knowing not the source of our food or products.
&ldquo;At least your readers will know why they&rsquo;re rubbing their backsides as the blowback from this boondoggle washes ashore.
&ldquo;Thanking you and the Paradigm team for all you do to inform, enlighten and educate macro-wise.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Thanking you likewise &mdash; and all of our readers &mdash; for your patronage and trust.

April 6 Desk Calendar and Classic White Clock on Green Background. 

FMF-Issue-032726(6)

Trump’s 10-Day Deadline

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Elon Musk&rsquo;s Very Busy Week
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s been a busy few days for Elon Musk. In no particular order, the following things have taken place&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Musk offered to pay TSA workers for the duration of the current dispute between the White House and Congress over Homeland Security funding. The White House said no &mdash; in part because SpaceX&rsquo;s status as a federal contractor might lead to someone challenging the arrangement in court</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Musk is demanding a judge in Delaware step aside from a shareholder lawsuit against Tesla &mdash; claiming the judge &ldquo;supported&rdquo; a post on LinkedIn that poked fun at him</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>After OpenAI announced it&rsquo;s junking its Sora video-creation platform, Musk said he&rsquo;s &ldquo;doubling down&rdquo; on video at xAI. &rdquo;The next Grok Imagine release will be epic.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
Oh, and yesterday Musk very publicly shot down a plan announced by one of his top lieutenants at X &mdash; aimed at cutting cut off the revenue flow for overseas users who are constantly s***posting about U.S. politics for clicks.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4pRwXMrA0C0Fp0N0FLKVlG/1f029d52e0fe03f94392ae75024df5af/FMF-Issue-032626-1.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Also yesterday, Tesla dropped a new video about its Optimus robot &mdash; aimed mostly at attracting more tech talent to work on the project ahead of mass production this summer.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/577aT2HnKrjTzwOawYQTdp/0678e845ad405ff7e9aad56072edf017/FMF-Issue-032626-2.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
"We are getting very close to the human functionality and form factor," says a current employee in the video. Tesla released postings for over 100 Optimus-adjacent jobs.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And none of this even accounts for SpaceX&rsquo;s pending IPO.
As mentioned here yesterday, the firm might file its IPO prospectus as early as this week &mdash; what&rsquo;s shaping up to be the biggest IPO in history. Smaller space-oriented firms that are already publicly traded basked in the glow &mdash; Firefly Aerospace and Rocket Lab both rising over 10%.
&ldquo;The SpaceX IPO will tell the world this is a trillion-dollar market,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s tech investing specialist Ray Blanco &mdash; in attendance this week at the Satellite 2026 conference in Washington, D.C. And not just the obvious applications. &ldquo;Everyone is planning on space compute and space data centers.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;Irrational Optimism&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Irrational optimism&rdquo; is the word of the day at CERAWeek &mdash; an annual gathering of the oil industry&rsquo;s movers and shakers in Houston. So says Karim Fawaz, an analyst with S&amp;P Global.
As Fawaz sees it, Donald Trump&rsquo;s jawboning about the progress of the war is doing an effective job of keeping a lid on the oil price.
Yesterday was a case in point, with Trump&rsquo;s remarks about Iranian leaders being ready to talk. A barrel of West Texas Intermediate tumbled 2% to $90.48 &mdash; even though word was already arriving from Tehran that the mullahs rejected a 15-point ceasefire proposal from Washington.
Writing on X, Fawaz chalks it up to normalcy bias &mdash; and dread. &ldquo;The alternative is so daunting to think about, with consequences so grave, that many are choosing optimism even without a solid foundation.&rdquo;
But now, with the president telling Tehran to &ldquo;get serious soon, before it is too late,&rdquo; crude is up nearly four bucks today to $94.28.
The action in crude both yesterday and today is mirrored in the major U.S. stock indexes: At last check the S&amp;P 500 has given up all of yesterday&rsquo;s gains and then some, down more than three-quarters of a percent to 6,539. The Dow&rsquo;s losses are more modest, the Nasdaq&rsquo;s steeper.
Too, with the war now about to enter its fifth week, Mr. Market might be tumbling to the phenomenon we&rsquo;ve cited regularly, captured by the remark of a cynic on X we cited Tuesday: &ldquo;The pattern is consistent: escalate on Fridays [in the evening] when energy markets are shut, pivot to dovish talk on Mondays to carry the market through the week.&rdquo;
Precious metals, you ask? Not pretty &mdash; gold down 1.5% to $4,437 and silver getting clobbered 4%, now $68.26. The floor on gold is $4,100 &mdash; a level last seen in November and tested briefly on Monday.
Crypto is stuck in the mud, Bitcoin just under $69,000 and Ethereum at $2,067.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Lest we forget, jitters remain in the bond market.
On the heels of a lousy auction of 2-year Treasury notes Tuesday, the government auctioned 5-year notes yesterday. Once again, demand was tepid at best &mdash; pushing the yield up to 3.98%.
Checking the benchmark 10-year Treasury, it&rsquo;s approaching 4.39% &mdash; once again testing highs that go back to last summer. Uncle Sam&rsquo;s borrowing costs are going nowhere but up.
That said, there&rsquo;s no panic in the bond market. The MOVE Index &mdash; a measure of volatility for bonds similar to the VIX for stocks &mdash; sits at 97.6. Real panic doesn&rsquo;t set in until the MOVE approaches 140.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gas Pains
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> While oil gets all the headlines, we can&rsquo;t overlook the disruption to the market for liquefied natural gas.
&ldquo;The closure of the Persian Gulf cuts off about 20% of global LNG exports,&rdquo; says Paradigm macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards. &ldquo;Producers in the Gulf including Iraq, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait have run out of storage capacity and are now slashing production. Saudi Arabia has closed the Safaniya, Zuluf and Abu Safa oil fields because of Iranian drone attacks.
&ldquo;Kuwait&rsquo;s Mina Al-Ahmadi oil refinery, which processes 730,000 barrels of oil per day, has been struck by Iranian missiles several days in a row. Saudi Arabia&rsquo;s giant Ras Tanura refinery complex, which handles 550,000 barrels per day, has also come under attack.
&ldquo;The damage to Qatar&rsquo;s Ras Laffan LNG export facilities from Iranian missiles and drones is so extensive that 20% of its capacity may be offline for years. Ras Laffan produces 20% of the world&rsquo;s LNG. The war is not over and the damage may get worse before the war ends.
&ldquo;This is not a marginal impact. The global price of LNG has already risen over 60% since the war began and may double from that base level in the days ahead. The world may soon reach a point where no LNG is available at any price because it has all been purchased by desperate users.&rdquo;
Yes, as we said earlier this month, American producers of LNG stand to benefit big-time.
Jim recommended call options on one of them yesterday for readers of his premium advisory Insider Intel.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Free Speech Victory (Such As It Is)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Chalk up a modest victory in the battle against internet censorship and the feds&rsquo; attempts to strong-arm the tech giants.
&ldquo;The Justice Department has settled a lawsuit over allegations that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to remove or suppress speech,&rdquo; reports The Hill.
We should back up a bit: In the summer of 2024 the Supreme Court decided a case called Murthy v. Missouri. Several of the plaintiffs were physicians who dissented from the conventional wisdom about COVID &mdash; and who got hushed up by the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
They sued the feds &mdash; presenting a compelling case that those companies acted under government pressure. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/supreme-cowards">But in a depressing 6-3 ruling we chronicled at the time</a>, the high court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked &ldquo;standing.&rdquo; That is, there was no smoking-gun email that said, Take down this exact individual&rsquo;s post or else.
However, the ruling didn&rsquo;t dismiss the case altogether; it only denied the plaintiffs from getting a preliminary injunction against the feds while the lawsuit itself was being decided. The case was then sent back to lower courts.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This week, the Justice Department reached a settlement with the plaintiffs&rsquo; lawyers that brings the case to a close.
&ldquo;It was a victory, even if we did not get everything we wanted in the settlement,&rdquo; says one of the plaintiffs &mdash; Aaron Kheriaty, a former psychiatry professor at the University of California Irvine.
As he writes on his Substack page&hellip;
<blockquote>&hellip; the settlement prohibits the U.S. Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from threatening social media companies into removing or suppressing constitutionally protected speech on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and YouTube. It also bars these government authorities from directing or vetoing the companies&rsquo; social media content moderation choices.</blockquote>
The disturbing documents uncovered during Murthy v. Missouri revealed the existence of a pervasive &ldquo;censorship industrial complex&rdquo; &mdash; a central theme in our annual censorship issues of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-censorship-industrial-complex">2023</a> and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/todays-5-bullets-is-packed-with-misinformation">2024</a>.
Of course, there&rsquo;s a new administration in charge now. But as we chronicled in our 2025 censorship issue, the threat to free expression remains. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/deport-tucker-carlson">It&rsquo;s just taking a different form</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Japan&rsquo;s TP Scare (and a &rsquo;70s Flashback)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is causing all manner of supply-chain disruptions in Japan &mdash; but a toilet paper shortage is not one of them.
About three-quarters of the country&rsquo;s oil supply transits the strait. The cutoff of supply is definitely going to bite &mdash; but by and large the trouble does not extend beyond petroleum-dependent products.
No matter: There are scattered reports about runs on toilet paper, prompting the country&rsquo;s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to post the following on social media&hellip;
<blockquote>Regarding the distribution of toilet paper in light of the situation in Iran and other matters, toilet paper is almost entirely produced domestically. The raw materials are domestically collected recycled paper and pulp, with almost no dependence on the Middle East, so there will be no direct impact. There is also sufficient capacity to increase production, so we ask that you use sound judgment based on accurate information before buying any.</blockquote>
Then again, the SoraNews24 site informs us that fear of TP shortages is more or less ingrained into the collective Japanese psyche &mdash; thanks in part to what happened during the oil shock of 1973, when Japan was among the countries embargoed by Arab oil producers.
As a goodwill gesture to customers strapped by rising prices, a supermarket in Osaka put toilet paper on sale &mdash; marked down 31% from the regular price. TP flew off the shelves as a result. The article goes on&hellip;
<blockquote>The spectacle of so many people buying toilet paper at once caught the attention of the media. However, by the time a Mainichi Shimbun reporter came down to check it out, they only saw the regularly priced paper on the shelves. As such, they reported it as if people were hoarding toilet paper merely as a result of the oil crisis rather than just pouncing on a really good price. </blockquote>
And thus began a wave of panic buying &mdash; not just of toilet paper but also salt, detergent, feminine hygiene products...
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &hellip; and the story doesn&rsquo;t end there. The panic spread to the United States &mdash; decades before the COVID TP fright of 2020.
It originated with a congressmember from a timber-intensive part of Wisconsin, Harold Froehlich. Based on some government contracting documents he encountered, he warned that &ldquo;the U.S. may face a serious shortage of toilet paper within a few months.&rdquo;
That by itself wasn&rsquo;t enough to inspire panic buying. The problem was when Froehlich&rsquo;s remark became fodder for Johnny Carson&rsquo;s monologue one night on The Tonight Show. (You have to be of a certain age to get a couple of the references&hellip;)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K9-Lz0SbrA"><img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1dgTIJJx4SIHXNkGeoFjoo/1b40606f1827af08d806491b8fe32ab5/FMF-Issue-032626-3.jpg" alt="Click here to learn more" width="540px" /></a>
The hoarding was severe enough that at least one manufacturer &mdash; Scott &mdash; had to ration its wholesale shipments to retailers. Supply was no problem &mdash; only demand.
In time, Carson felt compelled to apologize on-air. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare.&rdquo;
At least nothing of the sort is happening here again. Well, not yet&hellip;

FMF-Issue-032626-Featured

Elon Musk’s Very Busy Week

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />It&rsquo;s Not Just Oil That&rsquo;s Messed Up
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;What comes out of the Persian Gulf is more than oil,&rdquo; Jim Rickards wrote this week to his Strategic Intelligence readers.
We hit on this fact on Day 10 of the war. Now at Day 26 it merits our attention once more.
&ldquo;About 20% of the world&rsquo;s liquid natural gas (LNG) comes from the region,&rdquo; Jim says. &ldquo;It is also a major source of synthetic nitrates used as fertilizer &mdash; an input that is indispensable to farmers in developing economies like India and Brazil. Without nitrogen fertilizers for the coming planting season, hundreds of millions of people may face severe food shortages.&rdquo;
And while famine might not hit the United States, Americans will still feel the impact.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4pQwin4lbuvT9PaeGT8rlA/aff576b14e22c8eaa443feb659ac511e/FMF-Issue-032526-1.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Oil itself is about more than gasoline,&rdquo; Jim adds.
&ldquo;In refined form, it produces jet fuel (kerosene), diesel fuel (for trucks, trains and heavy equipment) and a wide range of distillates used in plastics, lubricants and industrial processes. Natural gas is used in some vehicles, but primarily for home heating and electricity generation.
&ldquo;When you look at gas prices &mdash; up roughly 33% in the past month for regular grade &mdash; the inflationary impact of higher oil prices is obvious. But the effect extends far beyond the pump. Everything you buy is transported by truck, train, plane or ship, all of which depend on oil distillates or electricity generated largely from natural gas.
&ldquo;In short, higher energy prices mean higher prices for nearly everything.&rdquo;
Diesel prices are now over $5 a gallon &mdash; up 44% since January.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Markets still expect the war to be resolved quickly, with a return to normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Neither expectation is realistic,&rdquo; Jim goes on.
The &ldquo;productive conversations&rdquo; the president mentioned on Monday that moved markets?
According to Iran&rsquo;s semi-official news agency Fars, Tehran formally rejected a 15-point ceasefire proposal from Washington this morning&hellip; and said any talks at this time would be &ldquo;illogical.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6GWyZSSaGEiB69AmuSuVxu/30cfac252ad348bcf1f26ff49ffdf095/FMF-Issue-032526-2.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains shuttered, the worse the trouble becomes.
&ldquo;Shortages would emerge not only in crude oil but also in refined products,&rdquo; Jim says. &ldquo;And restarting production is not as simple as flipping a switch. It can take weeks to restore output, and prolonged shutdowns risk permanent damage to well pressure and flow rates.
&ldquo;The situation in LNG may be worse. Damage to Qatar&rsquo;s Ras Laffan export facilities from Iranian strikes could leave a significant portion of capacity offline for years. Ras Laffan alone accounts for about 20% of global LNG supply.
&ldquo;Investors may be bracing for higher prices. What they are not fully accounting for are outright shortages, industrial shutdowns, long-term infrastructure damage and breakdowns in the systems that support global energy markets.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Markets Today: Oil Retreats, Bonds Stressed
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Stocks are rallying, oil is falling&hellip; and the mainstream has settled on a narrative that U.S.-Iran negotiations are nigh, despite what you read in Bullet No. 1.
Really, the action isn&rsquo;t that dramatic. The S&amp;P 500 is up a half percent, approaching 6,600. The gains in the Dow and Nasdaq are a bit stronger.
Meanwhile a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is down 2% to $90.48 &mdash; even as certain Middle East grades are trading for $170 and higher. True, there&rsquo;s a &ldquo;war premium&rdquo; on those grades&hellip; but an $80 premium continues to be beyond the pale for many observers on social media.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3jNfgmFiVm853RvdZHGid3/2685fd6c45565f72aa8c19a0d7135028/FMF-Issue-032526-3.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
An additional constraint on global oil supply: According to new calculations by the Reuters newswire, at least 40% of Russia&rsquo;s crude export capacity is offline &ldquo;following Ukrainian drone attacks, a disputed attack on a major pipeline and the seizure of tankers.&rdquo;
Precious metals are back on the rally tracks &mdash; gold up nearly $80 to $4,552 and silver up $1.37 to $72.48. Crypto remains range-bound, Bitcoin still over $71,000 and Ethereum just under $2,200.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Meanwhile, there&rsquo;s trouble brewing in the bond market.
The U.S. Treasury auctioned a batch of 2-year notes yesterday. It went &ldquo;miserably,&rdquo; to use the words of a strategist at Capitol Securities Management.
&ldquo;Reports of Pentagon plans to deploy roughly 3,000 soldiers from the Army&rsquo;s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East were blamed Tuesday for a weak $69 billion sale of 2-year Treasury notes,&rdquo; says MarketWatch.
&ldquo;Typically, 2-year auctions go largely unnoticed beyond the dealers and buyers involved in the roughly $30 trillion Treasury market. It&rsquo;s often a place where safe-haven seekers and corporations can park cash for a while and earn a bit of yield. The auction starts and buyers line up.&rdquo;
Not yesterday. Weak demand translates to rising rates&hellip; and the 2-year yield soared 0.096 percentage points to 3.926% &mdash; the highest in nearly eight months.
The stress spilled over into the benchmark 10-year note, where yields jumped back over 4.4%.
For the moment, that stress is receding, the 10-year back under 4.32%. All eyes now are on an auction of 5-year notes this afternoon&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />SpaceX Makes Waves, a Competitor Makes Moves
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Just as happened during SpaceCom in Orlando in January&hellip; major SpaceX news is breaking during this week&rsquo;s Satellite 2026 gathering in Washington, D.C.
Back then it was SpaceX&rsquo;s merger with another Elon Musk company, xAI. Now Bloomberg and Reuters report that SpaceX is looking to file its IPO prospectus as early as this week.
&ldquo;I'm watching it break in real-time, surrounded by the people building the industry it's about to put a price tag on,&rdquo; says our Ray Blanco from the convention floor.
&ldquo;The market is about to officially value space-based connectivity at over a trillion dollars. And I've spent the last two days on the ground with the companies riding that same wave.&rdquo;
Ray met up with the guy building the biggest rival to SpaceX&rsquo;s Starlink satellite venture &mdash; Scott Wisniewski, president and chief strategy officer at AST SpaceMobile (ASTS).
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/26plZREVJzslHKjGXfm3qb/6258b8fd5efe533f403015375cec78c3/ALN-ALert-032526_1_.jpg" alt="pub" width="540px" /> And Ray (on the right) has the photo to prove it&hellip;
&ldquo;While every headline was about SpaceX, I was standing on the exhibit floor with the man running commercialization for the company I believe will dominate direct-to-device connectivity from space,&rdquo; Ray writes on the Paradigm mobile app.
As Ray said in yesterday&rsquo;s edition, ASTS has the advantage of existing partnerships with all the major wireless providers. What&rsquo;s more, it has the technology enabling you to make satellite calls using the phone you already have in your pocket.
The company&rsquo;s next big step is the BlueBird 7 satellite launch just five days from now aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. By year-end, as many as 60 similar satellites will be in orbit.
&ldquo;The SpaceX IPO tells the world space connectivity is a trillion-dollar market. I agree. ASTS is how I'm playing it.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />OpenAI: The Real Story About Sora
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The big story in AI today is not what the media are making it out to be.
OpenAI, the privately held company behind ChatGPT, has shut down its AI video-making platform called Sora.
Sora burst on the scene less than two years ago &mdash; wowing users with its ability to make realistic-looking videos that were once the province of Hollywood studios with sophisticated CGI capabilities.
From the get-go, copyright was an issue: Users were pilfering existing videos and using Sora to edit, remix and otherwise modify them. The furor was such that in December, OpenAI struck a $1 billion content partnership with Disney &mdash; under which ChatGPT users got access to Disney and Marvel characters to create their own AI-generated images and videos.
So much for all that: Less than four months later, Sora is toast and OpenAI will wind down the DIS partnership.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> But the real story is where OpenAI says it&rsquo;s directing its resources instead.
The money and brainpower that the company was dumping into Sora? It&rsquo;s being diverted to the two things that Paradigm&rsquo;s experts have said mark the new frontier in AI &mdash; robotics and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/when-ai-does-your-grunt-work">AI agents</a>.
Or as OpenAI said in a statement to the BBC, it&rsquo;s focusing on endeavors &ldquo;that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks.&rdquo;
With this shift, OpenAI is acknowledging there are limits on available capital, on computing power and on energy. Scarce resources have to be devoted to efforts that will enhance productivity &mdash; rather than time-sucks like a video of SpongeBob running away from the cops.
By the way, you can still use ChatGPT to make still images. That doesn&rsquo;t soak up nearly as much computing power or energy.
➢ Meanwhile, Disney probably isn&rsquo;t out any money. The $1 billion DIS was going to &ldquo;invest&rdquo; in OpenAI? As Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta told us at the time of the announcement in December, OpenAI was paying DIS not in cash but with warrants to buy OpenAI stock. &ldquo;Those are likely well in the money and Disney would only put the $1 billion investment in IF they were so &mdash; in fact &mdash; while Disney WOULD be investing $1 billion into OpenAI, they likely would be making much more money than that.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Medicines and the Strait of Hormuz
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Drugs through the Strait of Hormuz?&rdquo; writes a perplexed reader after Saturday&rsquo;s edition about still another supply-chain snag resulting from the war.
&ldquo;Sorry, but no matter how cross-eyed I look at a world map, I can't find a reasonable shipping track from India to the United States through the Strait of Hormuz. Did you maybe mean the Bab al-Mandab Strait between Yemen and Djibouti? At least that makes some sense. Geography can be tricky when you're being shot at.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Ummm&hellip; We thought it was self-evident that the issue isn&rsquo;t with the finished products from India, but rather with some of the ingredients that go into those drugs. (Medical-grade plastics also transit the Strait of Hormuz.)
Among the potential shortages that are looming &mdash; antibiotics, diabetes drugs like metformin, blood pressure meds and even cancer therapies.
As the saying goes, actions have consequences&hellip;

FMF-Issue-032526-Featured)

It’s Not Just Oil That’s Messed Up

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t You Guys Make up Your Minds?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s a common complaint we hear at Paradigm Press &mdash; especially from newer readers.
We&rsquo;re encountering it again this month. Readers hear gloom from Jim Rickards amid the war. They hear optimism from James Altucher amid Nvidia&rsquo;s annual GTC event. Can&rsquo;t you guys make up your minds?
And so we&rsquo;ll take this opportunity to say it again: We don&rsquo;t enforce a &ldquo;company line&rdquo; among our team.
The last thing we want is for our editors to censor or second-guess themselves. You&rsquo;ve paid good money for your subscription(s) and you deserve the editors&rsquo; unvarnished, no-holds-barred opinions.
On those occasions when their opinions diverge, we respect your intelligence enough to weigh those opinions and come to your own conclusions.
At times, we&rsquo;ve even leaned into these divergences &mdash; as with our &ldquo;Gold vs. Bitcoin&rdquo; events in 2018 and 2025 featuring Jim making the case for gold and James making the case for crypto.
And on those occasions where they do agree, we try to spotlight that too &mdash; especially when they line up behind a single stock, and we&rsquo;ll convene an &ldquo;All-In Summit&rdquo; for the Paradigm Mastermind Group.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Two Words
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Two weeks to the day after Donald Trump moved markets bigly with four words, he&rsquo;s done it again with only two.
As a reminder, on the afternoon of March 9 he told CBS News, &ldquo;I think the war is very complete, pretty much.&rdquo; Oil prices tumbled, U.S. stocks surged.
No one remembers that now because the war continued, indeed escalated.
That&rsquo;s the context for a Trump social media post this morning. It was extremely wordy and in all caps but the two key words were &ldquo;productive conversations&rdquo; between U.S. and Iranian officials.
As such, he called a five-day postponement to his threat to bomb Iranian power plants if Tehran doesn&rsquo;t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (His original deadline was this evening.)
So, a few things here&hellip;
<ol>
<li>What is there for the two sides to talk about if Trump&rsquo;s sole demand is <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/unconditional-surrender">&ldquo;unconditional surrender&rdquo;</a> as he laid out earlier this month?</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>No one on the Iranian side is confirming that any talks are underway &mdash; and Iranian state media are outright denying it.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>Israel is also a belligerent in this conflict &mdash; and word is that the Israeli Air Force has launched a new series of airstrikes against &ldquo;infrastructure&rdquo; in the Iranian capital Tehran.</li>
</ol>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> No matter. The effect, however fleeting it turns out to be, is the same as it was two weeks ago: Oil tumbling, U.S. stocks surging.
West Texas Intermediate began the new trading week last night around $98, edging past $100 early this morning. But with the president&rsquo;s talk of &ldquo;productive conversations,&rdquo; it&rsquo;s now under $88.
Futures on the major U.S. stock indexes were looking ugly last night. But this morning, the S&amp;P 500 has roared over 2% higher to 6,638 at last check. The gains in the Dow and the Nasdaq are even stronger.
Bonds are rallying, too &mdash; prices up, yields down. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note sailed past 4.43% overnight &mdash; an eight-month high &mdash; but as we write it&rsquo;s a hair below 4.34%.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Let&rsquo;s take the president&rsquo;s words at face value: Perhaps he or someone in his inner circle realized events over the weekend were quickly hurtling toward the abyss.
First&hellip; there was Trump&rsquo;s Saturday evening threat to bomb Iranian power plants if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Depending on which experts you want to believe, Iran&rsquo;s biggest power plant generates only 3&ndash;4% of the country&rsquo;s electricity.
Israel&rsquo;s biggest power plant, on the other hand, generates about 20% of the country&rsquo;s electricity &mdash; and would be an attractive target for Tehran. In addition, Tehran would surely amp up its attacks on the oil-and-gas infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies.
Second&hellip; U.S-Israeli airstrikes on Saturday targeted Iran&rsquo;s Natanz uranium-enrichment plant. Tehran responded with airstrikes on Dimona &mdash; the Israeli city that sits about eight miles from the Negev Nuclear Research Center, site of Israel&rsquo;s &ldquo;secret&rdquo; nuclear weapons program.
Israel has never acknowledged the existence of its nuclear weapons, estimated by outside experts to number about 90 warheads. That&rsquo;s because under U.S. law, no country can receive U.S. military aid if it does not comply with regulations and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency &mdash; and Israel does not.
Third&hellip; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) did the Sunday talk show circuit and talked up a ground attack on Iran&rsquo;s Kharg Island oil terminal by invoking a World War II analogy. &ldquo;We did Iwo Jima, we can do this.&rdquo;
That was too much even for some of his fellow Republicans. &ldquo;This is unacceptable and dark,&rdquo; tweeted Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida). &ldquo;There were over 26,000 American casualties at Iwo Jima.&rdquo;
So that&rsquo;s the state of play. Perhaps the administration is looking for, as the pundits say, an &ldquo;off ramp.&rdquo;
<a id="3"></a>
On the other hand, we&rsquo;ll note that Trump&rsquo;s five-day deadline expires on Friday night &mdash; once more, while U.S. markets are closed for the weekend.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Gold&rsquo;s 2008 Moment?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The movement in precious metals once again deserves its own bullet today.
When electronic trading opened for a new week on Sunday night, the price action was positively ugly &mdash; gold cratering from just under $4,500 to nearly $4,100 and silver sinking from $68 to $62.
But with the &ldquo;productive conversations&rdquo; announcement, gold has trimmed much of those losses &mdash; now down $90 on the day, just below $4,400. And silver is actually in the green by almost a buck at $68.60.
Still, there&rsquo;s been plenty of damage to the metals this month &mdash; i.e., gold tumbling 10% on Friday.
Paradigm natural resources authority Matt Badiali says there might be an X factor at work this time &mdash; the Gulf monarchies selling gold to prop up their currencies and their economies.
&ldquo;Qatar&rsquo;s central bank holds 115 metric tons of gold,&rdquo; he told his Real Wealth Insider readers on Friday. &ldquo;Kuwait&rsquo;s holds about 79 metric tons. (A metric ton of gold is worth around $150 million.)
&ldquo;Based on the downward move in gold price, it looks like some of these countries are selling to offset the economic damage from the war.&rdquo;
In addition, gold is liquid. It&rsquo;s something big-money players can readily sell when they need to raise cash because their other positions are falling apart.
Sean Ring described it like this last week in the Rude Awakening: &ldquo;Hedge funds get margin calls. Banks hit their risk limits. Mutual funds face a wave of redemptions &mdash; people pulling money out all at once. These institutions don&rsquo;t get to sell what they want. They sell what they can. And what they can sell is whatever is large and liquid enough to find a buyer.&rdquo;
It was under those circumstances during the financial crisis in 2008 that gold sank from a peak of $1,020 in March to a trough below $700 in late October. Many of the proverbial &ldquo;weak hands&rdquo; were shaken out by that downdraft.
In case you&rsquo;re wondering: A similar move now would entail a collapse from the late January peak of $5,501 to under $3,800. Again, the bid right now is just over $4,400.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Of course, strong hands in 2008 were rewarded with a rally to over $1,900 by Labor Day 2011.
Which is the setup that Paradigm macro maven Jim Rickards sees. &ldquo;None of the fundamentals has changed,&rdquo; he tells us.
&ldquo;Central banks are still net buyers. Global output is still flat. Investor uncertainty still leaves gold as the only safe haven asset other than U.S. Treasury securities.
&ldquo;BRICS and other nations are still using gold as a reserve asset and trade settlement medium in order to avoid exposure to U.S. Treasuries. This suggests that the gold price rally will soon resume after the technical beatdown.
&ldquo;The hedge fund profit taking will soon be over and the weak hands will have cut and run. The strong hands (central banks and some institutional investors) will then step in.
&ldquo;Look for gold to start rising again in the weeks ahead as the war drags on, other commodity prices spike and safe-haven demand puts gold front and center again.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Fake News That Feels True
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> And now a few words about fake news, in light of two things that happened over the weekend. As an old-school journalist who actually cares about the truth, they were painful for me to watch.
In recent years the Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen has acquired a following in the United States for his heterodox and frequently astute views about the conflicts in both Ukraine and the Middle East.
But on Saturday, he stepped in it big-time&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7tOJh2Dj62AzsKdq6pVgNg/eedb2a99b80b686b61f30d2b94c58098/FMF-Issue-032326_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Just one problem: The Trump post was phony. (Diesen has since deleted his tweet, but as you see above, most everything on the internet lives forever.)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Then there was this bit of ridiculousness that got tens of thousands of views&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7ePROYZEFAQovOyfTqZWFm/f3365b2e2d0e5c2252f3994741067d19/FMF-Issue-032326_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
This post was further amplified by a Substack page called &ldquo;2nd Smartest Guy in the World&rdquo; &mdash; who does have some perceptive things to say now and then.
As several observers pointed out, a figure of $16.142 billion is right in line with the Federal Reserve&rsquo;s regular purchases of U.S. Treasuries &mdash; purchases that have been underway ever since the Fed announced in December that it would resume expanding its balance sheet.
(The Fed knew better than to call it &ldquo;quantitative easing&rdquo; this time &mdash; even though that&rsquo;s exactly what it is.)
The Fed blowing up its balance sheet is not a good thing in the long run &mdash; but in no way is it an EMERGENCY now.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> What happened to Prof. Diesen and the &ldquo;2nd Smartest Guy in the World&rdquo; is an object lesson for all of us&hellip;
<ol>
<li>Sometimes it&rsquo;s hard to tell Trump parody apart from Trump reality.</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>The amount of bogus information out there is proliferating like Topsy (and neither of these examples involves AI!).</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>To be an informed citizen, you must be hyper-vigilant &mdash; especially when encountering information that soothes your own confirmation bias.</li>
</ol>
In other words&hellip; even if it rings true, look a little deeper. Take nothing at face value.
Or as they said to cub reporters back in the day at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, &ldquo;If your mother says she loves you, check it out.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Presented without comment&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6XKgpBHUCeCG8OCeq7xWki/00f4eaff0a58a31ff60eb5231f588c89/FMF-Issue-032326_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />

FMF-Issue-032326(Featured)

“Can’t You Guys Make up Your Minds?”

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Oil Shock 2026 (And a &rsquo;70s Flashback)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Your editor&rsquo;s day began with an eye-popping chart sent from six time zones away by Rude Awakening editor Sean Ring. Look closely.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6xSdmai7qMayg7ThUCHnBI/520c5a0dde88c3987ea2705a4f33ec8c/FMF-Issue-031926_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
The green line depicts the volatility or lack thereof in oil prices over time. Big swings higher have heralded the onset of nearly every recession &mdash; the vertical gray bars &mdash; for close to 60 years.
The only exception is the brief COVID recession of 2020 &mdash; and even there, you can see it came close. No one remembers now, but oil prices nearly tripled between early 2016 and the autumn of 2018. And a 2020 recession <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2022/03/11/countdown-to-cover-up/">was likely in the cards</a> even without the virus.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We caution: This chart is not a lead-pipe cinch guarantee that a recession is nigh. 
In recent years, the economic disruptions wrought by COVID lockdowns have scrambled any number of economic indicators that for decades looked like sure things.
For instance, we had an &ldquo;inverted yield curve&rdquo; &mdash; in which longer-term interest rates were lower than short-term rates &mdash; for a two-year stretch between 2022&ndash;2024.
Recessions typically set in less than a year after the curve &ldquo;uninverts&rdquo; and once again longer-term rates are higher than short-term rates.
Not this time: While the economy feels punk for anyone other than the top 10% of income-earners, there&rsquo;s no evidence of a recession as most economists would describe it.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Still&hellip; it&rsquo;s not too soon to start thinking about analogs to the &ldquo;oil shock&rdquo; of 1973&ndash;74&hellip; and the &ldquo;stagflation&rdquo; that marked the rest of the 1970s.
At least one economist thinks it&rsquo;s inevitable&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1LEiKpESf1A8hcYrD8IVyo/969b4d35b20193da55b4f8f20f864823/FMF-Issue-031926_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
To refresh your memory: The U.S. government intervened on the side of Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 &mdash; a 19-day conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states.
Arab oil producers responded with an embargo on oil sales to the United States. Oil prices quadrupled from roughly $3 a barrel to $12.
The impact was instant and severe: The U.S. economy tumbled into a recession the following month and it dragged on through all of 1974 and into early 1975. Unemployment peaked at 9% (at a time when unemployment was still measured honestly).
It was the worst hit to the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
And even when the recession was over, the recovery was weak. At the same time, reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve aimed at ensuring Richard Nixon&rsquo;s reelection in 1972 set the country on an inflationary course for the rest of the &rsquo;70s, with consumer prices leaping 14% year-over-year by early 1980.
Stagnation + inflation = stagflation.
The stock market was already in trouble during 1973 and wound up falling 45% peak-to-trough over a two-year stretch. It languished into the early 1980s and inflation ate into whatever meager returns the market generated.
Gold, meanwhile&hellip;
Well, we might as well give that its own bullet &mdash; given the carnage today.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Gold&hellip; and 1974&hellip; and 2008
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The good news for precious metals bulls is that the gold price is still in the green year-to-date.
The bad news is that it&rsquo;s down $216 or 4.5% as we write, barely holding onto the $4,600 level.
Silver is now in the red for 2026, the bid down nearly five bucks on the day to $70.39. The HUI index of mining stocks is down 7.2%, slipping below 700 and basically back to where it was at the start of the year.
We&rsquo;ll note here that amid the 1973&ndash;74 oil shock, gold fulfilled its role as a hedge against geopolitical risk &mdash; tripling from $64 to nearly $200 in very short order.
And then it collapsed 50% during 1974&hellip; finally, roaring 8X higher by early 1980. Volatility.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Maybe the stronger analogy right now is 2008.
&ldquo;Back then, fear drove gold and silver down 25% and 55% respectively,&rdquo; recalls Paradigm natural resources authority Matt Badiali.
&ldquo;And when metal prices fall modestly, mining stocks collapse. In 2008, the VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX), the benchmark for gold mining stocks, fell 70%.&rdquo;
A falling gold price now? That reflects fear that the Iran war will metastasize into a global economic crisis. Economic fears trump geopolitical fears, at least right now.
Now the rest of the 2008 story: &rdquo;Gold and silver bottomed in November 2008,&rdquo; Matt recalls.
&ldquo;Gold rose over 150% from its 2008 low to its 2011 high. Silver soared 400% from its 2008 low to its 2011 high. Gold stocks, as tracked by the GDX, rose 250% over that same period.
&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve seen this play out before. We&rsquo;re watching this decline in metal prices as a prelude to another big run. As the miners&rsquo; prices fall, we&rsquo;ll be looking for an entry point. Other less experienced investors will be running for the hills and we&rsquo;ll be backing up the truck.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Stocks and Oil: The Market Meltdown That Wasn&rsquo;t
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> What first looked like a rocky day for the U.S. stock market (down) and oil (up) has turned into&hellip; well, something rather different.
When we left you yesterday, Israeli airstrikes lit up Iran&rsquo;s massive South Pars natural gas field &mdash; and Tehran was threatening revenge on energy infrastructure in the gulf sheikdoms.
Tehran has since made good on those threats &mdash; striking the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas plant in Qatar, the largest plant for LNG exports in the world. Just like that, an estimated 3.5% of global LNG capacity is gone &mdash; and by one ballpark guess, so is a third of global <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute">helium supply</a>.
The plant took 14 years to build and Reuters reports that getting it back online will take three&ndash;five years.
Iranian forces also targeted the Yanbu oil export terminals in Saudi Arabia. Yanbu is located on the Red Sea and as such is the only way the kingdom&rsquo;s oil exports can bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
The initial market reaction was stocks down big and oil up big. But as midday approaches on the U.S. East Coast, those moves are looking much more muted.
At last check the S&amp;P 500 is down a little over a half percent to 6,586 &mdash; basically a four-month low. Both the Dow and the Nasdaq have shed about three-quarters of a percent. Not great, but not a big whoosh.
➢ Lest we forget: To no one&rsquo;s surprise, the Federal Reserve left short-term interest rates alone yesterday at the conclusion of its March policy-setting meeting. Looking at the activity in the futures markets, traders now expect no rate cuts this year.
The action in oil, meanwhile, has been simply ridiculous. The &ldquo;spread&rdquo; between West Texas Intermediate crude (the U.S. benchmark) and Brent crude (the global benchmark) has blown out to crazy-wide levels. Brent is usually priced higher but at last check it&rsquo;s $109.74 while WTI is still $98.66.
You don&rsquo;t have to search far on social media to find still more complaints of market manipulation. Manipulation or no, the spread hasn&rsquo;t been this wide since mid-2022.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Back to the Strait of Hormuz for a moment: We ran across an observer on X asking why doesn&rsquo;t Israel&rsquo;s military act to force the waterway back open.
Answer: The U.S. government guarantees an energy supply to Israel no matter what. That&rsquo;s according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/20/israelandthepalestinians.oil">a 2003 </a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/20/israelandthepalestinians.oil">Guardian</a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/20/israelandthepalestinians.oil"> article</a> that&rsquo;s resurfaced on social media in recent days&hellip;
<blockquote>In 1975, [Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger signed&hellip; a memorandum of understanding whereby the U.S. would guarantee Israel&rsquo;s oil reserves and energy supply in times of crisis&hellip; The memorandum has been quietly renewed every five years, with special legislation attached whereby the U.S. stocks a strategic oil reserve for Israel even if it entailed domestic shortages &mdash; at a cost of $3 billion in 2002 to U.S. taxpayers.</blockquote>
There&rsquo;s no evidence to suggest this agreement has since lapsed or been canceled.
We give the last word for now to Cato Institute foreign policy scholar Brandan Buck&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4hZTrWVCZP4BeDzFynYJdM/a45dd2fc12d6067a4376ca5259321b74/FMF-Issue-031926_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Sign of the times, even before the war&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2M4EZy8J1mWjUKA4Ah4ddy/827dd129820195ca823777b1f9344d08/FMF-Issue-031926_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: AI Agents, Emily&rsquo;s Departure
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> On the subject of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/when-ai-does-your-grunt-work">AI agents and the computational power they require</a> relative to chatbots, we heard from a member of our Omega Wealth Circle&hellip;
&ldquo;So how many people can use AI agents before the systems are overwhelmed, either by processing power or electricity?
&ldquo;I think we are about to face a modern example of the &lsquo;tragedy of the commons,&rsquo; where if one person grazed his cattle on land open to all, he did well, but when everyone tries to graze their cattle there, the commons is destroyed.
&ldquo;I suspect that as more people try to use AI agents, the price is going to go up A LOT. The true cost may be in the thousands of dollars per month, and if they charge that much, then the number of users will not overload the systems. If it does, then the price goes up even more.
&ldquo;In the case you gave of having your flight cancelled and using agentic AI to take care of all the details of flights, hotels, etc., if it cost $10, just for that event, then millions of people would use it, but if it cost $1,000, then the usage would be much less.
&ldquo;I am watching this space closely.&rdquo;
Dave responds: As are we, rest assured.
Maybe agentic AI will be the catalyst for the tech industry to move beyond the business model that&rsquo;s defined it throughout the 21st century: &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not paying for the product, then you&rsquo;re the product.&rdquo;
Of course we&rsquo;ve been pounding the table about AI and its impact on the power grid for over two years &mdash; long before the mainstream caught on.
And there&rsquo;s another constraint facing AI. We touched on it in early 2025. It&rsquo;s something the technology sector hasn&rsquo;t grappled with before &mdash; the rising cost of borrowed money.
Interest rates move in decades-long cycles &mdash; 40 years up, 40 years down, give or take. IBM&rsquo;s introduction of the first mass-market personal computer in 1981 coincided almost perfectly with a secular peak in interest rates &mdash; 15.8% on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note.
From that peak, it was generally down for the next four decades &mdash; not a straight line, of course, but a steady trajectory. The tech industry was able to ride that wave all the way down; any debt they took on for startup or expansion could be refinanced later at a lower interest rate.
But those days are over. The bottom of that falling-rate cycle came in August 2020, when the 10-year T-note yielded a paltry 0.5% (and the work-from-home crowd had just loaded up on all the electronics they&rsquo;d need for a few years).
Today the 10-year yield rests at 4.26%. It&rsquo;s higher now than when the Fed started cutting short-term rates 18 months ago. Usually long-term rates fall in sympathy with cuts to short-term rates &mdash; but no longer.
Rising rates might be one reason the much-ballyhooed Stargate AI project <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/jim-rickards-software-stock-scare#2">can&rsquo;t get off the ground</a> &mdash; in addition to infighting among the principal investors.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you for all you've done, Emily. You, Dave and the team are the best,&rdquo; a reader writes as Emily Clancy <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute?vid2=f7584bb8d0f8b4ef03ea4a2a79cb9ffebd5601637dfb4b221b21055bfe10aa56fb9565c7166c12ea93687031263ed97489aead8f437e4ddd1cfcbcd5e6a6bb06&amp;utm_campaign=FMF_Issue_03.18.26_&amp;utm_source=Iterable&amp;itbl_templateId=22562110&amp;itbl_campaignId=17330027&amp;utm_medium=Email#5">prepares to move on</a>.
&ldquo;5 Bullets has been my No. 1 must-read for more years than I can count. Good luck with your new venture!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Congratulations on your move to join Jim Rickards&rsquo; team,&rdquo; says another note to Emily. &ldquo;I know you will learn all kinds of new skills and build your knowledge base even deeper than it is today.
&ldquo;I will miss your contributions to the 5 Bullets. You marry information, perspective and a clever sense of humor. Your unique style is a bonus to the information the emails always contain.
&ldquo;Best wishes for a wonderful career move.&rdquo;
Dave clarifies: I gave a longtime reader the wrong impression yesterday. To be clear: When I said I was preparing &ldquo;my own sendoff&rdquo; to run in tomorrow&rsquo;s edition, I meant my sendoff for Emily. 
Sorry if I gave anyone a scare! Or in the case of this one reader, inspired him to raise a glass after &ldquo;being a teetotaler for some time.&rdquo; (It&rsquo;s kinda weighing on my conscience now&hellip;)

FMF-Issue-031926(Featured)

Oil Shock 2026 

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />When AI Does Your Grunt Work
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> We spilled some digital ink both yesterday and the day before about &ldquo;agentic AI.&rdquo; But it might still be too abstract, too airy-fairy, to wrap your mind around.
Let&rsquo;s remedy that today &mdash; with the help of pre-2026 AI.
I plugged the following inquiry into the Perplexity AI engine: &ldquo;Please furnish a vivid and recent example of agentic AI that would resonate for a &lsquo;normie&rsquo; whose only familiarity with AI is LLM chatbots.&rdquo;
Perplexity spat out a scenario in which you&rsquo;re flying home from a work trip &mdash; only to see your flight cancelled. Before you even open the airline app or start schlepping toward a help desk, an AI agent does the following&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Notices the cancellation in your email/airline app</li>
<li>Checks your calendar to see you have an important meeting tomorrow morning</li>
<li>Searches all possible rebooking options: earlier flights, nearby airports, even train options plus Uber to get home on time</li>
<li>Looks up your preferences it already learned (&ldquo;won&rsquo;t do red-eyes,&rdquo; &ldquo;OK with a layover if it gets home earlier&rdquo;)</li>
<li>Decides the best plan: Rebook you on a different airline tonight from a nearby airport, books a rideshare to that airport and finds a hotel near your destination in case of further delay.</li>
</ul>
Then it actually books the flight for you &mdash; using your credit card on file and applying your frequent-flyer miles. Oh, and it cancels your previous hotel booking and notifies your colleagues on Slack or Teams that while your original flight was cancelled, you&rsquo;ll still make that important meeting.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Plugging the same query into Elon Musk&rsquo;s Grok engine, I got the following: 
<blockquote>You open your laptop, fire up the Claude desktop app (Anthropic&rsquo;s tool) and type one casual sentence:</blockquote>
<blockquote>&ldquo;Hey Cowork, my Downloads folder is a total disaster&mdash;sort everything into folders by file type and date, pull out any receipts or invoices and make a clean spreadsheet summary of what&rsquo;s there with totals if it&rsquo;s money stuff. Oh, and flag anything that looks like a bill I haven&rsquo;t paid.&rdquo;</blockquote>
<blockquote>Then you walk away to grab coffee.</blockquote>
Cowork then scans every file, drags and drops them, identifies PDFs that look like invoices and builds an Excel spreadsheet detailing them. Once you&rsquo;re done swilling your coffee after 15 minutes or so, it&rsquo;s all done for you &mdash; even flagging three unpaid bills.
Sorta funny that Grok is doing free advertising for a competitor, but whatevs&hellip;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> OK now does the potential of agentic AI seem more real?
And it&rsquo;s come to the fore only in the last several weeks with the advent of an AI agent called OpenClaw.
Little wonder that AI agents were all the talk this week at Nvidia&rsquo;s annual GTC gathering in San Jose.
It was a must-see event for Paradigm AI authority James Altucher and his team &mdash; on site in California. Yesterday, fresh from the event, they took part in our Tech Turning Point 2026 online forum.
There, James explained how pre-2026 AI was simply an &ldquo;ask-answer&rdquo; proposition. AI agents differ in two huge ways: &ldquo;An AI agent is working around the clock &mdash; and it&rsquo;s taking action.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Ask-answer uses only a certain amuont of AI &mdash; a certain amount of bandwidth and computational power. But when you&rsquo;re continuously doing something and taking action you need 10,000 times more computational power.
&ldquo;The computational power required, and the companies that are delivering that power, are really important.&rdquo; Nvidia, yes, but at the same time, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t realize there are 80 suppliers of the components in every GPU [chip],&rdquo; James says. And that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m really interested in.&rdquo;
AI agents were only one topic on the agenda for our Tech Turning Point 2026 event yesterday. Our experts covered the gamut from robots to outer space.
And no, there was no attached sales pitch. Just two hours and 35 minutes of insights and actionable guidance &mdash; our way of saying thanks to you for being a Paradigm Press customer. <a href="https://paradigmpresslive.com/TechTurningPoint2026">Click here to start watching</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Is Oil $95&hellip; Or $150?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Has anyone suggested the price of oil is being manipulated in the futures markets?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;The price as I write is just above $95. To me, this seems so faraway from pricing in the current and future uncertainty in the gulf.&rdquo;
Short answer: Yes. The Financial Times says only yesterday, the price of crude coming out of Oman soared to a record $150 a barrel. Never mind that those barrels depart from ports that lie outside the Strait of Hormuz!
Chalk it up to &ldquo;intense competition for the small volumes still leaving the Middle East,&rdquo; says the paper.
Among those who agree with the reader&rsquo;s thesis is the Portuguese author and one-time diplomat Bruno Macaes&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6Yu85gYXqxEoLCtJON0w2Q/4d9474a6f9dd3cf84b7c582867b19097/FMF-Issue-031826_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Checking our screens &mdash; for whatever it&rsquo;s worth &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate is up 2.4% to $98.93.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But for nearly every other asset class, it&rsquo;s a sea of red today.
The S&amp;P 500 is down nearly two-thirds of a percent to 6,674 &mdash; giving up about half of its gains the last two days. The Nasdaq is down just over a half percent, the Dow down about 1%.
But for a real drubbing, look to the precious metals &mdash; gold down 2.8% to $4,863 and silver down 3.4% to $76.45, a one-month low.
Crypto&rsquo;s been caught up in the selling too. Bitcoin sits at $71,386 &mdash; the move over $73,000 couldn&rsquo;t stick. Ethereum has pulled back under $2,200.
The big economic number of the day is wholesale prices &mdash; up 0.7% between January and February. Literally no one among dozens of economists polled by Econoday expected an increase of over 0.3%.
No doubt that will feed into consumer inflation next month &mdash; on top of whatever&rsquo;s more costly because of the war.
<a id="3"></a>
As such, there&rsquo;s almost zero chance the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates today. The Fed&rsquo;s decision will be rendered by the time you read this; we&rsquo;ll follow up tomorrow.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Supply-Chain Snags, Iran War Edition
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> As for the war&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2FxG0NSae0dBk2eAUUDHYn/1ccbb73074a236e7965ff1d76771fa20/FMF-Issue-031826_2_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
No, the Strait of Hormuz is not open. Tehran still has full control over who may pass.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes are now targeting Iran&rsquo;s vast South Pars natural gas field. As such, Tehran says it&rsquo;s within its rights to carry out airstrikes on energy infrastructure in the Gulf sheikdoms.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The longer Hormuz remains closed, the more likely we face COVID-level disruptions to the supply chain.
Certainly that&rsquo;s already the case in large swaths of Asia. Diesel shortages in Thailand. Steel production interrupted in India, for want of natural gas. Today and every Wednesday declared a public holiday in Sri Lanka, just so people won&rsquo;t burn fuel going to work.
Speaking of India, look at the threat to its fertilizer supply coming from the gulf&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5ucwN7tlxXdF2aKsmKPqJ9/838b29567fd3e98049474dfa48d7705a/FMF-Issue-031826_3_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
North America is not immune: We&rsquo;re hearing murmurs from the Farm Belt about how fertilizer is now so costly that many corn farmers might opt to plant soybeans this year instead &mdash; because bean plants more or less make their own fertilizer.
Reminder: Among many other uses, corn is what makes the ethanol that goes into your gas tank.
As for the view from the White House&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1H7w4oTEQ6POnrRSccugp1/5bc21d1b4f25b99067c49e8f27cb7583/FMF-Issue-031826_4_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
To be fair, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the reason it&rsquo;s &ldquo;the last of our concerns&rdquo; is that &ldquo;we are very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.&rdquo;
If that makes you feel any better&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Tariff Fallout: Costco Customer Sues
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> This tariff refund thing is getting complicated.
As you probably know, the Supreme Court struck down the legal justification the Trump administration was using for much of its tariff regime &mdash; while dodging the question of whether companies that paid the tariffs were now entitled to refunds.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are now appealing to the U.S. Court of International Trade for refunds &mdash; including Costco Wholesale (COST).
Here&rsquo;s the plot twist: A Costco customer is suing the company, demanding that shoppers get a cut of any refunds the company collects. The suit filed by Matthew Sockov says it would amount to &ldquo;unjust enrichment&rdquo; if Costco recouped its tariff costs twice &mdash; &ldquo;from customers through elevated pricing and from the government.&rdquo;
"The truly injured parties possess no direct avenue for redress," says the suit filed in federal court in Illinois. Sockov is asking the court to declare his case a class action.
The BBC asked Costco for comment &mdash; but none was forthcoming.
Perhaps that&rsquo;s because the company thinks even addressing the issue is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. On an earnings call this month, CEO Ron Vachris said it&rsquo;s still fuzzy &ldquo;what refunds, if any, will be received.&rdquo;
Stay tuned&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Escorts, Swan Song
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The subject line of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-seeking-escorts">Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> elicited a couple of reader remarks, including this one&hellip;
&ldquo;Given the president's well-documented personal habits, maybe not the best wording for the 5 Bullets headline...?&nbsp;
[It was done very deliberately and you know that&hellip;]
&ldquo;I found myself thinking, OMG, it's not bad enough that he's started a war in the Middle East, but now he's after a Desert Stormy...&rdquo;
[RIM SHOT &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here all week, make sure to try the veal&hellip;&rdquo;]
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Thank you, Emily, God bless you on your next endeavor,&rdquo; says one of many replies after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/one-noble-gas-no-substitute/#5">Emily&rsquo;s swan song</a> yesterday on the weekday 5 Bullets.
&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t believe it&rsquo;s been nine years!&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;I am a FAITHFUL reader and appreciate all of your work over the years.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Thank you to Emily Clancy for years of well-written and insightful bullets,&rdquo; adds a third. &ldquo;I've absorbed a lot of ammunition and enjoyed every minute. P.S. This is my first feedback to your newsletter, and it seems fitting.
&ldquo;I don't usually respond to things at Paradigm (I'm a relatively new member),&rdquo; says one more, &ldquo;but I wanted to tell you that I have always enjoyed your 5 Bullets. Best of luck on your future role.&rdquo;
As Emily mentioned here yesterday, she&rsquo;s not going far &mdash; taking on a new role within our Jim Rickards unit. And you&rsquo;ll still hear from her in our Saturday wrap-up edition.
As for my own sendoff, I&rsquo;ll save that for the end of the week on Friday. In the meantime, catch you tomorrow&hellip;

FMF-Issue-031826(Featured)

When AI Does Your Grunt Work

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />No Balloons. No Chips
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> You might have been planning on green balloons for your St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day festivities. 
Here&rsquo;s some bad news: The same geopolitical shock that&rsquo;s reshaping global energy markets may make all balloons an endangered species in 2026. And that&rsquo;s genuinely the least important part of this story.
Here to add context to our reporting last week, Paradigm&rsquo;s Matt Badiali has been tracking natural resources through booms, busts and geopolitical shocks for decades.
This week, he&rsquo;s sounding the alarm on helium.
It all goes back to events in Qatar on March 2. That&rsquo;s when Iranian drones struck the Ras Laffan Industrial City complex &mdash; one of the world&rsquo;s largest LNG and helium production hubs.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure on its existing helium supply contracts on March 4, legally freeing it from delivery obligations to customers worldwide.
At the time of writing, no restart is planned, and the facility has been offline for nearly two weeks, removing roughly 30% of global helium supply from the market in a single stroke.
Most people hear &ldquo;helium shortage&rdquo; and think party supplies. Matt wants you to think semiconductors.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Helium is vital for making computer chips because it lets factories run their machines extremely hot, clean and precisely without messing up the tiny circuits,&rdquo; Matt explains.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a noble gas, so it doesn&rsquo;t react with the materials used to build chips. That helps keep the environment inside the machines very pure.&rdquo;
It also does something less obvious: &ldquo;It carries heat away really well, so it cools wafers evenly during intense processes, preventing them from cracking or warping.
&ldquo;It helps stabilize the plasmas used to carve out the microscopic patterns on chips and is used to check for leaks in the vacuum systems, since its small atoms are easy to detect.&rdquo;
Chipmakers now consume 20% of the world's helium supply &mdash; eclipsing MRI cooling as the primary industrial use.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), which controls over 50% of the global chipmaking market, is the single largest consumer.
And unlike most industrial inputs, there is no substitute. &ldquo;Like copper in electric motors,&rdquo; Matt says, &ldquo;there isn&rsquo;t any substitute for helium in that role.&rdquo;
The consequences of losing it aren&rsquo;t just expensive; it&rsquo;s a terminal risk. &ldquo;Without enough helium, you can't make the chips at all.
&ldquo;It's like water in bread making. The cost of the water is nothing compared to the price of the bread&hellip; but you can&rsquo;t make bread at all without the water.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The nation with the most to lose right now is South Korea. According to data from the Korea International Trade Association, Qatar supplied 64.7% of South Korea&rsquo;s helium imports in 2025.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3capq4DQOOjZhUI1hXaWL7/e9b1f7ceb0f587d746572ff76ec89441/FMF-Issue-031726_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" /> Hmm&hellip; Rain in the forecast for the <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/trump-seeking-escorts#3">&ldquo;Woodstock of AI&rdquo;?</a>
Samsung and SK Hynix together account for about 18% of global semiconductor output. SK Hynix has said it diversified supplies and secured sufficient inventory &mdash; but the clock is ticking.
Helium consultant Phil Kornbluth warned at a Gasworld webinar that if the outage extends beyond two weeks, industrial gas distributors could be forced to relocate cryogenic equipment and revalidate supplier relationships &mdash; a process that could stretch over months.
If the damage to Ras Laffan is severe, recovery could take far longer. &ldquo;The current shutdown in Qatar could significantly reduce global chip manufacturing if plants can&rsquo;t get enough helium,&rdquo; Matt says. &ldquo;A shortage of AI chips will dramatically increase prices.&rdquo;
For traders paying attention, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) &mdash; which holds most of these companies &mdash; is already well off its February highs. Matt sees a potential short opportunity in either SMH or TSM if the situation deteriorates further.
A war in the Middle East. A drone strike on a gas complex. No balloons. And maybe no chips.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no sugarcoating it &mdash; geopolitical tensions are creating some real [macro] headwinds right now,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s wealth-and-income authority Zach Scheidt.
&ldquo;Right now, it seems that traditional, heavy-industry names are taking the brunt of the damage,&rdquo; he notes, &ldquo;with the Dow suffering consecutive drops as the [Mideast] conflict intensifies and capital derisks.
&ldquo;But while the Dow takes on water and the headlines scream panic, a much more resilient story is playing out in the tech sector.
&ldquo;Despite the intense geopolitical pressure, traders have been stepping in (albeit timidly) to buy the dips here and there on tech names that have been heavily pressured.
&ldquo;Even on down days,the Nasdaq has fought its way back to close well off its lows, showing a clear unwillingness from buyers to completely capitulate.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The most encouraging sign of relative strength this week has been in software,&rdquo; Zach says.
&ldquo;Recently, the sector suffered an aggressive, overblown sell-off driven by a flawed narrative: the idea that AI would somehow allow every company to easily write their own software from scratch.
&ldquo;The current market environment is proving that thesis wrong. Established, bulletproof software platforms aren&rsquo;t going anywhere,&rdquo; he adds.
&ldquo;Amidst the surging oil prices and Dow weakness, the software sector has held up decently well.
&ldquo;After intense selling, it feels like these stocks have successfully carved out a hard floor of support, dismissing the AI fears and signaling that the previous wave of selling has largely exhausted itself.&rdquo;
Zach&rsquo;s takeaway: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the middle of a massive stress test; some sectors are feeling the squeeze. But if you look past the surface-level panic, the price action is actually telling a pretty interesting story.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Turning to the markets today, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) &mdash; a benchmark for software stocks &mdash; is up 1.50%. 
That might not seem like much, but in early February, IGV was down more than 20% YTD. The sector seems to be steadily climbing its way out of bear market territory.
The three major U.S. indexes are all seeing green on this St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day. The Dow, Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500 are all up about 0.50% to 47,180, 22,430 and 6,730 respectively.
As for commodities, crude is up over 1%, priced at $94.50 for a barrel of WTI. It&rsquo;s a mixed bag, however, for precious metals. Gold&rsquo;s up 0.25% to $5,015.50 per ounce; at the same time, silver&rsquo;s down 0.55% to $80.25.
The crypto market? Bitcoin&rsquo;s up 0.35% to $74,310, and Ethereum&rsquo;s barely hanging onto green at $2,330.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Rickards: Pre-FOMC Prediction
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The Federal Reserve meets this week, and our macro expert Jim Rickards says the decision itself is almost pre-written. &ldquo;The expected outcome for the Fed meeting on March 18 will be no change in the Fed&rsquo;s target rate,&rdquo; he says.
Accordingly, rates will likely stay parked at 3.75%, where they&rsquo;ve been since December 2025.
The Fed&rsquo;s broader dilemma is familiar by now. Inflation has cooled but remains above the central bank&rsquo;s 2% target &mdash; while the labor market is starting to weaken.
The latest employment report shows the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate up to 4.4%. That was a surprise for economists, who expected modest job gains instead.
Ordinarily, a weakening labor market would push the Fed toward cutting rates. But a geopolitical shock has complicated the picture.
When the U.S.-Israel war with Iran sent oil markets into chaos, prices briefly surged from $65 to $120 per barrel before settling lower &mdash; but still far above prewar levels. Gasoline has followed the same path.
&ldquo;Higher energy prices increase the price of almost everything, not just gas at the pump,&rdquo; Jim notes. That inflation risk is enough to keep the Fed on hold for now.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> The real drama isn&rsquo;t the interest-rate decision. It&rsquo;s Jerome Powell&rsquo;s final stretch as Fed chair, unfolding against a backdrop of war, politics and a brewing economic slowdown.
Powell&rsquo;s term as Fed chair expires in May, and President Trump has already nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to replace him.
At the same time, the White House is publicly pressuring Powell to cut rates immediately &mdash; something he has resisted.
Jim sees the Fed&rsquo;s decision this week as part economic judgment, part institutional showdown. &ldquo;Powell will have good reason to hold rates steady&hellip; but he will have the added satisfaction of poking a stick in Donald Trump&rsquo;s eye.&rdquo;
For now, the Fed chair still holds the gavel, in a matter of speaking. &ldquo;Powell will have won the feud, but the economy will have lost the war,&rdquo; Jim concludes.
We&rsquo;ll know more when Powell takes questions after Wednesday&rsquo;s announcement &mdash; and we&rsquo;ll break down the fallout for you afterward.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Tech Turning Point 2026
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Peter Steinberger spent 13 years building PDF tools in Austria. Then, in November 2025, he sat down and built a prototype in roughly one hour. 
&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t trying to change the world. He was just annoyed that something didn&rsquo;t exist &mdash; so he &lsquo;vibe coded&rsquo; it into existence.
&ldquo;That one-hour experiment became OpenClaw &mdash; the fastest-growing repository in GitHub history, with over 175,000 stars,&rdquo; says Paradigm editor, and James Altucher&rsquo;s close colleague, Chris Campbell.
GitHub is the world&rsquo;s largest platform where developers share code &mdash; think of it as a public library for software. Linux, the operating system powering most of the world&rsquo;s servers, &ldquo;took 30 years to reach similar milestones,&rdquo; Chris says. &ldquo;OpenClaw did it in three weeks.&rdquo;
So what actually is OpenClaw? While every AI assistant you&rsquo;ve ever used &mdash; ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa &mdash; is reactive, OpenClaw is different. Chris describes it as an &ldquo;autonomous agent.&rdquo;
You connect it to messaging apps (for instance, WhatsApp or Telegram). &ldquo;Give it access to your computer, your files, your email, your calendar. And then it just... runs.&rdquo;
According to Chris: &ldquo;It feels less like using software and more like texting a very capable friend who happens to have root access to your computer.&rdquo;
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang framed the bigger picture from the GTC stage yesterday: &ldquo;The last prompt was what is, when is, who is. This new prompt goes create, do, build, write.&rdquo;
Chris&rsquo; verdict: &ldquo;AI went from answering questions to taking actions. That&rsquo;s the whole ballgame.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Here's the investment angle &mdash; and it&rsquo;s enormous,&rdquo; Chris continues.
&ldquo;A normal AI conversation uses a modest amount of computing power,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;[But] continuous OpenClaw agents running in the background may consume up to 1 million times more [units of work].
&ldquo;This is why Nvidia is celebrating a software project it didn&rsquo;t build.
&ldquo;Every OpenClaw agent [is] another reason to buy more chips. More agents = more compute = more Blackwell GPUs = more revenue.&rdquo;
Chris underscores: &ldquo;The hardware thesis just got a second wind.&rdquo;
But there&rsquo;s a caveat: &ldquo;For agents to truly work &mdash; to help manage your inbox, run your experiments, coordinate your team, operate your business &mdash; they need to remember.
&ldquo;Persistently. Across sessions. Across tasks. Across time.
&ldquo;Right now, the entire agentic AI industry is built on a foundation that doesn&rsquo;t (yet) have this solved.
&ldquo;Whoever cracks it first doesn&rsquo;t just win a product category,&rdquo; Chris summarizes. &ldquo;They become the connective tissue of every agentic deployment on Earth.&rdquo;
[That&rsquo;s the conversation James and Chris will be having at exactly 2:00 pm EST TODAY, live at GTC 2026 in San Jose, California.
Beyond that, James and his team have an incredible lineup covering all things related to AI, robotics and so much more.
<a id="5"></a>
If you&rsquo;re serious about understanding where technology is heading &mdash; and where the real money gets made &mdash; you need to be in the room.
<a href="https://paradigmpresslive.com/TechTurningPoint2026">Here&rsquo;s your access to this FREE event: Tech Turning Point 2026.]</a>
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Farewell, for Now
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> After nearly nine years, this is my last regular issue of 5 Bullets &mdash; and I find myself struggling to find words to mark the occasion.
This chapter began with a leap of faith &mdash; Dave Gonigam&rsquo;s leap of faith, really. He took a chance on someone who had spent almost 13 years away from the workforce raising children. That was not a small thing. It was a risk, and he took it anyway. Everything that followed flows from that one act of generosity.
Dave has been a mentor, a teacher, a sounding board and a friend. I came to work for him as a complete novice. What I leave with &mdash; the instincts, the love of the work &mdash; I owe in no small part to him.
I also want to shine a light on the people you never see but without whom none of this would exist: copy editor Erik, marketer Colleen and the email team &mdash; Tyler, Heather and Oscar &mdash; who keep the whole machine humming, issue after issue. This newsletter has always been a group effort. I just happen to have a byline.
I&rsquo;ve been incredibly fortunate &mdash; in my husband, my family, my friends. Yes, I count Dave and the Paradigm team among them, without hesitation.
As for what&rsquo;s next, I&rsquo;m not going far. I&rsquo;ll still serve as contributing editor at our 5 Bullets highlight issue every Saturday. Plus, I&rsquo;ll be deepening my craft on Jim Rickards&rsquo; team, a new role I&rsquo;m genuinely excited to grow into.
And then there&rsquo;s you, reader. Some of you I know by first name from the mailbag. A few of you I&rsquo;ve had the rare pleasure to meet in person. You have made this work feel like a conversation rather than a broadcast.
Thank you. For your time, your trust and your loyalty. It has meant everything.