Baltic
Dry Index. 1989 -48 Brent Crude 99.92
Spot Gold 4559 Spot Silver 73.06
US 2 Year Yield 3.90 +0.07
US Federal Debt. 39.032 trillion
US GDP 31.266 trillion.
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde
8:00 AM Update
Energy shortages in Europe could hit
by next month, warns Shell CEO
By Stephanie Kelly and Marianna Parraga
March 24, 2026 2:25 PM GMT
·
Summary
·
Energy shortages in Europe could hit
next month, warns Shell CEO
·
Middle East conflict affecting
global energy supplies
·
Shell exploring gas and oil
opportunities in Venezuela
HOUSTON, March 24 (Reuters) - Energy shortages could hit Europe by next month, Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab CEO Wael Sawan said on Tuesday, adding that securing adequate energy supply was critical to national security.
Countries cannot have national
security without energy security, Sawan said, adding that Shell was trying to
work with governments to help them address the energy crisis, including with
storage and purchasing. The Middle East conflict, now in its fourth week, has
already affected supplies of jet fuel, with diesel set to be next, followed by
gasoline as summer driving season gets underway in the Northern Hemisphere,
Sawan said.
More
Energy
shortages in Europe could hit by next month, warns Shell CEO | Reuters
Another day and President Trump doubles down on his claims that Iran is negotiating a deal with the USA on a US 15 point end of war plan.
But highly suspicious oil and stock market trading is taking place ahead of announcements and military actions, suggesting insider trading and a highly corrupt war, possibly the most corrupt war ever.
South Korea stocks jump 3%, leading
regional gains as Trump comments signal Iran war de-escalation
Published Tue, Mar 24 2026 7:47 PM
EDT
South Korea stocks led gains
Wednesday as comments from U.S. President Donald Trump pointing to potential
talks with Iran lifted sentiment, even as Tehran has denied any direct
negotiations with Washington.
Speaking at the Oval Office on
Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. and Iran were “in negotiations right now” and
suggested Tehran was keen to strike a peace deal, adding he had stepped
back from threats to target Iranian energy infrastructure “based on
the fact we’re negotiating.”
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 3%, while
the small-cap Kosdaq was 3.18% higher.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 2%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 2.88%,
while the Topix added 2.4%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.14%,
while the CSI 300 rose 0.67%.
Oil prices were lower in early Asia
trading hours.
International benchmark Brent crude futures fell
around 6% to $98.31 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were
also down 5% at $87.65 per barrel.
U.S. stock futures rose Tuesday
night stateside, with S&P
500 futures and Nasdaq
100 futures rising 0.7% and 0.8%, respectively. Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average gained 318 points, or 0.7%.
Futures were higher after the S&P 500 pulled back,
giving back some of the sharp gains seen in the previous session, as crude
prices rose again while the Iran war entered its fourth week.
The broad market index lost 0.37%
and ended at 6,556.37, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed
84.41 points, or 0.18%, and settled at 46,124.06. The Nasdaq Composite dropped
0.84% and closed at 21,761.89.
Asia
markets: Nikkei 225, Kospi, Hang Seng Index
Oil drops more than 4% as Trump
signals Iran talks despite Tehran denial
Published Tue, Mar 24 2026 8:33 PM
EDT
Oil prices fell on Wednesday after
U.S. President Donald Trump said that Washington and Tehran are “in
negotiations right now” and indicated
Iran is keen to reach a peace agreement, despite the Islamic Republic
denying any direct talks with the U.S.
International benchmark Brent crude futures
declined 4.52% to $98.71 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were
also down 3.72% at $88.89 per barrel.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump
said he had pulled back from his earlier threat to launch strikes on Iranian
energy infrastructure “based on the fact we’re negotiating.”
“They’re talking to us, and they’re
talking sense,” Trump said when asked to elaborate on the shift.
Later Tuesday, The New York Times
reported, citing two unnamed officials, that the U.S. had sent Iran a 15-point
proposal aimed at ending the war.
According to the report, it remains
unclear how widely the proposal, delivered through Pakistan, has been
circulated among Iranian officials. It is also uncertain whether Israel, which
is carrying out attacks on Iran alongside the U.S., would back the plan.
Iran’s top joint military command
spokesperson signaled that oil markets will remain volatile, warning prices
won’t normalize until regional stability is secured under its military control,
Reuters reported.
The current disruption to oil
supplies marks the largest shock in decades when measured as a share of global
supply, Goldman Sachs co-head of global commodities research Daan Struyven said
in a call with the media, underscoring the unusually high uncertainty facing
markets.
The bank noted that near-term price
movements are being driven less by changes in the base case outlook and more by
shifts in the perceived probability of worst-case scenarios. Crude is
effectively trading on a geopolitical risk premium as investors hedge against
prolonged disruptions and critically low inventories, Goldman said.
The bank’s base case assumes flows
through the Strait of Hormuz to normalize in April over a four-week period.
Oil
price: WTI, Brent fall as Trump signals Iran talks despite Tehran denial
Gold jumps over 2% as oil slump
eases inflation fears amid Trump Iran talks
Published Tue, Mar 24 2026 10:36 PM
EDT
Gold prices climbed on Wednesday as
declining oil prices helped temper worries about persistent inflation,
following reports that Washington is working on a proposal to end the Middle
East conflict.
Spot gold prices were last up
2.56% at $4,588 per ounce, while gold futures for April
delivery were last seen over 4% higher at $4,597.7 per ounce.
U.S. President Donald Trump said
Tuesday the U.S. and Iran are “in negotiations right now” and suggested Tehran
is eager to make a peace deal, even as the Islamic Republic has denied it is in
direct talks with Washington.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump
said he decided to back off from his recent threat to order strikes on Iranian
energy infrastructure “based on the fact we’re negotiating.”
“They’re talking to us, and they’re
talking sense,” Trump said when asked to further explain his pivot.
Oil prices fell following Trump’s
comments. International benchmark Brent crude futures fell
around 6% to $98.31 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were
also down roughly 5% at $87.65 per barrel.
The dollar index, which measures the
strength of the greenback against a basket of currencies, was down 0.17% early
Asia hours.
Gold prices, however, remain about
17% below their late-January peak.
Goldman Sachs said the recent
pullback in gold prices was largely in line with historical patterns, citing
higher interest rate expectations and market volatility as key drivers behind
the decline.
“We don’t think that the decline …
is surprising in light of our existing pricing framework,” said the bank’s
co-head of global commodities research Daan Struyven on Wednesday. He noted
that rising rate expectations have weighed on investor demand, particularly
through gold-backed ETFs, which are “very rate sensitive.”
Episodes of extreme market stress
can also pressure bullion, Struyven told the media in a briefing call, as
investors facing margin calls tend to sell gold alongside other assets.
He also suggested that gold’s latest
rally has overshot fundamentals, with part of the correction reflecting “a bit
of normalization.”
Still, Goldman has maintained a
structurally bullish outlook, forecasting gold to reach $5,400 by year-end,
underpinned by continued central bank buying as countries seek to diversify
into assets with “lower geopolitical and financial risks.”
More
Gold
price amid Donald Trump Middle East peace hopes
Trump Began Iran Talks as Allies
Warned War Risked Disaster
Tue, March 24, 2026 at 2:36 AM GMT
(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump’s
decision to back down from his threat to destroy Iran’s power infrastructure
came after US allies and Gulf countries privately warned the president of the
dangers of following through with his threat, according to people familiar with
the matter.
The US president said Monday he was
giving Iran a five-day reprieve from his threatened action, pointing to new
talks with Tehran he believed could broker a deal that would resolve the
conflict.
But Trump’s decision came after some
allies cautioned that the war was quickly becoming a disaster. Regional
partners told the US that permanent damage to Iranian infrastructure would
almost inevitably result in a failed state after the conflict ended, according
to the people, who described private conversations on the condition of
anonymity.
Pulling back also dovetailed with
another interest of the president’s: calming markets rattled by his threats and
the ongoing conflict. Trump’s decision, which was announced shortly before US
trading began, was designed in part to address those concerns, according to the
people, and immediately spurred a sharp fall in Brent crude and a rebound in
the S&P 500 and US Treasuries.
“Trump needed some way to climb down
from a threat that would surely have started a new round of escalation, this
time crossing a new threshold by targeting civilian energy infrastructure,
which would likely constitute a war crime,” said Dana Stroul, former deputy
assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. “It is surely no
coincidence that the announcement of a five-day pause and talks came right
before markets opened in the United States on Monday morning.”
The picture that has emerged is one
where Iran’s regional neighbors are, for now, seeing the latest burst of
diplomacy as a five-day reprieve. One senior diplomat said Egypt, Turkey and
Pakistan are passing messages between the US and Iran. While officials are
acting as go-betweens for the two countries, it’s not at all clear the extent
to which those negotiations are happening directly.
Trump, speaking on Monday during
travel to Tennessee, said representatives from Iran reached out to start the
talks because they were eager to make a deal after his threat to strike energy
facilities.
“We’ve been negotiating for a long
time, and this time, they mean business, and it’s only because of the great job
that our military did,” Trump said.
The Trump administration appears to
believe that Iran will readily agree to talks if the US signals it’s ready to
negotiate, but allies worry that it may not be that easy, according to a person
familiar with the matter.
The negotiations between an unnamed
Iranian official, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and adviser Steve Witkoff
started Saturday and continued through Sunday, Trump said. According to the US
president, Tehran agreed to turn over nuclear material in the country and not
resume its nuclear program.
The talks were expected to continue
by phone on Monday. Asked who would control the pivotal Strait of Hormuz under
such a deal, Trump said, “maybe me and the ayatollah — whoever the ayatollah
is.”
“We’ll see how that goes, and if it
goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this,” Trump said. “Otherwise,
we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.”
----Pakistan’s army chief, Asim
Munir, spoke with Trump on Sunday while Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad
Shehbaz Sharif held talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday,
the Financial Times reported.
Still, Iran’s foreign ministry
denied any US-Iran talks to the state-run Mizan News Agency, and Iran’s
parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Monday said in a social media
post that the US president’s claims were fake news “used to manipulate the
financial and oil markets.”
The president’s decision to halt his
planned strikes on energy facilities was specifically seen as an effort to
manage oil prices by people familiar with the proceeding diplomatic talks, and
Trump on Monday acknowledged the link.
“The price of oil will drop like a
rock as soon as the deal is done,” Trump said. “I guess it already is today. So
we have a very serious chance of making a deal.”
And that mixing of motives has
fanned questions across Washington and Wall Street about the actual prospects
for peace. Trump’s well-established history of backing off maximalist threats,
Iran’s own record of stringing along nuclear talks, and recent examples of the
US using discussions with Tehran as a feint ahead of fresh military action all
have diplomats and traders questioning whether the negotiations are likely to
yield a real deal.
“The President also has shown a
penchant for misdirection, and we cannot rule out the possibility that his
48-hour deadline might provide cover for some near-term event that could change
the facts on the ground,” said Clearview Energy Partners LLC in an analyst
note.
----Trump’s emphatic insistence
there are direct communications was met with caution by many US allies who
adopted a wait-and-see approach and remained skeptical of this latest salvo
given the US leader’s multiple reversals during the three-week conflict.
Trump conceded that the talks had
not been with Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was appointed supreme leader
after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the strikes. Trump said the US
had not heard from the new leader directly — and was not sure if he was still
alive — but believed based on intelligence that Witkoff and Kushner were
dealing with the true power center in Iran.
Still, there’s a risk that the pause
could end up validating Iran’s approach, particularly if the talks don’t
succeed.
“This risks confirming, in Tehran’s
mind, that if it threatens back especially against energy infrastructure in the
region, it can compel the US to back down,” Jonathan Panikoff, former Deputy
National Intelligence Officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence
Council. “In its mind, Iran is not only winning but this is the type of action
that increases its own deterrence.”
More
Trump Began Iran Talks as Allies Warned War Risked Disaster
Stagflation alarm bells ring in the
euro zone as energy crunch hits the global economy
Published Tue, Mar 24 2026 8:39 AM
EDT
Private sector output in the euro
zone sank to a 10-month low in March, amid mounting evidence of the impact the
Iran conflict is having on the global economy.
The closely-watched S&P
Global flash purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for the euro zone fell to
50.5 in March, marking a steep decline from the 51.9 reported in February.
Economists polled by Reuters had
expected a shallower dip to 51.0. The 50.0 threshold
separates expansion from contraction territory.
The reading prompted fresh warnings
that the region is facing the specter of looming stagflation — a toxic
combination of high inflation and unemployment, and stalling growth.
“The flash Eurozone PMI is ringing
stagflation alarm bells as the war in the Middle East drives prices sharply
higher while stifling growth,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at
S&P Global Market Intelligence, commented Tuesday.
“Firms’ costs are rising at the
fastest rate for over three years amid the surge in energy prices and choking
of supply chains resulting from the war. Supplier delays have jumped to their
highest since mid-2022, largely linked to shipping issues.”
Euro zone companies surveyed by
S&P Global scaled back hiring marginally during March, as bosses lowered
output expectations for the year when compared with February forecasts,
according to S&P Global economists.
“Stagflation” is often seen as a
“worse case scenario” for economies and poses a dilemma for central banks
because the tools they’d usually use to combat high inflation — higher interest
rates — can stifle growth and employment, while lowering rates can boost growth
but increase demand and inflation.
The euro zone is not alone in seeing
private sector activity slow due to the Iran war, with PMI data from India earlier
on Tuesday also showing output growth slowed to its lowest level since October
2022.
‘Critical’ energy crunch
The current turmoil in the Middle
East has made previous growth and inflation forecasts largely redundant, and
businesses and policymakers have been left trying to gauge the direction of
travel for input costs and inflation without knowing how long the conflict will
last.
In revised forecasts released last week, the European Central Bank now
expects economic growth of 0.9% in 2026, and headline inflation to average 2.6%
this year.
That outlook could be optimistic,
however, with S&P Global’s Williamson noting that the PMI survey’s price
gauge was indicative of inflation accelerating close to 3%, “with cost pressure
likely to add still further to selling price inflation in the coming months.”
“The outlook depends on the duration
of the war and any potential lasting impact on energy and supply chains, but
the flash PMI data underscore how the European Central Bank is no longer in a ‘good place’ with respect to growth and inflation,” Williamson
said.
The March PMIs show the conflict in
Iran is already having a significant impact on the euro area economy, J.P.
Morgan’s Raphael Brun-Aguerre noted Tuesday.
More
Stagflation alarm bells in the euro zone amid 'critical'
energy crunch
Half a billion dollars bet on oil
minutes before Trump climbdown
Some 6,200 oil futures contracts
changed hands before president announced energy strikes ceasefire, raising
concerns about insider knowledge
Published 24 March 2026 7:53pm
GMT
Half a billion dollars worth of bets
on the oil market were placed 15 minutes before Donald Trump said the US had
held “productive” talks with Iran and announced a ceasefire
on energy strikes.
Some 6,200 oil futures contracts –
valued at a reported $580m (£433.9m) – changed hands between 6.49am
and 6.50am EST (10.49am and 10.50am GMT) on Monday.
A quarter of an hour later, the US
president announced “very good and productive conversations regarding a
complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East” on Truth
Social, which caused oil prices to tumble.
The oil futures market allows
investors to buy or sell oil at a set price on a future date, enabling them to
guard against any unexpected leaps in prices in the months ahead. Banks and
hedge funds also bet on moves in the price of oil to earn profits.
Shortly after Mr Trump’s post, oil
prices fell below oil
prices fell below $100 £74 a barrel, with markets hedging that the conflict
would probably come to an end soon.
Anonymous traders using the betting
site Polymarket, which allows you to wager on the outcome of everything from
weather patterns to politics, have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in
recent months.
Bets predicting military action
‘suspicious’
One user has made $1m (£747,000)
since 2024 from well-timed bets predicting military action by the US and Israel
against Iran, according to CNN.
Nick Vaiman, who leads Bubblemaps,
an analytics company tracking anonymous digital blockchain transactions,
described the trades as “suspicious”.
“All of this is strong signalling of
insider activity, based on the amount they made, the markets they bet on, the
timing of their trades, the success rates of these trades,” he told CNN.
More
Half
a billion dollars bet on oil minutes before Trump climbdown
Exclusive: Trader made nearly $1
million on Polymarket with remarkably accurate Iran bets
March 24, 2025
A trader made nearly $1 million
since 2024 from dozens of well-timed Polymarket bets that correctly predicted
US and Israeli military actions against Iran, according to an analysis shared
with CNN.
The bettor won a staggering 93% of
their five-figure wagers about Iran, even though the events they predicted were
unannounced military operations.
The trader had a pattern of
prescient bets, including hours before Israeli strikes in October 2024 during
its tit-for-tat conflict with Iran, hours before US
airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in June
2025, and hours before the joint US-Israeli surprise attack in February, which
started the current war.
The findings from Bubblemaps, an
analytics company that tracks blockchain transactions, highlight the rising
concerns about the potential for insider trading on some prediction markets,
where users can wager on everything from sports to elections to warfare.
“All of this is strong signaling of
insider activity, based on the amount they made, the markets they bet on, the
timing of their trades, the success rates of these trades, and the fact that
they are connected on-chain,” Bubblemaps CEO Nick Vaiman told CNN. “This is
pretty suspicious in my book.”
It isn’t clear whether the trader
flagged by Bubblemaps is an insider, and the accounts they used are anonymous
and can’t be publicly traced to a specific person.
The bets were placed on Polymarket’s
international site, which is out of the reach of US regulations. Polymarket
didn’t respond to CNN’s multiple requests for comment.
More
In other news, is a Super El Nino next?
What is a ‘super El Niño’?
Scientists predict record-breaking climate event this year
Mon, March 23, 2026 at 5:05 PM GMT
The ever-shifting, interconnected
system of global air and ocean currents dictates the weather we
experience daily.
This year, however, scientists are
warning that a particularly potent version of one of Earth's most infamous
climate phenomena, El Niño, could
dramatically alter these patterns.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain recently posted on X (formerly Twitter), stating: "Whew. All signs are increasingly pointing
to a significant, if not strong to very strong, El Niño event."
This sentiment was echoed by Washington Post meteorologist Ben Noll, who cautioned that "changes in location, intensity
and frequency of droughts, floods, heat waves and hurricanes are all likely."
In his X post, Noll estimated a 22
percent chance of a "super El Niño" by August and an 80 percent
chance of a "strong" one based on new modeling from the European
Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
This outcome is not set in stone,
and predictions in early spring tend to be less reliable than predictions later
in the year. Some scientists have warned against making assumptions just yet.
But if it does happen, the impact on
U.S. weather would be profound.
What is El Niño?
For hundreds of years, fishermen off
the western coast of South America had their livelihoods rocked by a periodic
change in water temperature that caused mass death in the food chain they
relied on.
Since it always happened around
December, they dubbed it "El Niño de
Navidad" — literally 'the little boy of
Christmas' — in a sardonic reference to the birth of Jesus Christ.
What we now call simply El Niño (the
boy) is a disruption in the usual pattern of water and air movement in the
Pacific Ocean, occurring roughly every two to seven years.
Normally, warmer surface water from
the eastern Pacific is continuously moved westward by strong winds. Colder
water wells up from the deep ocean to fill the gap, making the eastern Pacific
far cooler than the western Pacific.
Sometimes, though, this process
falters (although scientists disagree on exactly why). Those stiff westerly
winds get weaker, and the eastern Pacific gets warmer, causing massive updrafts of warm air that change the path of the air currents flowing east
over the Americas.
According to The Washington
Post, a 'super' version of El Niño
happens roughly once every 10-15 years. The impact on our weather is profound —
and can be catastrophic.
How would it affect the U.S.?
The impact of El Niño on the U.S. is
often unpredictable, but there are some patterns.
A strong El Niño generally makes the
whole world warmer, as all that heat wafting up from the ocean gets spread far
beyond the tropics.
That could lead to a
hotter-than-usual summer in the western U.S., potentially worsening the
wildfire season in California and Oregon. In the past, it has also often meant
a cooler summer in the U.S. South.
Conversely, Western and Southern
winters could be wetter than normal, leading to more snowfall in the mountains
and perhaps some relief for the ongoing droughts in many states.
The Midwest might see drier weather, while the Pacific Northwest is likely to be unusually hot.
"El Niño patterns could bring
more rain than normal to the Colorado Basin," said AccuWeather meteorologist Chat
Merrill. "The early start to the El
Niño can lead to an increase in moisture from the southern Plains to East Coast
during summer and fall.”
While hurricanes in the Atlantic
generally find it harder to form, they are more active in the Pacific, meaning
that Hawaii and east Asia might suffer more storms.
Pacific Islands such as Guam,
Hawaii, and American Samoa tend to get drier weather, but the increased chance
of cyclones means they may be suddenly lashed by high rainfall.
Extreme weather is more likely
overall, with intense heat in tropical countries and potentially widespread
droughts around the world.
More
What is a ‘super El Niño’? Scientists predict
record-breaking climate event this year
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
Now it depends on the outcome
of the next five days.
Apollo gives investors only 45% of requested withdrawals from $15
billion private credit fund
March 23, 2026
Apollo, the asset
management giant, told investors in its flagship private credit fund that it
will limit withdrawals this quarter to just under half of requests, the latest
sign of stress in the asset class.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday, Apollo
Debt Solutions BDC said that it received redemption requests equal to 11.2% of
shares outstanding in the first quarter, far exceeding the 5% quarterly cap the
fund allows.
Unlike some other private credit players, Apollo is sticking with the 5% cap, an industry
standard that rivals including Blackstone have recently relaxed to
satisfy investor demands for their funds.
The vehicle — a
non-traded business development company, or BDC — expects to return about $730
million to investors on a prorated basis, meaning redeeming shareholders will
receive roughly 45% of the capital they requested. The fund has a net asset
value of $15.1 billion as of Feb. 28.
"Today's decision
reflects our ongoing commitment to long-term value creation for the Fund's
shareholders," Apollo said. "As long-term stewards of capital, we
have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of all Fund investors,
balancing the interests of shareholders seeking liquidity with those who choose
to remain invested."
Apollo said the fund's
net asset value per share declined 1.2% over the past three months through Feb.
28, but outperformed the U.S. Leveraged Loan Index, which fell 2.2% over the
same period.
The withdrawals show that
Apollo didn't avoid the rush of investor redemptions plaguing rivals, driven by
concern over private credit loans to software companies. Apollo
executives have sought to distance themselves from other players recently, saying
the firm typically made loans to larger, more stable companies.
At 12.3% of loans,
software is the single biggest sector in the Apollo Debt Solutions BDC, according to
the company.
Apollo gives investors only 45% of requested withdrawals from $15 billion
private credit fund
‘Capital is a coward’: A whole new world of elevated risk will stay
embedded in global markets, keeping prices higher everywhere
Jason Ma
Mon, March 23, 2026 at 2:46 PM GMT
Markets rebounded Monday after President Donald
Trump retreated from his threat to destroy Iranian energy infrastructure and
revealed talks with the regime, but the world is unlikely to revert to its
prewar status quo, according to a geopolitics expert.
In a Washington Post op-ed on
Thursday, Eurasia Group Chairman and former State Department official Cliff
Kupchan predicted the Iranian regime, dominated by successive layers of
hardliners, will remain hostile to the U.S.
“The end of the war, therefore, is unlikely to
usher in a stable peace,” he warned. “That reality means the Strait of Hormuz
will become a source of geopolitical risk for a long time—a live wire down the
middle of the global economy.”
Even if Tehran eventually negotiates away its
uranium enrichment program and longer-range ballistic missiles, it will still
have drones, mines and fast attack boats that can threaten tankers, Kupchan
pointed out.
And Iran wouldn’t have to use its diminished
capabilities very often to scare investors. In fact, despite the U.S. and
Israel decimating its military with thousands of airstrikes, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps has been able to keep the Strait of Hormuz largely
closed with occasional attacks on ships.
That threat has effectively bottled up about
one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas, and prices have soared,
though they pulled back somewhat on Monday. Still, the genie is already out of
the bottle.
“From now on traders will act based on the
knowledge that Iran might at any time attack, and that new perception will
create new risk premia in critically important sectors,” Kupchan said.
Indeed, Brent crude oil prices are still above $100
a barrel after tumbling 10% Monday. He expects them to trade in the $80 range
for several months due to the lingering risk as well as the time needed to
restore output. Oil giants like Saudi Arabia and Iraq slashed production as
their exports have been throttled by the Hormuz closure.
Likewise for the LNG market, which suffered a major
shock last week when Iran struck a top natural gas field in Qatar that will
take years to repair. Meanwhile, the Gulf is also a major source of fertilizer,
aluminum, and helium, meaning shortages will curb crop yields, industrial
output, and semiconductor supplies, respectively.
The new risk environment will cause prices to stay
higher globally and further stoke inflation, Kupchan added. At the same time,
the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will struggle to rehabilitate
their images as safe places to invest, affecting the AI and defense sectors
too.
“Capital is a coward, going only where it feels
safe,” he noted. “Once unimaginable images of office and hotel towers burning
after Iranian strikes will pierce investor sentiment.”
To be sure, the U.S. will likely help allies
rebuild after the war and increase regional integration, but the Gulf will need
a long time to become a global safe haven for capital again, Kupchan wrote.
More
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section Updates as they get reported.
£400 plug-in
solar panels to be sold by Lidl and Amazon to cut your energy bills
The
Government claims a family could save £70 to £110 a year using plug-in solar
March 24, 2026 6:00 am (Updated
6:01 am)
Households in the UK will soon be able
to buy “plug-in” solar panels in shops, the Government has said. Ministers
say the appliances will take money off energy bills and support Britain’s
transition to net zero.
Here’s how it works.
What is plug-in-solar?
Plug-in solar refers to low-cost panels
that families can put on their balconies or outdoor spaces.
Unlike traditional solar panels, which
can be costly and complex to install, these panels are plugged directly into a
mains socket like any other device, providing a home with free solar power.
The appliances reduce the amount of
electricity a household draws from the grid, thereby cutting a family’s energy
bills.
What
is the Government planning?
Plug-in solar is already popular in
European countries like Germany and Spain. In Germany, where they are referred
to as Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant), around half a
million devices are plugged in each year.
However, UK regulations do not currently
allow plug-in solar. Ministers have promised to change this, saying the
technology is easy-to-install and could save many households significant
amounts on their energy bills while making Britain less reliant on fossil fuel.
The Government has said it will work
with the Energy Networks Association, Distribution Network Operators (the
organisations which own and control the electricity distribution network), and
the regulator Ofgem to update the regulations.
Specifically, it will update the “G98
distribution code and wiring regulations BS 7671” to allow UK households to
connect <800W plug-in solar panels to domestic mains sockets, without the
need for an electrician and with tailored safety standards.
The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:
“The Iran War has once again shown our drive for clean power is essential for
our energy security so we can escape the grip of
fossil fuel markets we don’t control.”
He added that plug-in solar would help
to “roll out clean power so we can give our country energy sovereignty”.
When could it become available by?
The Government has said it is already
working with retailers like Lidl and Amazon, alongside manufacturers such
as EcoFlow, to bring plug-in solar to the UK market.
The Department for Energy Security and
Net Zero has promised that the solar panels will be available in shops “within
months”, while EcoFlow has said it hopes people will be able to use them this
summer.
Georgina Hall, corporate affairs
director at Lidl GB said: “At Lidl GB, we are committed to making sustainable
living affordable for everyone and we welcome the Government’s move to
modernise regulations in the UK.
“Updating the regulatory landscape for
this ‘plug-and-play’ technology is a positive step towards empowering British
households to manage their energy costs and support the nation’s net-zero
ambitions.”
More
£400 plug-in solar panels to be sold by Lidl and Amazon to cut your
energy bills
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“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of
imagination.”
Oscar Wilde
