All’s Well That Ends In An Epic Mideast Death Match

Tension is running high on Monday with Trump stomping through Asia and the Saudis seemingly looking for excuses to go with war with Iran (or maybe it’s the other way around – that’s a perpetual chicken-egg dynamic).

That’s enough for some trepidation but of course not for a sell-off and indeed, we ended up at record highs. Nasdaq and small-caps outperformed to start the week:

30Y yield below 2.80 for the first time since late September:

Shit show (brushed 80.7bp matching Friday’s nadir):

USDJPY staged a notable rally overnight in a quick spike to 114.73, the highest since March 15, on Kuroda rhetoric among other things, but eventually gave it all back and then some during the US session:

Best day for gold since September 25, as geopolitical turmoil appears to be creating a safe haven bid – at least in the metals:

Crude of course surged and you can write your own script there, but we would encourage you to at least consider what we wrote first thing this morning (full post here):

Another thing I think it’s important to understand here – and this is something I told a trader who asked for my opinion on the Saudi purge as it was unfolding on Saturday evening – MbS is a foreign policy hawk. And ousting Prince Miteb bin Abdullah from his post as chief of the National Guard consolidates the kingdom’s entire military apparatus in the hands of the Crown Prince. This is going to create a scenario wherein Iran is cementing its grip on the Shiite crescent just as MbS (an architect of the Qatar embargo) is tightening his grip in the Kingdom.

Comments out of Nigeria’s oil minister suggesting they’re willing to cap output didn’t hurt either. As Bloomberg notes, the WTI skew slipped today to levels last seen in mid-September “as geopolitical risk premium floods market.”