spartex
9 hours ago
Nice....I could use those snowy mtns here now at 99 deg F! Now here's a word from MarketEar.com below for your information............S&P500 just kissing 6100. Can it close above or maybe tomorrow?
Still little chatter...…about ATHs. SPX practically at range highs. Let's see how this plays out from here, but an extension of the squeeze is not consensus. FOMO risk is huge.
NDX seasonality
"We are entering positive seasonality for the NDX. Over the last 25 years, the NDX has delivered an average return of 2.1%, the third strongest month of the year behind Oct/Nov. NDX has printed positively in 16 of the last 17 years, 94%, averaging a 4.6% return in those up-years". (JPM market intelligence)
Will ATH help?
Non dealers in US index futures could get much more long...
To buy or to buy
Dealers turn short gamma to the upside and will need to buy deltas if we move higher. They turn long gamma to the downside, and will need to buy details on downticks. Buy or buy...
$107B to buy
Lower vol will feed into massive buying by the vol control crowd: "...50bps daily SPX chg projected out the next t+1m = ~+$107B to BUY from this “Vol Scaler” cohort".
Retail favourites over MAG7
Big stuff lagging what retail is chasing...
Month end sellers
"US Pensions Month-End Rebal update: US pensions are modeled to SELL $22bn of US equities for quarter-end. $22bn to sell ranks in the 89th percentile amongst all buy and sell estimates in absolute dollar value over the past three years and in the 88th percentile going back to Jan 2000" writes GS. Recall these flows are executed over a period, as pension funds do not wait for the last day.
Oversold Europe
Who would have thought given that the US exceptionalism is apparently dead... More on Europe from earlier today here.
Keep it simple
Buy DAX when it reaches the strong trend line and the 50 day...
Monster oil
It is hard to find superlatives for the latest oil moves. Early yesterday, before the move lower, we outlined that the "outlook for oil price was bearish". We did not think oil would collapse. Anyway, here we are, trading at first bigger supports post the perfect reversal off the longer term negative trend line. Note we are hitting the 100 day as of writing. More on oil here'
spartex
19 hours ago
My post on Sunday My speculation is now that the Iranian Prime Minister has gone to Moscow, likely to kiss Putin's ring.... Putin may possibly say, "hey, that's your problem, I'm already still fighting a 3 year + war with Ukraine, leave me alone! "
Your reply What drug are you on? Question may really be, "What are you on??"
2 days later the WSJ publishes this morning: Why Russia is GIving Iran the Cold Shoulder after Israel Attack Hah, nailed that one Bucky Boy! 😅
Here's the article via my donation to ya!
Despite a recent strategic partnership, Russia is offering Iran little more than rhetorical support after U.S. and Israeli strikes.
Putin is prioritizing Russia’s interests, such as avoiding escalation and maintaining ties with Israel and Trump, over fully backing Iran.
Russia’s history of not fully supporting allies in crisis, like Armenia and Syria, suggests Iran may face similar disappointment.
At the start of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart at the Kremlin to sign a new strategic partnership to seal the budding alliance between the two countries that had spent the last decade trying to undermine the U.S.-led world order.
Now, after more than a week of punishing Israeli and U.S. airstrikes, that partnership is doing Tehran little good.
When Putin met with Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, on Monday, the Kremlin leader gave a stony-faced assessment of the U.S. strikes. He called the strikes unjustified and unprovoked and said Russia wanted to help the Iranian people.
But the Kremlin leader made no mention of military support in his public remarks ahead of the talks. Instead, he suggested they discuss an exit ramp out of the conflict. “This gives us a chance to…think together about how it would be possible to get out of this situation,” said Putin.
Israeli strikes have targeted Iran’s nuclear program, missiles and top military figures, with the U.S. joining over the weekend by using its most powerful bunker busters. Iran, meanwhile, has gotten little more than rhetorical support from its most powerful backers, including Russia and China.
The partnership between Moscow and Tehran has been a thorn in the side of Western interests in Europe and the Middle East. The two cooperated for almost a decade in Syria to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power. And after Moscow fumbled the initial stages of its invasion of Ukraine, Iran boosted Russia’s war effort with ammunition, artillery shells and thousands of drones.
During his meeting with Iran’s envoy in Moscow on Monday, Putin condemned the U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and said Russia was taking steps to help the Iranian people. Photo: Anton Vaganov/Reuters; Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images
But Moscow is unlikely to return the favor. With Iran facing its most existential challenge in decades and even calls from President Trump for regime change, Russian military aid is unlikely to come through, analysts said. While the strategic partnership reached between the two countries didn’t include a mutual defense pact, it did strengthen intelligence sharing and prohibit the countries from aiding each other’s enemies in conflicts.
“Iran can ask Russia to back it up in retaliation to the U.S., but Moscow will never accept it,” said Nikolay Kozhanov, an expert on Russian-Iranian relations and a professor at Qatar University.
The move underscores the transactional nature of even Putin’s strongest partnerships as the Kremlin is mired in Ukraine and vulnerable to Western sanctions. Putin wants to avoid an escalation of violence that could end badly for Iran and Russia. He also wants to preserve an on-again-off-again relationship with Israel and his ties with Trump, who has held back on sanctioning Russia despite the Kremlin’s resistance to engaging in substantive peace talks with Ukraine.
That is unlikely to satisfy—or surprise—Iran, which has faced disappointment from the Russians before.
The month after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis, the Iranian government said it completed a deal for Moscow to supply Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters, Mi-28 attack helicopters, S-400 air-defense systems and Yak-130 training jets.
The only delivery it got were the training jets. Production problems and diplomatic pressure from other Gulf countries prompted Russia to withhold more sensitive and powerful technology, said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a book on Iran and Russia.
Last year, Israeli strikes took out some of Iran’s best air-defense systems that had been provided by the Russians. In the months that followed, Russia was either unable or unwilling to replace them. On Monday, Araghchi asked Putin for new air-defense systems and help in restoring its nuclear energy network, according to a person briefed on the talks.
Last week, when pressed by reporters about why Russia wasn’t supplying arms to help Iran counter Israel’s attacks, Putin said Iran’s interest in Russian hardware had died down and that Iran hadn’t made any specific new requests.
“There’s nothing really to talk about,” he said.
Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian at the signing of a strategic partnership agreement
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Russia’s Vladimir Putin earlier this year, at the Kremlin for the signing of a strategic partnership agreement. Photo: vyacheslav prokofyev/Reuters
Iran is the most recent Russian partner to experience a cold shoulder from Moscow in a time of need. Armenia, which does have a mutual defense treaty with Russia, received no help from Moscow as its forces in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan were decimated by Baku’s troops in 2020 and 2023. The debacle accelerated Armenia’s fundamental shift away from alliance with Moscow toward partnership with the U.S.
Similarly, when Syria’s Assad was toppled last year, Putin merely offered asylum to the former strongman and his family.
“Russia is not as good a friend of dictators as it pretends: Putin often turns his back on his autocratic friends when they need him,” said Fabrice Pothier, a former top adviser to North Atlantic Treaty Organization leadership.
Rather than assisting Iran, Putin has instead sought to position himself as a potential mediator in the conflict. Trump dismissed that possibility last week, saying Putin should focus first on mediating the war in Ukraine.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How do you think Russia will navigate the Iran-Israel conflict? Join the conversation below.
The Israeli-Iranian war could in some ways be beneficial for Moscow, helping to boost the price of oil and shifting attention away from its invasion of Ukraine as Russia is expected to embark on a summer offensive.
Iran could, in fact, emerge from the conflict more isolated and dependent on Russia and China, who could use that to their advantage.
“A common complaint in Iran is that China and Russia, rather than being true friends, exploit Iran’s isolation to get cheap natural resources while selling Iran second-rate military hardware at inflated prices, sometimes never even delivering the promised equipment,” said Tino Sanandaji, a Swedish-Iranian researcher with the Stockholm School of Economics.
Others warned that Russia’s credibility as an ally could be at stake.
“The fact remains Russia couldn’t prevent Israel’s mass strike on a country with which five months ago Russia had signed a strategic partnership agreement,” political scientist Andrey Kortunov wrote. “Moscow is clearly not prepared to go beyond political statements.”
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
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