저자: Kevin · 외국인
요약 보기
미군 병력 추가 파견과 호르무즈 해협 봉쇄로 유가가 급등(브렌트 약 110달러, 시나리오상 150~180달러)하고 있다. 인플레이션 우려로 금리 인상 기대(10월까지 약 50bp)가 커지며 미국채 10년물이 4.39%대로 오르고 있다. 이는 나스닥 약세와 사모신용 위험으로 이어지며 경기침체 확률을 높인다고 주장한다. S&P500은 200일선 아래이며 JP모건은 6,000대 초반까지 하락 가능성을 언급했다.
다듬은 글
Well, Donald Trump is now sending more troops to the Middle East literally a day after yesterday well yesterday Donald Trump said we're not going to put troops on the ground though maybe we won't tell you because you know, it could be part of the element of surprise. Keep in mind numbers-wise last week we initiated the sending of 2200 Marines and 2500 Sailors to the Middle East from Japan the USS Tripoli and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.
They're expected to show up at the end of next week so around Friday Saturday Sunday is the 27th 28th 29th. However, today we just announced that we were sending an additional 2200 to 2500 troops well Marines via the USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th MEU to Central Command. This is coming at the same time as we're hearing rumors that the Trump administration might want to take over cargo Island.
Talk about that in just a moment. But before we could do that there are expectations that it could take upwards of a month to be ready to actually take over the island which creates other problems including fed rate hikes. See Saudi Arabia argues that if this oil shock goes into the middle of April we'll probably see oil at $150 per barrel which Goldman Sachs says is recessionary.
If we end up getting towards the end of April they see oil getting to $180 per barrel. And unfortunately these inflationary impetuses impetuses impetuses whatever they are leading this the broader bond market to now start pricing in rate hikes. Now on Tuesday I made a video saying prepare for the potential of rate hikes that Jerome Powell and the ECB would start talking about rate hikes.
Unfortunately both of them did in the days afterwards. The ECB yesterday talking about their base case seeing inflation up 0.7% above their previous 1.9 estimate moving it up to about 2.5% which isn't great, somewhat leading to a potential four rate hikes. In fact, the European Central Bank said that they're going to start discussing rate hikes in their April meeting, but they probably wouldn't hike until it in April.
They'd probably wait until June, but that is now on the radar. So, the ECB's putting on the radar rate hikes. And now we have our futures markets indicating an over 30, well, let's actually see here. We can It's gotten even worse here since I last updated this. October 28th, 2026 is now showing about a 47% chance of rate hikes.
Actually, if I could just add this together here, it'd be about 48.4% chance of rate hikes. All this on the right over here would be one rate hike and this right here would be a 10% chance of two rate hikes. So, 50 basis points of hikes by October. So, again, this is what we warned about on Tuesday.
And then a bunch of people got mad at me in the comments saying like, "No way, Kevin. There's no way." And I'm like, "Come on, folks. I I like I study this a lot." Uh and unfortunately, now the futures market is starting to price that in. One place that you're seeing this manifest is actually a place that in the Alpha report this morning we said, "Listen, the only way the only way we go bullish on the Qs today." And this was blunt in the Alpha report, "is if Treasury yields come down because they were rising this morning." And I'm like, "This isn't good." Unfortunately, exactly the opposite happened in the Treasury market.
Rather than yields coming down, we saw yields rise as the market is starting to price in rate hikes. That led the NASDAQ 100 to sell down off our opening at about 592 down to about 586. The S&P 500, uh, not looking at the Q's there, but just looking at the S&P 500, uh, is now trading below its 200-day moving average.
Uh, and JP Morgan warns that if we have any kind of sell-off below that 200-day moving average, which is what we're seeing right now, so in other words, we need to rebound to prevent this. JP Morgan says the S&P 500 is likely to not find support until the lower 6,000 range. You can see that document right here that I was sent.
If the S&P 500 sell-off gains momentum below the 200-day moving average at $6,600, strong support may not materialize until essentially an additional 10% correction down to the low 6,000 range. They're lowering their S&P 500 outlook for the rest of the year. They believe that higher oil prices can lead to demand destruction and ultimately increase the odds of recession, which is that R word that we don't want to hear about.
Now, obviously, the concern is the longer this goes on, the greater the risk to the economy. Saudi Arabia, just a dive into this for a moment here, keeping also in mind that the oil shock that we've seen so far is already worse than what we saw in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Obviously, the Gulf is more important for oil, but what we're seeing here is the previous all-time high for oil was $146 per barrel in July of 2008, which happened right before the recession as Lehman Brothers collapsed in September thanks to the excesses related to the real estate market.
Now, some people are saying history may not repeat, but it might rhyme, that you could have excesses in private credit coincide with potentially new all-time highs for oil, highs that we've never seen before. There's an energy consulting firm here that says $200 a barrel is not out of the realm of possibility.
Gulf futures tied to Oman crude, which are less liquid, are currently shooting past $166 per barrel uh in uh futures pricing. Uh and we're starting to see options uh indicate more bullish bets on oil getting to about 130 to 140, which we weren't seeing about 2 weeks ago. Saudi officials say they expect that oil prices could hit $150 if we get into the second week of April and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
The problem is, in order to actually get the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, we're going to need more Marines. And that's exactly why the Pentagon is sending more Marines. Issue is, we're not expecting the first batch to show up until the end of next week, and the next batch, which is coming from uh California, could take even longer to show up, probably closer to that April 3rd, 4th, 5th weekend, which is after we get the next set of jobs data.
Now, Trump is also thinking about taking over Kharg Island to force Iran as a leverage point to open up the strait because 90% of Iran's crude oil goes through here. However, military intelligence suggests, quote, "We need about 1 month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes to take the island and then get them by the balls and use it for negotiations," a source with knowledge of the White House thinking said.
Now, the Wall Street Journal had a whole piece about how we could potentially escort tankers through uh the Strait of Hormuz, but the big risk that we face are that in this sort of fishbowl that you're in going through the strait where you've got these cliffs around you, the risk is that small ribs or smaller boats laden with explosives can just run out essentially or overwhelm by using multiple of them, overwhelm destroyers or escort ships that we use in the region, which is exactly why the Marine Expeditionary Unit is likely being sent to the region so you could line troops along the shore while ships pass through.
Problem obviously with this is it really puts your troops under the risk of Iranian fire since Iran knows the more and longer they can keep this war going on, the more likely Iran spikes oil prices and as a result the greater chance of a global recession, which unfortunately is exactly what Iran wants.
They would love nothing more than to damage the global economy and then they could essentially take credit and say, "Hey, this is why you should never attack Iran." Now, Iran has sometimes also a self-destructing sort of MO. Uh, the Iranian regime has executed more than 2,000 Iranians in 2025. That's the most that they've executed since 1989 and that's in addition to like the 6,000 people that were killed in protests in December and January.
Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hormuz escorts may begin once those amphibious units are in the region, but again, that's going to take two to four weeks to happen, uh, which unfortunately aligns with this uh, Saudi Arabia article in the journal that indicates we're probably looking at 150 to 180 barrel, uh, not being out of the question and Brent futures bets currently hitting the 130, 40, and 150 level for April, as it doesn't look like the war is coming anywhere close to to an end.
This is obviously inflationary, and it's exactly why we're starting to see markets price in rate hikes rather than cuts. Now, what you really ought to focus on today is not just the fact that Brent has now moved up another $2 up to about $110 per barrel from about the 108 where we started the day. But, the real concern is the fact that the 10-year Treasury yield has moved from about 4.34%, which is like 10 basis points higher than what we had yesterday, up to now almost 4.4.
We're sitting at 4.39. And the more pressure we see on the 10-year or the 2-year, and the more of this sort of bearish yield curve flattening that we're getting, more pressure on private credit, which is that very similar rhyming ticking time bomb that we saw in 2008. Except then again, it was real estate.
Now, it's private credit. I actually think real estate is a unique hedge because my base case is that by 2032, whether it's because we have a recession in the near term or in the longer term, by 2032, I think rates will be lower than they've ever been before. I actually think we'll have lower mortgage rates than we had in 2020, which seems remarkable because during that panic, we cut rates to zero, and people were, you know, including myself, were were getting loans at like 2.75%.
I actually think by 2032, we'll see even lower rates. But, that's just my opinion. That's just my speculation, and it's one of the reasons why I think hedging by exposing yourself to real estate right now is is such a strong bet because that's not where the bubble sits now. Bubble sits elsewhere, but it's triggered potentially by, again, rising inflationary concerns, rate hikes.
This increase in the 10-year accelerates the pain in private credit, especially since a lot of businesses are zombie businesses that probably deserve to go bankrupt, uh but they're drowning in debt and rates are going up and not down. Now, just so you can understand what a bear flattening is. A bear flattening is when yields on both the 10-year and the 2-year are rising, which they are.
The 2-year's up about 9.1%. The 10-year's up about or basis points. The 10-year's up about 10.7. We're almost at a four handle on the 2-year. That has been leading the 10-2 spread over the last few weeks to flatten down. You could see this sort of let's go to like the three-month chart over here. You could see this fall over here from about 0.72 on that yield spread down.
Usually that going down is less of a sign of a recession risk, but it's bearish for the economy when it's occurring because rates are going up rather than down. You'd rather have a bull flattening where rates are going down because inflation concerns are going down and then you can actually encourage you know, the writing of the private credit ship and encourage risk-taking in the stock market or otherwise.
Unfortunately, because that's the opposite of what's happening right now, we are seeing the Qs suffer, which is exactly what we expected in the alpha report this morning. I hate to say it, but I gave a very blunt warning in the alpha report this morning and I said that you should watch TLT. If TLT goes down, don't make an upside bet on the Qs.
In fact, when we saw the Qs move up right here and we were live in our course member live stream, I said, "This may not be stable because we're not actually seeing yields come down. When yields go down, this line goes up. And so, we're able to use this as a canary to indicate oopsy doopsies, not great." So, we've got a confluence of problems here.
Troops are going to take time to show up. They create risk for American lives, but what we're indicating is even though Trump is saying, "Oh, yeah, we're not going to tell you if we put troops on the ground. Maybe we will, maybe we won't, but we're not going to tell you." And the timing elements that it's going to take two probably to four weeks to actually get the situation uh well, to get troops in the region.
We're in a bit of a poopy-doopy place where we could actually see Brent crude, as Saudi Arabia puts it, or UBS or others, that if this war continues into April, we're probably looking at substantially higher oil prices. And that they've been suppressed so far under the belief that this war will end or this incursion will end, much like Operation Midnight Hammer last year, 12-day war, will end in a short period of time, less than 30 days.
Well, we're coming up on our 30-day anniversary next week of this war already. And so far, there's no end in sight. Which is bearish. If we get into April and this war is still going on, which at this point is likely, and oil prices and treasury yields continue to rise, we continue to price in rate hikes, our bear-bull scale is going to continue to decline, and the odds of recession, unfortunately, continue to rise.
This is not ideal, but it is the latest of what's going on. Now, is it possible that the takeover of Kharg Island will end up forcing Iran to negotiate? Maybe. That's the hope. We take over the island, it squeezes 90% of their you know, their oil production, and hopefully that encourages Iran to negotiate.
The problem is, not only is it hard to do this, whether you commando raid the island or you have a naval blockade or whatever, the problem is not just the American lives that could be lost in this, but the problem is also that it may not work. You could take over Kharg Island, you could destroy Kharg Island, and Iran may not want to negotiate and enable the reopening of the strait.
Because Iran knows the longer this war goes on, the more the global economy is damaged. And if we end up triggering a nasty recession that Iran can claim claim credit for and say, "Look, you might have better bombs and a better military, but we destroyed your economy. Don't mess with Iran in the future." Then Iran takes home a pretty big win.
It hurts the global economy, so it's sort of like, you know, ripping off your nose despite your face because you know, Iran will have a nasty recession as well. Uh but, uh it sucks for everyone. Anyway, that's my take today. Appreciate y'all watching and we'll see y'all in the next tim.
Comments 0