March 8, 2026 | Trading Desk Notes for March 7, 2026

Let’s start with crude oil Nymex front-month April WTI traded above $92.50 on Friday, up ~$25 (38%) on the week, the largest ever weekly price rise, on the highest ever weekly trading volume (over 14 million contracts at 1,000 barrels per contract = roughly the equivalent of 140 days’ worth of total global crude oil production traded on […]

March 7, 2026 | This Week in Money

• Ross Clark:  Stock Markets, Oil, Gold, Silver, Copper, USD, Canadian Dollar, Bitcoin.
• Martin Straith:  (11:55) Stock Markets, Oil, Strait of Hormuz.
• David Brett:  (46:23) Mining Industry, Aboriginal Land Claims.

March 7, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday March 7th 2026

The Bottom Line Start of the war against Iran had a significant negative impact on world equity markets last week. By the end of the week, intermediate term technicals for world equity markets had deteriorated from Overbought to Neutral levels. Despite international and political influences, analysts raised 2026 cash flow and earnings estimates for S&P […]

March 6, 2026 | Trump Holds a Weak Hand Heading into the Upcoming Summit

Trump Heads to Beijing With a Weak Hand When Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping in Beijing later this month, the setting will look like a diplomatic summit. But the real story is leverage—and right now China appears to have more of it. The three-day meeting comes as tensions rise over U.S. military action in Iran. […]

March 6, 2026 | Diversify This

The investment sales world loves to talk about the defensive benefit of holding different equity sectors and global markets. The pitch is that there’s always a bull market somewhere, so we can always-be-buying risk-on products. The US stock market is heavily concentrated (39%) in the top 10 most expensive companies today (dark blue bar below). […]

March 6, 2026 | Existing US Home Sales Collapse Despite Falling Mortgage Rates

    Existing home sales just delivered one of the clearest signals yet about the true state of the housing market in 2026, and it is not the rebound narrative the mainstream keeps promoting. The latest data shows that existing-home sales fell 8.4% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 3.91 million […]

March 5, 2026 | Europe Is Building a Digital Identity System for 450 Million People

The European Union is quietly constructing what may become one of the most sweeping digital identity systems ever attempted. Under new legislation, every EU member state must provide citizens with a government-approved “European Digital Identity Wallet” by 2026. This system will allow people to store official documents, verify identity, access government services, sign legal contracts, […]

March 5, 2026 | Could New Gulf War Cause Stock Market Crash?

Is the US already in a recession?

March 5, 2026 | Even Without War, Markets Would Have Been Bumpy

All metals will likely do better than stock markets right now

March 4, 2026 | Great Nations Do Not Fight Endless Wars

  “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Donald Trump said during his campaign when highlighting his “Americas First” message. Trump explicitly promised to maintain peace and keep American troops out of foreign wars. American blood has been shed in the Middle East once more amid Operation Epic Fury. Could this escalating war cause MAGA […]

March 4, 2026 | Blocked Exits Intensify The Urge To Get Out

After the 2008 financial crisis, more than a decade of zero-interest-rate policies drove an explosion in private credit products and funds that were initially marketed to institutions and pensions under the oxymoron of safe ‘high-yield’. Then, from March 2022 to May 2023, a record succession of central bank rate hikes took the US Fed rate […]

March 3, 2026 | Recession Watch: Is Private Credit The New Subprime Mortgage?

Oil has been one of the worst-performing commodities lately, due mostly to rising US production and relative peace in the Middle East. Well, that peace ended with a bang last weekend, and oil has erased its price declines. Higher gasoline prices are likely to follow. While oil was spiking, pretty much everything else tanked on […]

March 3, 2026 | Shocks are Part of life; Sentiment Coming into Them Matters

Macro shocks are a constant throughout time. The market impact is often dramatic in the short-term. Longer-term, outcomes vary depending on the level of optimism that was priced in when the shock hits. Coming into 2026, most asset markets were exhibiting excessive optimism -pricing the best of all possible outcomes. Just one example: the S&P […]

March 3, 2026 | Iranians Divided Over Regime Change

The Western press is desperately trying to frame the Iranian people as either celebrating liberation or rallying behind their government. As always, the truth is far more complex. The Iranian population is deeply divided, and that division is precisely what unfolds when an external military strike hits a nation already suffering from internal political and […]

March 2, 2026 | Landmark Agreements?

Happy Monday Morning! While everyone was busy following the enormous geopolitical events unfolding in the middle east, a subtle news release from the Federal Government went largely unnoticed or perhaps intentionally burried, despite having (potentially) significant ramifications for nearly all of Metro Vancouver. The Musqueam Indian Band and the Government of Canada signed a Rights Recognition […]

March 2, 2026 | Will Mortgage Rates Crash and Spur a Real Estate Boom?

  Everyone keeps asking if mortgage rates will collapse in 2026 as if the entire real estate market revolves around the Federal Reserve pulling a lever. That is simply not how the system actually functions. Mortgage rates are tied to long-term capital flows and the 10-year yield, not just whatever the Fed does at the […]

March 2, 2026 | Art of the Collapse, March 2026

Welcome to the Era of Mixed Feelings. The world is still at war… …but stackers are getting rich: The “Epstein class” is now a thing: Next up: culture war Alarming Study Shows Average Somali High School Senior In Minnesota Committing Fraud At Just A 5th Grade Level (Babylon Bee) – An alarming new study of Minnesota schools […]

March 1, 2026 | Why Stocks Look Like Hell

[Events in the Middle East have overshadowed my narrow economic critique of President Trump in the commentary below.  His alliance with Israel to knock out global jihad’s command structure is likely to change the world in ways no one can predict. It will also test the idea that only military might can secure a lasting […]

March 1, 2026 | The Coming Crisis: Fingers of Instability

This letter is a little different. I am indeed working on my book about what I believe is a coming crisis by reviewing five different cycle theories. They all arrive at a similar scenario from different points of view, but they all suggest a crisis occurring sometime around the end of this decade or perhaps […]