evening wrap, march 9

market vibes

Europe and OPEC

Updates

Gold is up $90, silver is up $5, stocks are see sawing up and down, Oil is trading at $84/barrel, $35 lower than its highs last night. Trump just posted this ultimatum on Truth. Oil sold off 4 dollars since the 6 PM opening on Globex.

The G7 held an emergency Zoom today and agreed to a coordinated release from their SPR reserves; 300–400 million barrels was discussed. That would equal 15 days at 20 mm bbls/day to fill the void from closing the Strait. If the Strait stays closed, 300 mm barrels will be available behind the Strait by Friday. Ultimately that oil can be swapped back to the SPRs for cash. Therefore, the problem of oil outside the Strait has been solved. Meanwhile, rumors of oil cargos moving safely through the Strait are unconfrimed but growing in number.

Now…Oil behind the Strait is a local problem between Iran and the local producers at least for the next 2 weeks. This augurs poorly for Iranian. And… The G-7 SPR program is just in the nick of time for Europe. Putin instructed his government to evaluate halting all shipments of energy to Europe today.

this wonky but worth it

WTI had a $38 range in the last 24 hours, falling from 119.48 to a low of $81.19—eerily like silver in January (May silver fell from 119.29 to $74.77). It’s not a conspiracy but it is uncanny 2 markets might behave so closely alike within weeks of one another.

According to Grok: Even allowing for fat tails and volatility clustering during crises, the joint occurrence of these two specific mega-moves just weeks apart remains a once-in-the-history-of-financial-markets statistical anomaly—effective probability << 10⁻¹⁰ under any realistic model.

Silver (Jan 30, 2026): 31% settlement drop → 8 sigma (crisis-adjusted vol ~4%; historical baseline pushes it higher to 15–20+ sigma, but realistic tail-adjusted ~8).

Oil (March 8, 2026): 20–25% intraday/peak gain (largest ever daily %) → 6 sigma (elevated vol ~4%; normal baseline ~8–10 sigma). An 8 sigma event translates to an expected recurrence of once every 806 trillion occurrences (or roughly 1 in 8 × 10¹⁴ trials).

The combined occurrence of two major exchange-traded commodities falling 40% in a 24-hour period twice in the same quarter is beyond Grok’s ability to measure. That means the amount of money that has been made and lost in the last 10 days as a repeatable occurrence… from the infinite beginning of time to the infinite future… is beyond the capability of artificial intelligence to calculate. Random?

In the markets

NYMEX product cracks were unchanged. Front spreads resemble this chart, meaning a vertical high-volume bar that traded almost 200% of open interest. That implies all longs sold and all shorts covered and their relative positions were reestablished… It is likely the sellers last night were represented via text messaging on the G-7 call today. This is oil, not the FOMC.

April WTI daily data

curious timing

At 9 PM ET WTI crude oil made its highs.

At 9 PM ET stocks bottomed. USD FX made its highs and gold was sold heavily on the Globex opening.

NDX futures rallied vertically all day and closed above the 200 D MA which was breached (chart below) in all 3 major stock indexes last night. The problem with this kind of coordinated intervention is its secretive nature. If you want to trade volume disclose it! If you want to elevate prices disclose it.

The net result of these price-fixing ops is more often distrust than success. Instead of staking last night’s lows as a point of confidence, they’re going to become a parking lot for sell stops, imo.

Silver had a leadership day, rallying $10 off its lows (as I write) on a confirmed up wiggle, closing above the 55 D MA on light volume.

Gold and PGMs remain steady and featureless. If silver takes the lead gold and platinum will follow. Stay flexible. Oil might plunge and there’s no telling what metals will do.

Bonds held the 200 D MA and posted a well-formed outside reversal. Lower oil should be good for bonds… if it goes lower.

Bitcoin has been rangebound since Feb 1. I’m not thrilled to see an island of blue indicating a sustained rejection of this rally. Also the longer the range remains in force the greater the possibility distribution of risk from strong to weak hands is still ongoing.

I can’t be too critical of bitcoin for failing to rally. Gold is just as lethargic but then again gold is at all-time highs and bitcoin is down 50% in dollars, 75% in ounces of gold.

my vibe

A new narrative has fingers pointing to Lloyd’s of London and Starmer for causing the oil spike. It goes like this:

On March 1 Lloyd’s canceled all risk insurance covering shipping in the Persian Gulf. Fine. No problem. On March 3, Trump replaced it under the aegis of the US Development Corp. at “reasonable rates.” The US plan also includes U.S. Navy escorts. However, no ships have accepted Trump’s offer because in part, analysts from JPMorgan stated the U.S. lacks sufficient “firepower” (reserves) to cover the estimated $350 billion potentially needed to get tankers moving again.

Fwiw… the US has a far higher sovereign credit rating (AAA?) and a much lower risk weighting than Lloyd’s of London (corporate A rated S&P)…. $350 billion was a mere bag of shells for Ukraine. At any rate let’s keep going.

In a March 9 article titled “Industry doubts Trump plan to insure Gulf oil tankers as Iran war halts transit”, the FT said, “[energy and insurance specialists] have expressed significant skepticism about the [Trump] plan.” For the record, Trump asked Starmer for naval assistance protecting US bases in the Gulf in early February. Starmer didn’t reply for several weeks. Trump blames Starmer for excessive damage to Bahrain and Qatar which Trump asked him to protect and Starmer ghosted him. Connecting the dots: Starmer and Lloyd’s, … and JPM?

This going to make a great book 20 years from now.

little wings (rebecca Lovell)

beautiful rendition of an old Dolly Parton tune

oil traders watching X for war news

night all… good luck in Asia…

JJ

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Charts and data CQG and Bloomberg… occasional cartoons by Gary Larson

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