WTI broke out of that pennant on the hourly chart that we noted yesterday and rallied up to its high for the move at $78. After a pullback, oil then squirted up to a new high 52-week and to above the Jan 2025 high to as just over $82 during the US session. Thanks to headline from the White House threatening some sort of futures market manipulation. This sounds like magic beans to me, but crude did back off about $3 on the headline in the final hour of equity trading (more on that below).

The S&Ps opened down a touch and initially experienced some panic buying for some unknown reason even as crude oil began making new highs. As oil continued to work higher, the S&Ps eventually collapsed to the downside and began slowly working their way lower. On the lows in the afternoon, the S&Ps would be down only just over a percent, but as I alluded to above, that was enough to panic the White House into putting this headline out. As oil dropped, the S&Ps (and anything not nailed down, including gold and silver) bounced, and that bounce would basically continue into the close to cut the day's losses in half and sent the S&Ps out with a loss of only half a percent. So, crisis averted I guess?

The financials were once again VERY heavy, and most moved back to their lows. GS even made a new low for the move.

BTC fell 2 percent, and MSTR backed off 5 percent after failing to manage a close above its 50 dma once again. A higher low in BTC and MSTR as the spoos potentially plunge to new lows would get me interested in MSTR again.

Commodities (other than crude) were basically down across the board, but the GCC ETF still managed to gain a touch. Copper and platinum, among the metals, notably moved lower towards what look to be necklines of H&S tops.

The dollar was a little firmer once again, with the DXY moving back to near its highs for the move. Yields rose once again.

Gold and silver had a wild night and tumbled with stocks as oil firmed. After then rebounding with stocks on a headline about Iran offering to give up its nuclear material, which turned out to be from a week ago people would later learn. The interesting thing was though, that gold, silver, and stocks all moved together. Everything is basically a liquidity trade right now.

Once the US session began, the metals tumbled again, and gold would sink to as low as $5060 before bouncing as crude came in at the end of the day to end off the lows at $5084 for a loss of over a percent. Silver fared similarly and traded down to as low as $80 and change and once again held its uptrend, which looks like the bottom of a bear flag, since the Feb low. Like everything else, silver bounced into the close as oil backed off, and silver would cut its loss to just over a percent at $82.

The GDX opened down near yesterday's low and began to plunge. On its lows, the GDX would attack its 50 dma, and thanks to the last hour bounce that everything else had, the GDX would then rebound to cut its loss by about a third to just under 4 percent.

Once again, gold, silver, and GDX all closed below their 5 dma, which leaves the bears firmly in charge from a statistical standpoint.

I don't know what exactly the White House thinks it has up its sleeve, but if there was an easy way to push crude down, they would have done it by now. Matter of fact, they would have done it in the 1970s and every year after that too. The SPR would be the normal mechanism, but Biden wasted most of it, and it's so low now that we may actually need it to fight the war. Other nations are in similar boats, where need outweighs the need for short term manipulation in order to support stock prices. China even cut off all exports of energy overnight.

Seems like every day the equity market has gone home with some sort of "hope" story about how oil prices aren't going to go through the roof and natural gas, refined products, fertilizer, and food etc will all suddenly start flowing through the straits (never mind that a big refinery was set ablaze today Bahrain and more wells were shut in along with a tanker being targeted). But the reality is that's not happening unless Iran makes a sudden U-turn and throws up its hands, and that seems highly unlikely.

So, unless some sort of miracle weapon that forces oil prices lower isn't rolled out tonight, I would expect crude oil to make a run for $100 in short order, and that's going to trigger across the board selling in virtually everything, including the metals, albeit less so in gold as always. Silver and gold stocks, on the other hand, are a whole different ballgame, as we saw today in the GDX.

If, on the other hand, the market is dumb enough to believe whatever BS the White House feeds them, and crude comes in some more, then maybe we get a wild bounce? But we used up a lot of bounce fuel in the last hour already and couldn't go green anywhere.

My guess is this isn't going to end until oil simply exhausts to the upside after hitting some sort of spike price (pick a number) that is deemed to trigger demand destruction along with a recession because of all the other price spikes in natural gas, refined products, etc. All of this is going to produce a huge inflationary wave down the line, but that's tomorrow's business. In the short-term, people will say this is deflationary and recessionary due to demand destruction, and that's going to force the Fed to panic and ease, perhaps even as soon as the next FOMC meeting in about two weeks on March 18th. But like we saw during Covid, until the Fed begins to run the printing presses, everything can get DEstroyed.

My gold model, which once again nailed a short-term top with another Tier 1 SELL yesterday, moved back to neutral, which thus far has tended to only see a day or two of more selling at the most recently once that neutral level has been returned to. Or, maybe we even bounce until another Tier 1?

Positions: I left my equity shorts unchanged, and I remain long IBIT. Long GDXD, GDX 95 and 92 puts for tomorrow. I also added the SLV 67, 68, and 69 puts for tomorrow and remain long the 65 and 66 puts too. Obviously, all these puts will get smoked if the White House pulls out some magic beans, but that's the way it goes.

We've got a jobs number and retail sales in the AM tomorrow too, but I'm not sure anybody cares?