hodl and wait
market vibes
In the news “AMD is down 9% (ht not your advisor) after earnings. Lilly soars on strong outlook. Burry warns of Bitcoin sparking a cascading plunge across levered assets. I doubt that. A trillion just isn’t what it used to be. A cascade may be imminent but bitcoin will be a straw not the camel’s back.
Stephen Miran said US needs to cut rates 1% in 2026. That means a 50 bps cut coming in June.
In energy, the US sent $500 million from oil sales to Caracas (BBG). The Venezuelan restart is moving along. Marathon Petroleum (NYSE: MPC) beat fourth-quarter earnings expectations by a mile as refining margins quadrupled in the latter part of 2025. That is a bizarre statement!
Here is the 3/2/1 crack. The only way to quadruple margins in a single quarter in a falling market like this is to buy super cheap crude. And… who is selling crude super cheap? Hmmm.
in the markets
It took 3 days for gold to reestablish balance following the public beatdown of silver. April gold prices are now circa $600 from the highs and $600 off the lows. It seems likely gold has found equilibrium at $5,000 a nice round number and it will either depart forthwith for new high ground or oscillate here for a while discounting the rest of the quarter.
Recently I wrote: “Gold has no enemies.” The obvious takeaway today is that powerful financial forces do not want gold to go up. They may forecast higher prices but if gold does trade $8000/toz as JPM thinks it will, that would imply a chaotic world shunning USD FX and paper assets. It is far easier to cosmeticize gold prices than it is to make paper assets more valueable so… expect more lip service and beatdowns in the future. As Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy.”
A maxim I use: low open interest equals low supply (inventory). New buying met with rising open interest creates paper supply. Gold has almost unlimited headroom to add paper supply in this technical set up either up or down. This morning, Comex gold open interest is approaching the November 2018 lows of 408K. These are levels supporting prices years ago circa $1000/ toz.
