The oil price going up due to the war is only the first order effect. Sulphur (or sulfur as Americans call it), is a waste product from refining sour crude. That gets converted into sulphuric acid and is used to leach metal from oxide ores.

When one fourth of the supply becomes suddenly unavailable, the miners feel it. They can keep mining and stockpiling ore, blowing out their working capital, or curtail production.

Either way, the outcome is the same: less copper, gold, nickel and uranium.

Add this to aluminum smelters blowing up, and you have a global metals shortage.

What does this do to manufacturing and supply chains? Nobody knows.

My alpha comes from figuring this stuff out.

LNG supply destruction

According to QatarEnergy's CEO, 17% of LNG export capacity has been lost and won't be replaced for 5 years.

The market is pricing in a sharp drop in JKM over the next year, presumably because EU cargoes will get re-routed to Asia.

Which begs the question: how will the EU handle the energy crisis?

No Russian piped gas, less imported US LNG, Groningen permanently shut with wells sealed.

April 05, 2026

This is a trend with no end.

April 06, 2026

Q1 2026 performance: +51%

The stagflation trade got a boost from the war. I was positioned right and caught a tailwind.

Onward to Q2.

April 07, 2026

"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." - African proverb.

Nigeria - a surprise winner from the war

Dangote Refinery has started exporting fuel across Africa after reaching full production capacity.

Nigeria produces crude oil and until recently, exported it all and imported refined fuel.

The Dangote Refinery, built by Africa's richest man, is a game changer for the country.

Their deep sea port (built and maintained by China) is right next to the refinery.

Nigeria has problems, but oil money solves a lot of those problems.

Refiners lose money on hedging gone wrong

Phillips 66 (PSX), a leading US based refiner, has warned that its Q1 results will be hit by a $900 million pre-tax loss on its derivatives positions.

PSX is net short 50 million barrels of crude and refined products. The company had to post $3 billion in collateral to cover its paper losses, further increasing its debt load.

In the 2022 refining bull market, US refiner Vertex Energy (VTNR) went bankrupt because they had gone heavily net short. A windfall quarter for other companies turned into a bankruptcy filing for VTNR.

While PSX is far from going bankrupt, it won't be the only company to report losses from hedges gone awry. Something commodity investors need to watch out for.

April 08, 2026

Bitcoin is ready to explode

I've been accumulating since $66k odd but yet to reach full position.

Hormuz tolls in bitcoin

I published this article for paid subscribers on Friday and announced it on the Holy Macro Show.

5 days later, it is mainstream news that Iran is demanding payment in bitcoin. The price action made it clear that something was up - the news is mere confirmation.

You can buy an individual copy of this report for $25 (link below), or subscribe for access to the unique alpha I provide.

April 09, 2026

CoreWeave

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave (CRWV) is raising another $3.45 billion in debt, taking its total debt load up to ~$25 billion.

In Q4, the company lost 29 cents per dollar in sales, accelerating from a loss of 8 cents in Q3.

This company has no chance in hell of achieving operational breakeven, much less generating a profit to service the debt.

So, how is CRWV managing to dupe investors into lending it money?

That's where private credit's mark-to-myth accounting comes in, and that's why this whole house of cards will soon come tumbling down. Blue Owl (OWL)

April 12, 2026

Resource nationalism in Brazil

Resource nationalism is inevitable in times of war. Brazil wants to impose a 12% oil export tax, courts say no.

April 14, 2026

Citadel is bullish because apparently, forward returns have been positive whenever retail put buying has been at an extreme.

The catch? Their data only goes back to 2020.

What was retail doing during the S&P 500's Lost Decade? Nobody knows, because that data isn't available.

Speaking of parabolas... BWET

April 16, 2026

Goodbye, American dream

The American middle class has been hollowed out. You're either a beneficiary of Fed money printing or a victim of it.

April 19, 2026

The cure for high prices is high prices. Asian LNG imports dropped to the lowest level in six years.

April 21, 2026

Tops are an event, bottoms are a process

There is a lot of churn at market bottoms, as assets move from the hands of the least capable to the more capable holders.

There is thin trading at the top, as the pool of more capable holders dries up with higher prices (simple marginal demand/ supply stuff).

When a market is bottoming out, even the more capable holders feel fear. The longer it drags out, the greater the despair.

When a market is topping out, everyone is exuberant because they are counting their gains weekly, daily, and then hourly. Then the market rolls over and those 5% paper gains on a hugely pyramided position turns into a devastating 40% loss, never to recover.

(Attached is a long-term chart of Stratasys (SSYS) which perfectly illustrates this phenomenon)

SoftBank is a technical long

I am as biased as any fundamentals-based analyst but I don't let that bias interfere with reading chart patterns.

I still think SoftBank is a zero but the right call was to get long and ride the move.

You only get paid if you make money.

When statistics fail

From Ludwig von Mises' Human Action:

"If a statistician determines that a rise of 10 per cent in the supply of potatoes in Atlantis at a definite time was followed by a fall of 8 per cent in the price, he does not establish anything about what happened or may happen with a change in the supply of potatoes in another country or at another time.

He has not “measured” the “elasticity of demand” of potatoes. He has established a unique and individual historical fact.

No intelligent man can doubt that the behavior of men with regard to potatoes, and every other commodity is variable... and valuations change with the same individuals with changing conditions".

I consider all statistical backtests irrelevant because they deal with 'class' probability, whereas trading decisions deal with 'case' probability.

If you ask a dumb statistician whether Trump can win the 2028 election, he will look at the empirical data and say there is a two-thirds probability in favor of winning.

If you ask a rational individual, he would read the 22nd Amendment and say no way in hell.

Traders err in their judgement when they use statistical information about 'classes', rather than real-world understanding, in dealing with individual 'cases'.

The current state of the world makes it impossible for this SPX rally to continue unabated. You don't need statistics to make that case, so stop hunting for data. Just use old fashioned common sense.

April 23, 2026

Shipping company DHT Holdings (DHT) is earning $189,500 per day in the spot market for very large crude carriers.

The cost of a new VLCC is $124 million, which means if such high rates persist, a new ship pays for itself in 22 months.

April 25, 2026

Goodbye, dollar milkshake theory

In the movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise is part of a team which prevents crime before it can happen.

Fed swap lines being expanded to cover all US allies (non-allied countries have already de-dollarized their economies) prevents funding stresses before they become funding stresses.

Ergo, there will never be any "sucking" of liquidity from the global financial system into the US dollar even in a severe crisis, which means the dollar will lose its safe haven bid in times of stress.

If the world is short dollars, and the Fed supplies them, there is no consequence to being short dollars. You are actually encouraged to use dollars for carry trades, much like Abenomics did to the Japanese Yen.

The eventual outcome is the dollar becoming more of a transactional currency and less of a store of value.

This is great news for Asians. It means the end of permanent currency depreciation, making local equities more attractive relative to US assets. Pair high growth rates and favorable demographics with currency stability, and you have the perfect setup for an EM resurgence.

The Treasury Secretary does not understand the long-term implications of this Empire ending move.

Say India gets a Fed swap line

The RBI, India's central bank, will make use of that swap line to prevent currency devaluation.

So far, they have tried to stop capital flight with a 20% exit tax and clamping down on crypto transfers. But since everyone knows the rupee is going to depreciate 10% a year, investors are paying the tax to get their money out, right up to the yearly $250,000 limit.

Until a few years ago, Indian investors could access global equities through Indian mutual funds. The demand was so overwhelming that the RBI limited such investments to ~$2,100 per taxpayer.

All this just to "manage" the depreciation curve and keep the rupee from going the way of the Ghanian cedi.

But, India is undergoing an inflationary boom a la US in 2004, and with much better demographics. If they can stabilize the rupee through swaps and eliminate the reasons behind capital flight, local equities will become more attractive.

So the Fed swap line lowers demand for USD and US assets, and raises demand for assets in the beneficiary nation.

Unlimited swap lines is a net benefit for Asia and a negative for dollar hegemony. It is going to backfire by making US assets less attractive for global capital.

April 28, 2026

Bitcoin: market timing beats HODL

If you bought bitcoin 5 years ago and held, you are up 31.5%, barely beating T-bills.

If you bought it 5 weeks ago, you are already up 14% with no downside volatility.

Timing the market beats time in the market. There are always plenty of trading opportunities.

April 29, 2026

Your Main Street business is struggling. AI is increasing the cost of power and water. Your customers are getting laid off.

But look, semiconductor stocks are making new highs every day! That means the economy is doing just fine under Trump.

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Good Trading!

Kashyap

hello@kashyapsriram.com

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