War, Tweets, and Market Chaos: How to Decode the News Cycle
(00:00.628)
Okay, I’m breaking out the watchdog on Wall Street secret decoder ring on war and news cycles and well basically everything all of the above. Let’s just leave it at that. It is nuts out there trying to keep track of everything that’s going on. Not to mention having to fact check everything several times over. Yesterday case and
point, you have the Energy Department putting out a tweet telling us that the United States Navy is going to start escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz that sent oil prices tanking, fell off a cliff until that tweet was deleted and we were told it was a fugazi.
It’s like that your best if you’re a trader out there, you know, and again, I don’t recommend that at all. But if you are, you’re probably your best source of information is truth social because they are just driving markets here, there and everywhere. And it’s interesting, too, because there were some funky trades that went along with those announcements yesterday. Let’s just say a few people made a great sum of money. Anyway, we’ll get into that.
another podcast talk a little bit about insider trading. So the President, President, I want to kind of go over his presser that he gave at Doral. We are now on because again, we’ve been given various different reasons behind the war and I, I know I get listeners out there that
You know are upset with me. It’s all gonna be well and good. It’s gonna be awesome It’s gonna be fantastic. All we need to do is we’re gonna try to do as much destruction as we possibly can and that’s the the ultimate goal well, I Don’t I’m not a big fan quite honestly of shifting shifting goals Okay, and narratives that means to me that you weren’t really sure what you were doing quite frankly and That’s what everybody’s getting
(02:21.102)
Trump is now, well, this is what he told people in the press conference that he wants an internal regime change in Iran. wants to train want them to do it on their own. We’re just not seeing it. We’re not seeing any sort of uprising at all. The Tomahawk missile question that was asked to him, obviously, he knew the answer to it. He just
he didn’t want to give it. I really, you know, it’s quite upsetting to many people and rightfully so. I’ve talked about it here on the podcast. I really don’t like getting into it again. War is hell.
War is hell, war is an awful thing. Terrible things happen in war.
I think, you know, again, I kind of want to believe that our country, if we make a mistake, a horrific mistake in our engagement of war, there’s nothing wrong with being honest and letting everybody know. think pretending that you don’t know makes things a hell of a lot worse. That’s that’s just me. That’s just me. The MAGAs will tell me otherwise.
This I found interesting as well. The fact that Trump wasn’t even calling it a war, he was calling it an excursion. An excursion. When I think of the word excursion, that’s basically my wife and I getting away for a weekend, maybe in Miami for an excursion. But that’s what the latest framing of this thing is. It’s now an excursion.
(04:14.766)
The Putin thing. Putin wants to be helpful on the Iran war. Had a lengthy conversation with him and it was great and he wants to be helpful. And again, we’re now no more sanctions on Russian oil. They’re able to sell whatever they like. The interesting thing is, that the Russians came out the next day and they’re like, what are you talking about? We never said that. We never said that. We are most certainly on Iran’s side.
Trump also said the straight of Hormuz bottleneck doesn’t really affect the United States and that’s just Not accurate by any stretch The other thing I wanted to touch on when it comes to this is that it’s actually been used several times by the secretary of war Pete Hegseth basically alluding to the
Marine barracks bombing that was that killed 241 Americans back in 1983. And CSAC actually suffered more than more than Pete Hegs actually cite that. Yeah, Lindsey Graham did as well. But that’s not surprising as justification for what’s going on. I just want to remind everybody that whole Marine barracks bombing situation.
forget what was going on at that point in time in Lebanon basically had a civil war situation. You had the PLO there. You had Israel trying to kick out the PLO. There was a massacre that took place. We were there. They were taking potshots. was actually embassies were hit first thing. Our embassy was hit first. So like the French embassy was hit back at that point in time and then
obviously the the barracks bombing. We were also that was kind of this was also involved with the whole Iran Contra situation. We were selling. That’s not really selling. Yeah, basically sell. Yes, we’re selling weapons to Iran. We were selling weapons to Iran where that money was coming back and we were giving it to the Contras. Again, and which
(06:42.958)
the Iranians were heavily involved in this barracks bombing. was a very, it was a pretty dark spot on the Reagan administration without a doubt. I think it was probably, know, everybody remember watching those Oliver North court cases back in the day. Another item that Trump mentioned in his presser, noticeable.
Basically protected himself. I feel to some degree. He said he went to war against Iran on the Council of Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio. Now the first three I’ll go along with the first three. I’ll go along with because that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. But then again, you’re going to war on the Council.
of your son-in-law, Steve Witkoff, two real estate developers, and Pete Hegseth.
and Marco Rubio, but Marco Rubio’s public statements, I’m sorry, they don’t really jibe with that. So again, you got to understand why things are said and put out, it’s cover your buttocks, right? Things don’t go away. Well, I’m just listening to the people around me. It’s the McKinsey defense, if you will. We talked about that here and how corporate America does that.
Some of the messages we’re getting right now when it comes to energy and oil, we had the International Energy Agency proposing the largest release of oil reserves in its history. And its history, 400 million barrels with more than double the agency’s biggest prior release. That was after that was 2022. They put 182 million barrels on the market after Russia launched its invasion.
(08:51.24)
of Ukraine. Have that been information on you? I’m going to try to go over the tug of war that you’re seeing right now.
Iran right now. Iran right now controls the straight of hormones. They control it. In fact, in fact, and this is not really being widely reported. They are currently exporting more oil than before the war.
Now, Trump put out a tweet talking about how he’s, you know, not going to stand for the straight being shut down, not going to happen. And he actually, so, you know, basically I’m paraphrasing China. You can thank me. They were helping China out with this. Now China is getting their oil.
(09:47.896)
China is getting their oil. All right, like I said, Iran is exporting more. They decide what ships go through. We don’t have any control over the Strait of Hormuz at this point in time. They had a briefing, two-hour briefing that they had members of Congress attend. The briefings are closed, they’re classified. Information is…
getting out, obviously not the classified stuff, but.
(10:26.082)
Basically from the looks of things right now, it doesn’t like again this like I said, this is fluid it could change It could change The current goals do not involve destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program
Not gonna, that would involve, that would involve boots on the ground. That would involve special forces for us to go ahead and do that. Again, like I said, that could change. They recognize that regime change is also something that’s not gonna happen. Again, I wanna remind everybody that these were things, these were some of the reasons we have been given
over the past week, week and a half in regards to, you know, why we are doing this. So basically, from my understanding right now, my understanding right now is that the goals are to destroy as much of their missiles and boats and drone factories as we possibly can, then get some sort of
settlement or have some conversation in Geneva or via I don’t know somewhere and we’ll agree to disagree and walk away. The problem is what’s next.
What happens after that?
(12:06.434)
We can declare victory and say we knocked them down a peg or two. Yes, we can do that. But I’m just, I’m gonna play, you know, I’m gonna play Ayatollah here. Okay, what would you do?
What would you do if you were the Ayatollah?
I would be working as quickly as possible to try to get my hands on a weapon.
I’d be working as quickly as possible. Look to be cutting a deal with North Korea, whatever it may be.
Whatever it may be, that would be my thing I would be doing first and foremost, okay? Again, these are consequences.
(13:01.004)
These are consequences. And when I talk about when you engage in something you never know, you got to try to weigh all of the various different risks that are you going to do that are involved with the choice of your action. What does it mean? What could actually happen? And that’s that’s what out of doubt. That’s one of them. And like I said before, the straight of Hormuz is there’s no plan right now. We don’t know what we are going to do.
So, okay, again, you got to weigh all of these different things. You got the IEA proposing the largest ever release of strategic oil. are now I guess we we blew up a bunch of their their mining ships are their mind laying ships. There was a report that a ship in the straight had been hit by a projectile.
But as far as escorting ships, that’s not happening right now. The Navy has said that they’ve gotten daily requests from shipping companies and they’re telling them no. They’re telling them no. And I get it. I get it. United States Navy, again, billion dollar pieces of equipment. You’re gonna be a bit of a target to say the least going through the strait of Ormuz. I don’t think they want any part of it.
at this time. Iran has said today that they are actually now going to be looking at, you know, no more reciprocal hits, continual strikes and warns that they’re going to they’re going to try. The strategy is to drive oil to over $200 a barrel. You actually have investment firms right now going through and statements being made by Trump, the Energy Secretary Pete Hegseth,
Putting them into actual charts to try to track what is being said and make heads or tails out of what is going on. What do you take with all of that information, people? What do you take with all that? Well, first and foremost, it could change. It could change since I started this podcast, quite frankly. How does one handle their finances and their investments in such a climate?
(15:29.058)
what you do is you make sure that you own quality. You make sure you own quality. And like I said before, you swim out of the Rift Ride. It’s absolutely impossible to trade this by any stretch. By any stretch. Yeah, it’s a true story. A lot of the young people that work for me over here over the years and you know have…
conversations with them. And sometimes we make various different trading picks. And Sunday afternoon, was out to dinner in New York with some of them. And I told him, you know, I said, it’s gonna hit $120 a barrel, oil is gonna hit a 20 120 hours a barrel. And there’s going to be some conversation, some taco talk, you know, Trump always chickens out, and it’ll come back down. And sure enough.
Sure enough, I woke up bright and early Monday morning and I’m like, what in the world? Yeah. Yeah. I happen to be pretty good at deciphering what things direction things are gonna go. But you know what? I don’t act on them. I don’t. I don’t act on them because guess what? There’s just too much risk involved. You want to protect yourself. You own high quality companies and you don’t.
get involved with all of the tweets and the nonsense every single day. It’s absolutely impossible to track. Watchdog on wallstreet.com

