Showing posts with label Crude Oil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crude Oil. Show all posts

Thursday, October 1, 2026

My Forecast for the Rest of 2026 | Larry Williams

US equities face near-term downside pressure and range-bound volatility amid poor breadth. Deteriorating internals—seen in the divergence between a strong NASDAQ, moderately strong S&P 500, and weak Dow and Russell 2000—suggest capital is rotating from quality blue chips into speculation, a pattern that has historically preceded broader sell-offs.


A major synchronized cyclical low and buying opportunity across the S&P 500, NASDAQ, Dow, and Russell is projected around Tuesday, October 27, ahead of the US presidential election. At the trough, focus capital on the index showing the strongest relative strength and greatest resistance to selling pressure during the decline.

Reference:
  
S&P 500 October Performance in Midterm Election Years.
Oct 27 (Tue) opens the midterm stretch that runs through Nov 10 (Tue), 2026, up in 22 of 24
midterm years (91.67%, avg. +2.6%, med. +3.2%). Misses: 1930 (−12.6%) and 1994 (−0.3%).  

 DJIA.

Russell 2000. 
 
 NASDAQ.
Detrended seasonal cycles isolate short-term periodic signals by removing longer-term trends, preventing distortion and enabling precise measurement of amplitude and timing.
See also:

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Judgment Day for the Middle of the Barrel | Larry Johnson

Karl Miller's latest private assessment, dated September 16 and titled "Judgment Day Has Arrived," makes a single governing claim about diesel, jet fuel, and kerosene: physical demand is now outrunning promptly deliverable supply. Not the price of the barrel—the delivery of it. In Miller's framing the market has crossed from a pricing problem, which money solves, to a deliverability problem, which money alone does not. The next phase, he argues, forces buyers to compete not just for fuel but for delivery capacity and for the cash to fund both at once.

 » US pumps are going dark. They started a war over oil and now they can't fill a truck. « 

He is describing something the market has already begun to confirm… US retail diesel crossed $6.00 a gallon on September 11, the first time on record, ten days after setting its prior all-time high. The ULSD crack spread
—the margin between diesel and crude—hit an intraday record above $108 a barrel on September 3, a level never before sustained, which tells you the scarcity is in the product, not the barrel. Distillate inventories fell to roughly 103 million barrels in late August, the lowest for that point in the calendar since 1951, and the EIA expects them to stay below 100 million through much of 2027. Miller wrote his brief into a market that is already validating its premise.
 
The Governing Condition
The spine of the assessment is deliberately simple. Take a recurring shortfall between what a market consumes and what can actually be delivered to it. Inventory and diverted cargoes can bridge that gap for a while. They cannot sustain it indefinitely. Once usable stocks are drawn down, the adjustment arrives as some combination of higher replacement cost, tighter allocation, and reduced activity—and it lands first on whichever buyer, terminal, or airport cannot secure its next delivery on time. Miller's phrase for the resolution is stark: supply must recover, or consumption must fall. There is no third option once the buffers are gone.

How a Diesel Shortage Becomes an Economic Crisis. 

To size the thing, he runs a central diesel stress case
—and here it is essential to be precise about what kind of number this is, because Miller himself is. He assumes a 1.6 million-barrel-a-day export disruption met by 50 percent replacement, leaving a residual gap of 0.8 mb/d. Held constant, that residual would demand about 72 million barrels of stock draw or demand destruction over 90 days, and 144 million over 180. These are explicitly illustrative sensitivities, not a measured global deficit—he flags repeatedly that product-level deficit magnitudes remain uncertain and that the figures are scenario mechanics rather than forecasts. The value is in the method, not the decimal.

And the method maps onto the real shocks cleanly enough. The IEA has identified three disruptions compounding at once: the Hormuz conflict removing on the order of an eighth of global supply, Russian diesel-export bans after drone strikes disabled roughly a quarter of its refining capacity, and winter distillate demand arriving into depleted tanks. Russia
—historically the world’s second-largest diesel exporter—banned exports outright on July 9 to keep fuel for its military. Miller's 1.6 mb/d is an assumption; the machinery pulling barrels off the water is not.

Inventory as a Countdown, not a Cushion
The sharpest operational move in the brief is to demote the national inventory number that dominates the headlines. A country-level buffer, Miller argues, tells you almost nothing about whether a specific business keeps running. What matters is site-level endurance: usable stock—excluding tank bottoms, unqualified material, and volumes already committed to other buyers—divided by the net daily draw. A terminal with a fixed usable volume and a widening deficit is on a clock, and a replacement cargo that arrives four days after the clock runs out may as well not have sailed. The same logic scales down to a hospital’s or data center’s backup generators, where a tank that reads "full" is really a countdown measured in days against a known burn rate.

This is why his diagnosis is that the shortage will be local and uneven long before it is general. A national statistic can look adequate while individual nodes fail, because fuel that exists in the wrong place, in the wrong grade, or under someone else's contract does not cover a missed delivery. This broader point is illustrated in the photos at the top of this article.

Credit Decides Who Gets the Cargo
Miller’s second key insight is financial. In a market where prices are high and delivery cycles are long, the buyer has to fund both simultaneously—pay up for the barrel and carry it for the extra days it spends in transit. He illustrates with a delivered-cost stack that runs, in his tight-to-acute range, from roughly $200 to nearly $300 a barrel once location premium, ocean freight, terminal handling, inland delivery, and financing are added on top of the benchmark—the equivalent of something like $4.80 to $6.90 a gallon before tax. Again, these are illustrative route economics, not quotes. But note that the market has already printed the middle of that range: $6 diesel is here, and California retail has been reported above $9.

Food and energy are two of the most immediate and visible inflation channels

The consequence he draws is the one worth keeping: credit becomes a supply constraint. A buyer can be perfectly solvent on annual earnings and still lack the working capital to prepay a larger cargo, meet collateral calls, and carry slower-moving inventory all at the same time. When that happens, the fuel goes to whoever can fund it, not whoever needs it most. Financially weaker importers can lose access before larger economies feel the squeeze at all.

Aviation and the Airport Problem
Jet A and Jet A-1 get their own treatment, because aviation has the least room to improvise. Qualified fuel has to be at the airport, in the hydrant, before the aircraft departs; a refinery barrel somewhere else is worthless to a delayed flight. Airlines are left to choose among buying costlier replacement fuel, tankering extra where it is operationally feasible, reworking schedules, or cancelling. Miller’s illustrative math — a $20-a-barrel step adding $60 million over 30 days for a 100,000-barrel-a-day buyer — is less important than the structural point: hedging can change what a carrier pays, but it cannot conjure a delivery that the airport cannot physically make. He is also careful to note that jet fuel and kerosene are the same cut of the barrel, so the aviation volume must not be double-counted as additional kerosene demand — a discipline that a lot of looser analysis ignores.

Where It Bites First, and How It Ends
The geography of risk, in his ranking, runs through the weakest local links: import-dependent Northwest Europe and inland markets facing winter demand on top of freight fuel; the US Gulf Coast, whose refining and export weight makes any local outage a global event; import-dependent emerging markets where foreign exchange and cargo finance can fail before physical stocks do; and airports with concentrated, hard-to-substitute supply. The common thread is that substitution is hardest exactly where the stakes are highest.

On duration, Miller offers no normalization date, and insists none can be honestly given. His planning horizon is 90 to 180 days with contingency held into 2027. The recovery point he stresses is one that calendar-watchers routinely miss: ending the shortage requires not a daily balance but a sustained surplus, because supply first has to stop the draw and then rebuild the usable buffer while still covering consumption. At a half-million-barrel-a-day surplus, rebuilding 30 million barrels of cover takes two months — and that clock only starts after supply overtakes demand. A market that merely returns to breakeven stays fragile.

The Verdict
Strip the brief to its load-bearing claim and it does not merely hold up against the tape—the tape is racing to catch up to it. This is, by every current metric, a middle-distillate physical-supply crisis: record crack spreads above $108 confirm a refining and yield failure rather than a crude shortage, inventories sit at their lowest level in seven decades heading into heating season, refineries are already running at 98 percent and still cannot make enough of the middle of the barrel, and traders and the IEA alike are warning the tightness runs clear through winter and into 2027. Miller called the nature of the danger correctly and early: this is about deliverability—the next cargo, the qualified grade, the funded position—not headline price, and that lens is sharper than nearly all of the commentary still treating a structural break as a passing spike. He wrote "Judgment Day Has Arrived" into a market that promptly broke $6 diesel for the first time in history, printed the highest distillate margins ever recorded, and watched a quarter of Russia's refining capacity and an eighth of global supply go offline at once. The banner is not hyperbole. It is a description.

One distinction has to be kept, and it is the one that makes the brief stronger rather than weaker: the quantified apparatus is a scenario toolkit, not a set of measured deficits. The 1.6 mb/d disruption, the cost ladders, the barrel counts are illustrative sensitivities—Miller says so himself—and their power is in the method, not the decimal: the residual-gap arithmetic, the site-level endurance countdown, the credit gate. Insist on that and the framework is unassailable, because you are handing a reader a way to run the numbers rather than a number to argue with. And the one development that could ease the price—softening freight and contracting manufacturing—is no refutation at all. It is the second of the two exits Miller named. Either supply recovers or consumption falls, and consumption falling is not the crisis being escaped. It is the crisis arriving.
 
Reference:
Larry C. Johnson (b. 1954) is a former CIA analyst, State Department counter-terrorism advisor, and 24-year Special Operations trainer who has served as managing partner of BERG Associates LLC since 1998, specializing in financial analysis and anti-money laundering investigations. Sidelined from mainstream media for offering candid assessments against foreign interventionism, he now provides independent geopolitical analysis to businesses, non-partisan commentary outlets, and international platforms, including the UN Security Council and channels like Judging Freedom, The Duran, and Redacted.

Karl W. Miller (b. 1965) is an energy veteran with over 35 years of experience in commodities trading, risk management, and market strategy, having held senior executive roles at firms like JPMorgan Chase, Enron, El Paso Energy, and PG&E. Typically operating behind the scenes, he strictly reserves his proprietary insights for private clients, making his recent public warnings regarding unprecedented middle-distillate shortages a rare, high-stakes departure from standard practice. 
See also:

Spectrum Cycle Composites: S&P 500, Nasdaq & Dow Jones | Sergey Ivanov

S&P 500
(daily bars through Sep 18, 2026; blue solid line = forecast).
 
Nasdaq 
(daily bars through Sep 18, 2026; blue solid line = forecast).
 
DJIA (daily bars through Sep 18, 2026
; red solid line = forecast). 
 
Gold (XAU/USD, daily bars through Sep 18, 2026
; red solid line = forecast). 
 
Crude Oil (WTI/USD, daily bars through Sep 18, 2026
; red solid line = forecast). 
 
Bitcoin (BTC/USD, daily bars through Sep 18, 2026; red solid line = forecast). 
  
Reference:
 
See also:

Friday, September 4, 2026

Refilling America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve

 
» THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY! «
Bombing. Killing. Hijacking. Looting. Intimidation.
Triumphs of the Orange Ape.

September 4, 2026: The Orange Ape dismisses his six-month war
against Iran as "small potatoes," saying, "It’s not a big thing:
We got Venezuela."
» Trump's dementia is growing, fueled by his excessive narcissism and megalomania. He won't listen to anyone anymore. And the two people who are running the United States government right now are the deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. That's about as dangerous a situation as you can imagine. The budget director doesn't believe in the Constitution, and the other fellow—it's hard for me to come up with the words adequately to describe his understanding of government. The people who ran Germany in the 1930s come to mind. « — Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, September 4, 2026.
  

Saturday, August 22, 2026

Price Performance vs. Zodiac Signs, Lunar Phase & Mercury Retrograde

S&P 500 (SPX) performance by color-shaded Zodiac Signs (2016–2026),
New Moon, Full Moon and rosa-shaded Mercury Retrograde periods. 
S&P 500 Strategy: Go long during bullish zodiac phases and short during bearish phases; hold through phase end with a 2% stop-loss (1% tighter stops improved results). Starting with $1,000, a 10 year walk-forward case study produced $5,410. The win rate exceeded RSI, Stochastic, and MFI, slightly outperforming Stochastic. Low-win-rate signs (e.g., Gemini at 39%) can be omitted. 

Augmented version: Enter long only when Stochastic (14,1,3) ≤20 during a bullish phase; enter short only when ≥80 during a bearish phase; hold through the full phase. Python backtest: $18,571.79 over two years with a 66.67% win rate. 

Using 10 years of S&P 500, Mercury retrograde periods frequently preceded major pivots, with post-retrograde directional flips.
Upcoming Events (dates and times for New York City):
Jul 29 (Wed), 2026 07:34 EDT — Full Moon (Buck Moon)
Aug 12 (Wed), 2026 12:11 EDT — New Moon
Aug 23 (Sun), 2026 00:19 EDT — enters Virgo (150 deg from 0 deg Aries = vernal equinox)
Aug 27 (Thu), 2026 19:18 EDT — Full Moon (Sturgeon Moon / Lunar Eclipse)
Sep 10 (Thu), 2026 21:12 EDT — New Moon
Sep 22 (Tue), 2026 16:05 EDT — enters Libra (180 deg) (Fall Equinox)
Sep 26 (Sat), 2026 05:49 EDT — Full Moon (Corn / Harvest Moon)
Oct 10 (Sat), 2026 08:51 EDT — New Moon
Oct 22 (Thu), 2026 23:00 EDT — enters Scorpio (210 deg)
Oct 24 (Sat), 2026 03:02 EDT — Mercury Retrograde Begins
Oct 25 (Sun), 2026 15:38 EDT — Full Moon (Hunter's Moon)
Nov 08 (Sun), 2026 23:02 EST — New Moon
Nov 13 (Fri), 2026 11:01 EST — Mercury Direct Resumes
Nov 21 (Sat), 2026 16:00 EST — enters Sagittarius (240 deg)
Nov 24 (Tue), 2026 00:53 EST — Full Moon (Beaver Moon)
Dec 08 (Tue), 2026 15:49 EST — New Moon
Dec 21 (Mon), 2026 10:50 EST — Capricorn (270 deg) (Winter Solstice)
Dec 23 (Wed), 2026 09:28 EST — Full Moon (Cold Moon)
 
Volatility S&P 500 Index (VIX; 2016–2026) 
 
Bitcoin (BTCUSD; 2016–2026) 

Gold (XAUUSD; 
2016–2026) 

Silver (XAGUSD; 
2016–2026)
 
WTI Light Crude Oil (XTIUSD; 
2016–2026)
 
Dollar Index (DXY; 
2016–2026)
 
Reference:
 
Forecast Based on "Moon Synodic + Sun in Virgo" Model | Sergey Tarassov
 
 
 [HERE]
 

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

"Iran Will Make Sure the US Economy Is Destroyed" | Foad Izadi

Iranian Professor Foad Izadi of the Department of American Studies at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of World Studies has just laid out the clearest statement yet of Iran’s official current thinking. After failed talks and repeated US aggression, a growing number of voices inside Iran no longer believe diplomacy can work. Iran’s answer is simple and brutal: raise the cost until the American economy itself is broken.

» Make sure the US economy is destroyed while Trump is the president. « 
 
That is the explicit goal now being discussed. Take 20 percent of the oil coming from the region, and prices stay high for at least two years. High oil prices for two years mean the end of Trump, the end of his presidency, and the end of the American economy—three goals at the same time.

»
There is n
o diplomatic solution. Only a military solution. «
 
Negotiations have failed for more than 20 years. Every time Iran sat at the table, the US bombed the table. The problem with the US, therefore, has no diplomatic solution. It has a military solution. Continued attacks are needed to cause enough pain so this never happens again, and military deterrence is restored.
 
» They will go thirsty! «
Iran's plan to evict 50,000 US troops. 
 
Iran’s target list: oil facilities, hit hard enough that repairs take a long time; desalination plants that supply 98 percent of the water for Gulf countries. With 50,000 US troops in the region, if those countries lose water, the troops have no choice but to leave and drink water back home in America.

Why this level of force? For 46 years after the 1979 Iranian revolution, the US never attacked Iran the way it is attacking now. Only in the last year did the attacks intensify because Washington believed it could handle the cost. Iranians are tired of being hit every few weeks, losing civilians and infrastructure. Enough is enough. The cost so far has not been high enough. Trump keeps attacking. The equation must change.
 
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claims to have inflicted well over 200 US military fatalities across targeted bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, with waves of missiles overwhelming and effectively neutralizing billion-dollar US defense infrastructure.
America ends wars when its politicians finally realize they made a mistake. That is how US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan ended. Either the executive branch or Congress concludes the price is too high, and the funding ends. 
» The President of the United States wants to give Iran's frozen assets to companies and countries that have suffered damage in the war. From now on, we announce that any company or country that accepts this proposal will never be allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz. «
Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari, July 28, 2026.
The same logic is now being applied: force the realization that the current policy is destroying the US economy, and the policy will change. Iran has decided that only the language of force works. Raise the economic cost high enough, for long enough, and the United States will be forced to stop. This is no longer about limited deterrence. This is about breaking the American economy while Trump is still in office.

July 29, 2026: Iranian civil defense teams have miraculously rescued two children, transporting them to a hospital on Qeshm Island, as the search continues for three others trapped under the rubble from the latest US terror attack. How was this a legitimate target? The war crimes keep piling up as the US becomes more desperate.

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Al-Aqsa Triangle: Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, and Suez Chokepoints

Following the partial disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandab Strait is emerging as a second potential global energy chokepoint. The Ansar Allah movement (Houthis) in Yemen has announced an initial naval blockade targeting Saudi vessels, citing the long-standing Saudi air and sea blockade of Yemen. 

Al-Aqsa Triangle: Yemen–Iran strategy to disrupt global trade
by closing the Middle East's three key maritime chokepoints.
Bab al-Mandab links the Suez–Red Sea corridor to the Indian Ocean and, alongside Hormuz, forms a dual chokepoint system vulnerable to escalation via Iran-aligned actors. A simultaneous disruption would block roughly a quarter of global energy flows and a large share of Asia–Europe trade, with Hormuz carrying 27% of seaborne oil and 20% of LNG, and the Bab al-Mandab/Suez corridor each handling 11% of global trade and 8% of LNG. 
The Bab al-Mandab is not yet fully closed. Commercial traffic continues, but the corridor is operating under elevated threat conditions. Attacks on selected vessels have increased, producing selective disruption rather than a comprehensive blockade. In response, some shipping lines are rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, while others continue transit under heightened security measures, including naval presence and route adjustments. In response to constraints at Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has shifted a significant share of exports to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, where approximately 4 million barrels of crude are loaded daily. Roughly 3 million barrels per day are destined for Asian markets and transit the Bab al-Mandab.
American worthless signature: The repeated breaches of the agreement by the Great Satan regarding the MOU signed by the Presidents of Iran and the US have once again laid bare a fundamental truth: the signature of the US President is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility. It further reaffirms that coercion and brutality are inseparable components of the US creed and doctrine. Imam Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei, July 17, 2026.
Rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope adds 6,000 km (3,700 miles) and 10–14 days transit time, in some cases longer. This materially increases fuel, charter, and operating costs. War-risk insurance premiums for Red Sea transit have also surged, adding several hundred thousand USD per voyage. Escalation risk centers on a full blockade scenario. If Ansar Allah forces interdict all international shipping, not just Saudi vessels, the impact would be significantly greater.
 
Strategic Trade Significance: Hormuz vs. Bab al-Mandab
Hormuz concentrates unmatched upstream energy dependency, funneling roughly 20% of global oil (17–20 million bpd), over 20% of LNG, and a decisive share of global helium vital for high-tech and medical supply chains. Because Saudi and UAE pipeline bypasses cover only a fraction of normal volumes, any disruption creates an immediate physical supply deficit—driving rapid oil and gas repricing with direct spillovers into petrochemicals, fertilizers, and industrial inputs.

Bab al-Mandab anchors throughput rather than production, serving as the southern gateway to Suez. It carries 12–15% of global trade, including major Asia–Europe container traffic, dry bulk, and mid-single-digit million bpd of oil. Unlike Hormuz, these flows can be rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, though doing so adds roughly 6,000 km, 10–14 days, and sharp increases in fuel costs, vessel utilization constraints, freight rates, and war-risk premiums.

Consequently, their economic transmission mechanisms diverge. Hormuz is a quantity shock that removes physical supply and forces immediate energy repricing. Bab al-Mandab is a friction shock that preserves supply but degrades delivery efficiency, triggering broader, slower-moving inflation across manufactured goods, energy derivatives, and food. Fertilizer markets sit at the intersection, relying on Hormuz for Gulf ammonia and urea to exit, and on Bab al-Mandab for efficient delivery to European and African markets.

Simultaneous impairment escalates systemic risk nonlinearly. Upstream supply contraction combines with downstream logistical breakdown, eliminating volume availability and transit efficiency at once. This dual constraint compresses global inventories, amplifies price volatility, and propagates cost increases across industrial inputs and consumer goods with minimal buffering capacity.
The Bab al-Mandab handles thousands of commercial transits annually and links the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and Suez Canal—one of the world's critical trade corridors. Full closure would force large-scale rerouting around Africa, extending delivery times, increasing freight rates and insurance costs, and placing renewed stress on global supply chains.  
 
July 21, 2026: Iran Destroys F-15 Hanger Base, 100 US Troops Lost as Trump Panics.

Cost transmission effects would likely be broad-based. Higher transport costs would feed into fuel prices (gasoline, diesel, heating oil), airfares, food, consumer goods, and imported products. Firms would absorb higher logistics and energy costs, with partial pass-through to end consumers.

July 21, 2026: Bab al-Mandab Strait Becomes New Shipping Flashpoint as Houthis Signal Blockade.
 
The EU is engaged via Operation Aspides with a mandate limited to protecting civilian shipping. The US and the UK are conducting separate military strikes against targets in Yemen. Historical precedent indicates limited containment success: prior multinational naval deployments with dozens of warships failed to durably constrain Ansar Allah capabilities. Current Ansar Allah systems include even more advanced drones and missiles than in 2025.

 
A concurrent escalation in Bab al-Mandab alongside sustained tension in the Strait of Hormuz would affect the region's two principal energy and trade corridors simultaneously, posing a high-risk scenario for global economic disruption and upward pressure on energy, transport, and consumer prices.