Gold prices reflect a shift in paradigm – Part I

IRGC Navy Turns Back Containership Seeking Hormuz Passage As Iran Starts Charging $2 Million Toll Amid reports of increasing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Alireza Tangsiri, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, said on X that the containership Selen was turned back by the IRGC Navy for "failing to comply with legal protocols and lacking permission to transit the Strait of Hormuz." Needless to say, that is an upgrade from firing missiles at it. کشتی کانتینربر SELEN به دلیل عدم رعایت پروتکل‌های قانونی و نداشتن مجوز عبور از #تنگه_هرمز،...

DOJ Probes BlackRock Private Credit Fund Valuations After Dramatic Repricings It all started in late January, just before the Blue Owl debacle and the SAAS-palcypse sparked a historic crash in private credit.  It was then that in a rare off-cycle disclosure, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp., a publicly traded private-credit fund structured as a business development company (BDC), disclosed a 19% markdown in net asset value as troubled loans weighed on performance. The news not only sent shares of the fund plunging 13% on Jan. 26, the most since March 2020 but market...

Why Hasn't Oil Hit $150 (Yet)? Authored by Robert Rapier via OilPrice.com, Global oil inventories and floating storage have acted as temporary shock absorbers against the Hormuz disruption. OPEC spare capacity has stabilized markets, but it cannot fully replace lost Persian Gulf exports indefinitely. Prolonged disruption could eventually exhaust market buffers and trigger a much sharper oil price surge. I think most energy analysts would have been shocked to learn that roughly three months into a total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, oil would be trading at just over $100 a barrel. I...