Screwball
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Posts posted by Screwball
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Crude is at $79 and change as I type this. Was as high as $79.97. Dow down 780ish, S&P down 48, and the NASDAQ only -77
Here are two very long and sobering reads on the Iran/oil situation.
Systemic Risk: A 12-Order Cascading Analysis of a Zero-Flow Strait of Hormuz Closure
The Invisible Siege: How Insurance Markets, Not Missiles, Closed the Strait of Hormuz
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2 hours ago, Deleterious said:
Trump is now selling insurance to ships passing through the straight. I'm not making that up.
I saw that today but didn't think much of it. More BS.
War, and now premium insurance rates due to said war. Both are inflationary. News at 11 kind of thing. Was busy and couldn't follow the timing, but you reminded me. Funny this...
Love the chart porn. I wondered about this, but couldn't find the exact time of release. These guys did.
It's really fun to watch the headlines vs. the tape. This is a case where they jawboned the price of oil down. For today anyway. Won't stay that way if they all keep blowing things the **** up. The next CPI report won't show this, but starting the next month it should start to. One of the only things that made the last one decent was the lower price of...oil and gas. No longer.
Summer is coming, farmers will be planting our food very shortly. Need fertilizer. Natty gas is a large part of that process. That only drives up the cost of our food.
Our corporate overlords know that too. They are probably having meetings as we speak to figure out ways to cut costs - because - the bottom line. What and who gets whacked? We must beat the next quarterly earnings report for the pigmen of Wall Street.
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Crude (WTI) up around 8 percent today. $76.87 as I type this (Brent crude at 83.72). Also of note, from OilPrice on natural gas;
Qatar’s LNG Blackout Just Broke the Global Gas Market
Natty gas here is up almost 6 percent.
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35 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:
Marco Rubio has always been weak. He used to ne somewhat normal. Now, every time I see him it's like he's a hostage held captive by Trump. I think he has destroyed his political career much like Pence.
Rubio has always been a warmongering POS slut to the killing people for profit people. In his latest gig, he was confirmed 99-0. Imagine that.
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24 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:
In a long past life I remember sticking tanks with water visualizer applied at the end to check for leaks. Water would turn the treated stick purple. If it was over 1" we were supposed to pump the water out. Who ever thought putting thin wall steel tanks in the ground was a good idea.......
Yes, I remember that too. I worked at a station on the edge of town. Open field to the West. 6 am, cold as ****. Had to take the cap off, which had a padlock. Froze in winter. So fun. Junior in high school.
Went through the oil embargo of 73-74. Had to ration gas. Not on the bingo card. We had cars lined up down the street.
What's crazy...Before that happened that year, there was a huge concert somewhere around here out in the sticks. Big name bands. When I went to work on Sunday morning the place was full, even parked along the streets to get in. I opened the door, called my boss and said - get the hell out here. What a zoo.
I got to meet and talk to the guys from Brownsville Station. That was super off the charts cool, and I did smoke in the boys room.
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Just now, gehringer_2 said:
Curious report about a strike at a Saudi refinery. The Iranians said they called the Saudis to deny it was them. So that then, the Houthi's just doing their buddies a favor unbidden?
Who knows? False flag, crazy people, planned strike?
I could believe anything. I trust nobody.
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15 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:
The U.S. is the largest oils producer in the world. I bet Chinese gas prices are seeing a spike.
What we don't produce ourself we import. From 2023, but probably not much different today;
When oil prices didn't go nuts today I thought about the above. The straight doesn't mean much to us. But at the same time, Brent crude, which will have a bigger impact on that part of the world, didn't go nuts either.
Most of Iran's oil goes to China, which is probably why the straight is still open (there are reports this isn't true as well). You need money to fight a war, and oil is money.
You can't print it either. :-)
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12 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:
I think we've been down this road so many times before without the worst case happening that there is a lot resistance to believing this time will be any different, esp given the current admin's past history of making a lot of noise only to fold their tents. However, if Iran makes good on closing the Strait of Hormuz it won't take that long for La merde a frappé le ventilateur.
In prior years this would be the **** hitting the fan. Nothing happened, yet. Orange Hitler has nothing to do with it.
We will see. Insurance rates on tankers aren't getting any cheaper.
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A little follow up on the plant closing thing up-thread - with a new twist.
Our local rag of a paper finally covered it today, good for them. I talked to one of the girls who work there, and she told me they had a potential buyer there today. Lot's of people hoping for the best.
Around 5:30 a crew of 5 guys came in wearing snot green safety vests. They work for an energy company about five minutes from the ****hole bar. Their place was built a couple of years ago. It serves as a warehouse for all the supplies needed to run power lines. They have crews who truck the stuff to wherever they are running lines (in this case an hour an a half away), come home, take more tomorrow.
None live around here. They are pretty much gypsies. The guy I was talking to lives in the UP of Michigan and gets home only every few months. He runs the warehouse, so he's one of the lucky ones that doesn't have to drive hours each day (he rents a house here, probably paid for). The others, if lucky get home more often. They all make big ****ing bucks.
What exactly are you doing and for who? Ohio AEP, and another one, but I didn't catch the name. I will find out more. Why? Data centers. Imagine that.
The funny part. He tells me his company wants to buy the place right beside them that is going out of business because they need more floor space. I won't be repeating that...
I'm going to drive by tomorrow and count cars. I'm guessing, even if the road crews park there, there isn't a dozen cars. So it's not like they have a lot of local employees. Now maybe they can turn a factory that employed 400 people into a staging area for AI and data centers. He said it was all about AI.
I'm not convinced, and I'm a big time tech guy. It put food on my table. AI - all idiocy.
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6 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:
we are near the point of the year when refiners have to stop blending so much cheap light ends into gasoline headed to the north because the weather is getting warmer. That puts upward pressure on gasoline prices in addition to whatever increases in crude come down the line because of the fighting.
This is kind of funny. Usually when the market makes a big move you will have many opinions on why. In this case, we have many opinions on why not? This was just a normal day for the most part.
I have followed, and traded, the oil markets since the early 2000s (disclosure: I'm long crude). I expected a much bigger response to what is going on in one of the most important choke points on the globe. From my travels today I can say I am not alone. Even pump prices didn't change around here.
Doesn't make a lick of sense given history.
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I suppose they can, but the girls at the one I go to still get a call. I asked them. With the technology we have today, they should know how much they pump and when, how much was delivered, and when they need more. I wonder if they still stick the tanks?
I'll bet not.
Then again, the Office Space documentary didn't really do corporate America justice.
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They are all over the place around here. From $2.20 ish to $3.20 ish depending on where you are.
These stations will get a phone call in the morning, or maybe tonight, telling them to change the price at the pump tomorrow. It's going up.
Funny, price of gas is one of the things the CPI does a poor job of reporting, as measured, and I say reporting because the numbers are in the report if you interrogate them correctly. Going with the bigger picture, the last CPI report was better due to the lower price of gas.
Depending on what happens with oil supply chains, terminals, and refineries, it could get ugly quick. To risky? They won't insure a vessel through the straight, then what, or at what price? All inflationary, directly, and indirectly. Could also be cargo.
The American people can't afford a oil war right now. It didn't turn out so good last time. Not looking it up, going on memory, but maybe July of 2008 crude hit $147 a barrel. The crash of 2008 and the S&P hitting 666 around March 2009? Many think the oil shock was the pin. I think they were right.
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Sunday night update since the futures markets are open. I expected the price of crude to jump, which it did. But as I type this as of 7:40 for the most part has been uneventful. As shown in the chart above crude was around $67 at close on Friday. When it opened tonight at 6 it jumped to $75 and change, then went back down to around the 72ish range and has done little since.
This is Sunday night, we don't know what's going on. If anyone Wall Street does, and the tape will tell us what happens when they decide it does. It's all about the Straight of Hormuz. Some analysts think if that is closed, crude will go to $110ish. If that happens, we will of course see that at the pump.
Crude today at open (incoming chart porn):
For perspective, crude over the last 3 months. Notice the large gap up today, but the candle going green because it has went down since open, even though up around 7 percent.
Looking at the S&P futures, the e-mini as they call it, is down, but not really a significant move, even in normal volatility on news. Looks uneventful. But it is bouncing around a resistance level.
Let's zoom out a bit and look at a 6 month chart. Like some of the chart porn up thread going back to October of last year, this shows the point of downside resistance from getting into the range created by that big sell-off back then. As a trader, this will tell us what to do next. Looks like next stop 6540 if this doesn't hold.
Of course, depending on what happens in our current world this can all be moot. All bets are off - or on.
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1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:
the story is on Reuters now and the name are public.
Sounds like there might be a chance Ford steps in to straighten it out. That would probably be the best outcome for the employees, but it's not like FoMoCo doesn't have enough problems of it's own either.
I was trying to protect the names, but it's all out there now. The people I know work for the TMD plants. They are a blow mold operations making parts for Ford. Things like windshield water bottles or anti-freeze containers. They make the part in a blow mold, then it goes to a secondary operation where they might poke a hole or cut off a neck. Those are bunches of those machines - many of which are leaking oil all over the floor. Ford was there, and saw it. Not happy. For the workers, and our town, I hope they can figure it out.
The Horizon they mention, if it is the same one I was familiar with years ago, make wheel lug nuts. We had a plant here at one time, but long gone. Probably to China.
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13 hours ago, Screwball said:
This is their own doing.
I was expelled along with hundreds of others from the big multi-national due to being too old and too expensive. They wanted to go younger and cheaper. Because money. I ended up at a company that made machines for these people, and a bunch of them.
Every time the automaker, or whoever, changes a marketing gimmick - hey look - new parts. Good for them, the manufacturer, and us, the people who made their machines. Win - win.
But they all ****ed it up because they are a bunch of clueless phony back stabbing pricks that know nothing about how to run a manufacturing plant.
Update. This became official today as it hit the news. 3 plants total, all in Ohio, 1,011 total employees. Closing at the end of April. But it gets worse. They have been under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a while. I wasn't aware of that.
The release states (this is funny); “Company leadership has indicated there has been interest in the facility and they remain optimistic about a potential path forward prior to the April 30 date,”
Of course, but then there is this you have to deal with;
QuoteThe bankruptcy that led to Friday’s closures came after federal prosecutors filed what they describe as evidence of a yearslong fraud scheme at the top of XXXXX. On January 29, 2026, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York indicted First Brands founder and former CEO XXXX, 61, of Chagrin Falls, and his brother XXXXX, 60, of Canton, on charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and multiple counts of wire fraud and bank fraud. XXXXX faces an additional charge of managing a continuing financial crimes enterprise, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
QuoteXXXXX has operated since 1955, growing from a model and pattern shop into a Tier 1/Tier 2 automotive supplier producing interior components and air and fluid management systems, according to its website. The company changed hands several times before landing in XXXXX portfolio. XXXXX purchased XXX for $271 million in 2018, then sold it to XXXXXXLLC — with XXXXX serving as guarantor — for $40 million in September 2024. First Brands filed for bankruptcy less than a year later, and XXXXX subsequently filed suit in Delaware court alleging that XXXXX LLC and XXXXX had breached the purchase agreement and withheld more than $20 million in payments, according to court records. That litigation is ongoing.
The YYYYY facility operated as part of the broader XXXXX portfolio, which also includes brands such as FRAM filters, Autolite spark plugs, and TRICO wiper blades.
The closure would affect workers across more than 50 job classifications, including press operators, production handlers, engineers, quality control staff, maintenance workers, and administrative personnel. Some of the affected workers are represented by United Auto Workers Local 2021.
The worker bees tell me the union wouldn't do squat. I don't know why they list maintenance workers when they seem to not do anything, and neither did management. They wouldn't do **** after the girl I know slipped on the oil and got hurt, and didn't do **** for her either. But hey, a fish stinks from the head down.
What a crooked bunch of dicks. May they rot in a jail cell.
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26 minutes ago, Screwball said:
This is their own doing.
I was expelled along with hundreds of others from the big multi-national due to being too old and too expensive. They wanted to go younger and cheaper. Because money. I ended up at a company that made machines for these people, and a bunch of them.
Every time the automaker, or whoever, changes a marketing gimmick - hey look - new parts. Good for them, the manufacturer, and us, the people who made their machines. Win - win.
But they all ****ed it up because they are a bunch of clueless phony back stabbing pricks that know nothing about how to run a manufacturing plant.
I forgot one of the most important points. I asked the girl how many bad parts they were putting out? A lot...
The big manufactures cannot get bad parts or bad things happen.
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52 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:
And it's the self fulfilling death spiral. The way they are operating they aren't making any money, so some vulture like Bain dismembers it all and walks away a little cash but the all the people are SOL. The vulture's ledger books say in the end it was all good, but society gets left with all those 'externalities' like broken towns and broken people that neither the vultures nor the big campaign contributors are obligated to do any accounting for.
This is their own doing.
I was expelled along with hundreds of others from the big multi-national due to being too old and too expensive. They wanted to go younger and cheaper. Because money. I ended up at a company that made machines for these people, and a bunch of them.
Every time the automaker, or whoever, changes a marketing gimmick - hey look - new parts. Good for them, the manufacturer, and us, the people who made their machines. Win - win.
But they all ****ed it up because they are a bunch of clueless phony back stabbing pricks that know nothing about how to run a manufacturing plant.
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6 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:
I have a nicer version when I'm told they only have an hour to spend, and don't want to pay admission. "The gift shop is down the hall"
Being kind and respecting people isn't hard. Our first interaction sets the tone on how we can go forward and make the most of the situation.
As my cousin Oddball who was in Kelly's Hero's would say; "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Not directed at you, just the quote.
But I get it, I spent years in retail. Try a bar. Just add alcohol...
We need to do better. We should all be above this horse****.
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The S&P is holding up pretty well considering what's going on. More concerned with the 6762 level that, if breeched, would take us back into the channel from the huge sell-off in October, which puts 6550 in play as the next stop.
Incoming chart porn warning.
Reminder, the yellow arrows were Fed rate cuts.
On to the story of the day - energy, and the price of crude. It was fun to watch today. Got as high as $82.16. Little under $80 as I type this. For perspective, a 6 month chart of crude and what it looks like in the last week.
This isn't new, when you look back in history - given the price of crude right now. There are some parallels. Look around Jan 15, and later what they call the 12 day war. Blowing **** up is directly proportional to the price of crude it appears.
There is an old saying. This time is different. Seems like some **** is getting blown up. Next stop according to the charts is around 92.