The Fallout from the Middle East🚀 (Full MM version)
Hi Masterminds, welcome to a Monday Market Update. I’m going to make this one reasonably quick, but it’s all about what’s going on geopolitically. Very similar to what we saw with Russia Ukraine, where we’re talking about how this could quickly spiral out of control if Russia invades, and sort of the historical implications of when a, you know, a larger nation or even a bigger nation attacking a smaller nation type dynamic does happen in modern history tends to take markets. It’s almost like selling cannons. And what is it? I’ve forgotten the saying it’s really really annoying me But essentially you want to sell leading into the event and then buy just after the event and again I hate talking about you know markets during a time and you just go on, you know, Twitter right now or X, whatever it’s called, and it is just a deplorable place today.
You kind of just have to turn it off and walk away, but it is very difficult because there’s a lot of a lot of signal and a lot of input just filtering through, but it’s pretty horrific what’s going on in in Israel and also Palestine currently, and the broad implications are incredibly serious for the macro landscape.
And the charts in a sec One, this really does show and it’s maybe not something that anyone’s really thinking, it really does show the United States, the American empire in serious decline. I think this is, it started with Afghanistan and then it moved on to Ukraine and Russia, you know, Russian foot and bold and they could actually do that.
Then you’ve got Israel, the last kind of democracy in the Middle East, heavily backed by the United States. And then you’ve got Iran feeding Hezbollah. Hamas and they’ve just attacked Israel in one of essentially Israel’s 9 11. So in terms of people killed and how it just affects things, you know, Saudi Arabia and Israel are actually going to broker a groundbreaking alliance partnership type situation.
That’s now off the table. It’s really erupted and this can spiral and fracture out of control very, very quickly. And again, it just shows me that the United States is not the feared hyper power that it once was. They are plugging gaps and leaks everywhere now. And you just have to think, what is this signal next?
And if the Americans are distracted so totally by Ukraine and now Israel trying to hold everything together and again plug those leaks and gaps, their resources are stretched very, very thin militarily. Let’s say China wants to hit Taiwan right now. Does this seem like a really good time to do that?
I’d say, yes, absolutely. What if North Korea now wants to you know, say that America’s distracted and weak? in decline, all that, and goes, let’s hit South, South Korea. You can also look at India, Pakistan, and look at the Balkans with Serbia, Kosovo, and their surrounding nations. This is a really dangerous situation in the world, and I think we are now, what Israel signals, what Russia and Ukraine signal, first of all, and then.
So, Afghanistan again, I think was that that signal to the world and then Russia took that. So, the calamitous exit from Afghanistan, Russia, okay, this, this might be our time trying to sort of get the same thing. And then we’ve got now Israel blowing up the Middle East or Hamas and the, the, the militants around it, but Iran is signaling that they’re backing those.
And there’s people around Israel that want to do harm to Israel, Iran hates Israel as well. So does that bring the Americans against Iran and create a larger war in the region? It could spiral very, very quickly. And again, I think this signals the world is going into a much, much dangerous, more volatile place.
We’ve been very, very lucky to essentially live in a relatively peaceful world since the Second World War. You know, Vietnam and a few other things happening along the way, of course. But yeah, this next, it’s the fourth turning, it really is. It’s that reset moment we’re coming with, that empire is I don’t think it’s the end for America at all.
I think this might be that, that jolt that they need to flip things, flip the script a little bit here. But yeah, it’s looking very, very dangerous. I probably digressed there a lot, but what it, what it means for markets, in my view, is a bit of fear, a bit of panic. Like we saw with Russia, Ukraine, we’re going to see oil go up again.
That’s going to increase inflation fears. We’re going to see those scarce, harder assets like gold and now Bitcoin, I think going to get a really strong bid over the next little phase. But I think in the short term, it’s going to be a knee jerk reaction, flight to safety, like stocks are going to hit, oil’s going to go up.
I would expect U. S. Treasuries could get a bid you know, because we know yields are going out of control, so obviously you Treasuries are getting sold off, so does that bring in capital because people are fearful when they buy those Treasuries to lock in that yield, or are they looking at the U.S. looking a bit weak? Teetering, and they don’t want to buy those treasures. Instead, they might look at buying gold or Bitcoin. In my view, this is a really wild setup, and even though the world’s kind of feeling very volatile, it’s a wild setup for Bitcoin to actually really thrive and do what it’s supposed to do, and be that neutral, decentralized, store of value currency in a world just going a bit mad on, on essentially everything.
So, A lot of things are coming to the head. And again, I’ve digressed a little bit. You guys are probably more talking crypto thinking rich, but I wanted to give you my thoughts on where things are going. a little bit concerned on how things are going. I’m not a geopolitical expert by any means, you know, never served in the military overseas or, you know, in a strategic sense or anything like that.
This is just stuff that I’m picking up over the journey and it helped us identify when Russia was going to hit Ukraine and how it kind of would go from that. So I’m, I’m kind of trying to play it, not with what we’re seeing right now, what are the second and third order effects, what’s down the line and it, it has very similar dynamics to Russia and Ukraine.
We know that due to the world economy. The thrust of inflation out of control, it increased, it increased the scarcity of a lot of these assets like oil and energy and whatnot that we use every single day in our economy. And I don’t see that changing. I think of the Middle East, this escalated even bigger.
And I think there’s a strong possibility that it will do that because Israel is going to. Absolutely raise Gaza and just ride right through us in retribution for this 9 11 event that they’ve got, you know, what are the consequences of that down the road? And I think this is going to turn in most of the Middle East against them.
It’s been a relatively peaceful place for a little while. But Iran’s agitating, agitating Turkey’s now looking to do some things. Yeah, so again, we’re just going to wait for this player. But in the short term, this is really a case of look at those safe havens and I would put it. Crypto here.
And Bitcoin up here. So they are two different things in my mind right now. Bitcoin is that store of value, decentralized medium of exchange, currency and whatnot. You’ve got crypto over here, essentially like a speculative tech stock bubble. We know, we have strong convictions on that asset class and where it could go, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
But Bitcoin is in a different league of its own in these kind of environments in my view. We could see a strong bid on Bitcoin, dominance absolutely ripped through the ceiling. Maybe we get up to 29, 30, 000 while crypto is just getting crushed because no one wants to put their money in that when the world’s going through geopolitical issues.
So, we have to think in those terms. And I, I think, we’ve seen this morning that gold’s got a really strong bid. I’ll just go through some charts to see where we’re at. So Bitcoin you know, I want to say unsurprisingly, but my view is right now, Bitcoin is actually going to go sideways until the US stock market comes open.
We get a bit more information. I just think we go down a little bit. We just go sideways. We consolidate until we get more information. So we can really. Digest what’s going on, but broadly, I think the big one looks really, really good to move back to 29, the short term. I think this just looks really, really nice directionally.
I think it literally follows these arrows and goes up, you know, potentially higher than 30, 000, depending on what happens. Yeah, that’s, that’s essentially where I see it. We, we, we need to remember as well, grappling with the 200 day and week moving average just above us at 29, 000, 20, We really can’t get bullish for those higher prices until we’re on top of this incredibly key resistance.
Right now, we’re grappling underneath it, wick, wick, wick, wick, wick. So, it would make sense if we have a bit of a cool off, maybe come down to low 27, 000 yeah, low 27, 000 again. And move through that you know, come back actually following with this arrow, maybe 27. 5, not all the way down to the low, but just in this, and there is a triangle that I’m watching or pennant to start to start to form a lower time frame.
So I’ll have that drawn there, might even validate down here, I’ll just double check that. But yeah, I think just holding patterns from a viewpoint, you don’t make too many. knee jerk reactions, but I wouldn’t be trading altcoins. I would be concerned if Bitcoin starts hitting down to low 27, 000s and your alerts start to pop off.
I think if it drops beneath that 27, 000, we’re going to be in a bit of trouble here. And we go down to maybe that 26, 000 26, 000 low. But right now, I think we just have to, again, just be very cautious, play the ball where it lies. If you’re exposed to leveraged trades or short term risk, I would say just pull back from that.
Make sure you’re just protecting yourself a little bit here. Ethereum low. I just, I’m putting Ethereum in the crypto basket right now. The only thing I’d be looking at holding at all is Bitcoin. Everything else looks a bit suspect, so I believe the US stock market right now is closed. And it had a pretty strong close there, but I think on the back of war years and geopolitical issues and the United States are starting to flex a little bit.
And I think we’re coming to a point too that the US has to feel that today. need to flex. They need to show that they’re still a super, well, no, everyone knows they’re a superpower, but everyone needs to see that they can handle everything that’s going on. They are going to defend their allies, which is Israel.
And they’re going to come to the rescue of anyone that needs it within their interests and their sphere of influence. Because right now I think there’s a bit of blood in the water and if things go the way they could you know, we could see a lot more frozen wars. that have been, you know, suspended for a long time.
I discussed the different places at the beginning. Some actors could get very uppity and think this is their time to flex. You know, when that, when a superpower is distracted, weakened, divided, makes it, it makes a ton of sense. So we have to be very, very careful where we’re putting our money right now.
And that’s just my view. So S&P, I think S& P can pretty much come down and nuke through these levels. That’s just my view. Might come up and retest here. I think this week’s going to wreck bulls and bears just significantly. We could have a rally but I think we chop and then grind down. Further, that’s just my view of what I’m saying.
So this is the future so far. It hasn’t opened down really at all which is, which is fascinating. So we need to just be prepared. It could be a non event and markers don’t really worry about this, but I disagree. I think if oil spiking and whatnot, that would be very interesting. We’ll look at oil in a second.
I just wanted to have a look at gold because it’s had a really strong bid this morning. And this is a good case, a good test case. Thank you. But whether Bitcoin is deciding to uncorrelated and do its own thing like it has been doing, because gold’s been nuking, stocks have been going down, and all that, Bitcoin’s actually been growing higher so Bitcoin hasn’t been following gold either.
But gold has had a significant rally here, and I think this might be a sign that the safe haven is kind of coming back into vogue. Is Bitcoin going to get a bid here? It hasn’t so far this morning, but it hasn’t dropped either. It’s just been sort of meandering and going sideways. So, interesting times.
I’d be very interested if gold starts breaking up into this channel and moving higher, then that real safe haven trade could be on. But again, this is just a digestion period where the market’s trying to tell us something, or we’re just, I’m not sure what it is just yet, but I suspect it’s going to be pretty violent in terms of risk until we know more.
If a lot of these Arab nations decide to maybe stay out of this and wait for Israel to do its thing and wait for the, you know, maybe more outrage to come from the Palestinian side, because what Israel is about to do maybe then we’ll see a bit more agitation. I think it’s a very dynamic situation.
We just can’t be too sure of anything. I look at yields so far, not really seeing too much of a big coming for yields, but I know the bond market is closed today. So that is interesting to note. So I might, this might start to play out over Tuesday, Wednesday. So just be, be aware of that. So yeah, hold off any risk at the moment, I think, and wait for maybe really nice entries that give you maybe like a, you know, maybe even start to think about some of these alkalis.
to 20 percent sell off. That’s kind of what I’m thinking. In the shorter term, and I’ve removed I think I’ve said this a million times, I think I’ve removed a lot of risk this morning from my portfolio, not only holding Bitcoin at the moment, it’s the only thing I’m really rather keen on at the moment based on the contrarian store of value trade.
I don’t think it’s behaving like a tech stock at the moment at all. Let’s look at WTI. Yeah, so significant rally in West Texas oil, which is essentially the barometer for crude oil prices and we’ve seen off that low there, 6%. So this could really ramp higher based on the geopolitical fears if there’s a war in the Middle East, a significant war, which looks like there will be.
Oil will be disrupted. I know the US has just moved a carrier group to the Mediterranean to help with Israel evacuations, all that kind of stuff around Gaza. So, yeah, this can, this can escalate pretty quickly. And we just got to, you know, if there’s a declaration of war between Israel and Iran you know, something like that if the American personnel starts to be attacked by the Iranians quite openly, then, Yeah, we’re going to see some pretty hairy stuff in markets, I think.
So please, please, please, please just pay attention, have your alert set, remove risk. Again, the only thing that I would be interested in looking at here is gold and Bitcoin. Everything else, just step away from it. Even Bitcoin, please be very aware. It’s still, you know, immature, and it has been known in recent times to behave like a tech stock, and it is higher risk.
But I think there is arguably a really great case of Bitcoin right now to perform really strongly. It doesn’t mean you can’t hedge that risk and manage that to the downside. So guys, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. There’s some thoughts around Macaron and where I sit. You know, I’ll probably paste this, paste this, probably will post this into the rest of the groups as well.
So if you’re watching this from this group, thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions, make sure to post them and I’ll be happy to answer. I know this is a mastermind client but just, yeah, post your questions, have me answer about how I’ve come around my thoughts. And of course I didn’t check on a really important chart, which I’ll just quickly look at.
And that’s the U. S. dollar. I think the U. S. dollar has a really strong case here. To rally because of fundamental reasons, not because of technicals and whatnot. And all through this phase, I mean, you could see bearish diversions pop through here. I thought this was a really strong bearish divergence to, again, it still is.
But I think the U. S. dollar actually has a pretty strong reason to rally here. Those safe havens will get a bit of a bid because capital will look in, in my views, let’s say stock, stock market use that capital. That’s being sold off has to go somewhere. Where is that going? Is that going into bonds?
If you’re still going out, they’re not going into bonds. Where are they going? Probably going into the US dollar because people will want investors to sit this one out until the dust settles. And then they can feel a bit more confident and move back in. And if it’s not just going to the U. S. dollar as well, we’re seeing gold move up, we’re seeing Bitcoin go up, well then you know a lot of the capital is being sold off for gold.
Maybe silver going up too, you might see that. And maybe Bitcoin again, a bit more speculative on the side. But yeah, there is reason to think the dollar can actually still rally here, even though this looks ridiculous just based on fundamental reasons. You know, the dollar rose significantly throughout, you know, multiple turbulent times and, and through recent military operations.
I’m pretty sure it went up quite strongly during the Russian Ukraine part of the beginning. So yeah and I’m just trying to remember, was it to sell the drums, buy the cannons. That was the saying, though the war drums leading up to the event, you want to sell into that, and then if you want to buy the cannons when the war starts, and again, I hate talking about markets, and Israel and whatnot has kind of caught a lot of people off guard and weren’t prepared for a surprise attack, so maybe that analogy isn’t, isn’t worth thinking about, but generally when these situations with Russia, Ukraine as soon as the the war got started in earnest, the worst of the sell off was actually over and then a lot of the the turbulence was in energy markets and foreign exchange.
So that’s the way I’m looking at it. All right, guys, hope you’ve enjoyed this. Let’s catch up, stay safe, hug your family, give them a kiss and go out and get some fresh air, get some sun. So have a great day.