Friday 11, March 2022

Who can we believe?

“The first casualty of war is the truth.” “They are not even pretending anymore. — Ben Hunt”

Control of the narrative is very important. We all learn that to get our own way, we have to persuade others of the correctness of our …

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Thursday 10, March 2022

Energy nonsense

Biden, his advisors, Kamala, the Twitter amanuensis, whoever it is that writes Biden’s tweets is clueless about energy. He uses the usual argument that it’s cheaper to use renewable energy, and so not using oil will save us money and benefit us …

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Wednesday 9, March 2022

Wrap

Today was an explosively risk-on day. A few things happened: UAE suggested that OPEC would sell more oil, Zelenskyy said he’d talk to the Russians, people seem to have decided that the Fed and the ECB will hike less, or later than they were …

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Tuesday 8, March 2022

Wrap

Prices fluctuated. Zelenskyy said that Ukraine did not want to join NATO. I think that, in fact, he reiterated this, as it was part of the Minsk Accord, signed in 2014. I may be wrong here, but I have read that the idea that trends …

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Monday 7, March 2022

Wrap

The war in Ukraine is going on too long. The west has badly miscalculated Putin’s intentions, and it’s not clear what credible threats now will deter him from driving on until he’s conquered Ukraine. Economically, having Ukraine once more fall within Russia …

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Friday 4, March 2022

Moving money internationally

This is an insanely good essay on what it means to move money internationally, by someone who really understands what money is. You need to read it (H/T to Matt Levine who mentioned it in today’s column). What Patrick McKenzie points …

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Thursday 3, March 2022

Wrap

The war in Ukraine grinds on. More talks are scheduled, but no obvious resolution is in sight. The dollar strengthened, but the SPX did too, although the latter has been extremely choppy. Ark Innovation, as for many of its constituents, was extremely volatile.

Energy and …

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Wednesday 2, March 2022

Wrap

The only story in town is of oil becoming unanchored. The near month went up by nearly $8 a barrel. This is a commodity which was trading at a negative price a couple of years ago. The world seems to be waking up to the …

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Tuesday 1, March 2022

Wrap

Oil prices have gone up 76% YoY, 22% MoM and 15% in the last week. So far oil stocks and longer-dated contracts have not moved nearly so much, but inflation expectations are now so entrenched (in my view) that it will be a while before …

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Monday 28, February 2022

Wrap

I’ve been away, and much too busy with my day job to think much about what’s happening. We are still in the fog of war, and nobody knows that the outcome will be, but the following things might be worth thinking about:

• Russia …

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