Over the weekend Iran changed its mind and closed the straits again. Iran also fired on a few tankers, and the US boarded an Iranian vessel trying to run its blockade. All of that translated into the S&Ps dipping about a percent overnight as crude rallied a couple bucks. As usual, gold and silver sold off a little too, and the dollar and yields firmed a little.

By the time we rolled around to the US open, everybody had decided none of that meant much and that a deal would still be done by Trump's deadline of Wed night.

The S&Ps opened flat and moved into barely positive territory for what would have been its 14th straight day to the upside, but a few sellers showed up on some headlines from Trump about not extending the ceasefire past Wed. That resulted in a small pullback in the S&Ps into barely positive territory, and we would basically chop sideways for the rest of the day at those levels to end with a loss of just a touch.

The dollar slipped again, with the DXY ending down a touch. Yields were basically unchanged. Commodities were mostly a little lower, except for crude oil, which only managed to gain a little over a percent.

BTC slipped a percent, but MSTR managed to rally over 2 percent to a new high for the move since its Feb low.

Gold dumped to a low of $4737 overnight but quickly recovered and managed to rally back up into nearly positive territory around $4825 before slipping again along with stocks on the headlines about Trump not extending the ceasefire (metals and stocks continue to be the same peace trade). For the close, gold would go out at $4815 for a loss of a percent.

Silver similarly dumped overnight to as low as $78.64 and would cut that loss to just over 2 percent and end closer to $79.60 in the US.

The GDX opened down a touch and slipped below the 5 dma but then spent the rest of the day slowly climbing back above it to eventually go out with a loss of just over a percent and exactly on the 5 dma.

It seems pretty apparent that those in the know are certain that some sort of BS "deal" will be done over the next couple days between the US and Iran that allows both sides to claim some sort of victory, or things wouldn't be trading as if no bad news matters.

The physical shortages of crude, refined products, LNG, etc won't be solved by a "deal," but it seems we need to get the headline of the deal in order to shake out the last of the "war trades" in crude. It's AFTER we get that "deal" headline that I expect oil will surprise people and begin to move higher and cause all sorts of problems, because opening the straits today, tomorrow, or even two weeks ago won't solve the supply and demand problems out there. Until then though, fantasy seems to rule the day.

My gold model remained at neutral.

Positions: Short SPY, QQQ, MDY, IWM, XHB, and BLDR. Long DBA and IBIT.

I sold ZSL and GDXD given the way everything (metals, stocks, commodities, etc) keep trading to the upside off of deal hopes and the likelihood of something that will be called a deal over the next 48 hours. I plan on putting them back out AFTER that deal is announced and we get whatever celebration we're due to get. That's of course assuming that I am correct about oil moving higher AFTER the deal. I also bought some SLV 76 calls for Wed for 23 cents.

Warsh's confirmation testimony was also released today ahead of tomorrow's confirmation hearing, but I honestly don't think anybody cares about about any of that. All that matters is the expectation that a deal will be done with Iran soon.