Financial Mindset

Stock futures dipped Sunday as investors were forced to confront the inconvenient reality that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed with oil markets edging closer to a cliff’s edge. Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 123 points, or 0.25%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.09%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.04%. U.S. oil futures rose 1.75% to $107.26 a barrel, while Brent crude climbed 1.1% to $110.50. Gold fell 0.14% to $4,555.30 per ounce. The U.S. dollar was up 0.03% against the euro and up 0.01% against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was steady at 4.597%. Last week’s euphoria came to screeching halt on Friday, when the U.S.-China summit failed to produce a breakthrough that would reopen the strait and allow oil supplies to flow again. Given the fading hopes that energy-fueled inflation will come back down soon, bonds sold off sharply, with U.S., German, Japanese, and U.K. yields all soaring while stocks tumbled. For the first t...

Four crew members ejected safely after two Navy jets collided Sunday at an air show in Idaho, a show organizer said. Emergency crews responded after the two planes collided during the show at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in western Idaho. All four of the crew members from the planes ejected safely, said Kim Sykes, marketing director with Silver Wings of Idaho, which helped to plan the air show. Sykes said the crash occurred off base and she did not see the crash but saw the smoke afterward. The base said in a social media post that it was locked down following the incident during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show. Responders were on the scene and an investigation was underway. Multiple witnesses reported two planes collided and crashed, and videos posted online showed four parachutes opening in the sky as the aircraft plummet to the ground near the base about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Boise. No other information was immediately available, said a person who ...

The Trump administration allowed a waiver that encouraged more Russian crude sales to lapse, even as the Iran war stokes concerns about global oil supplies and higher fuel costs.  The expiration effectively ends for now a brief period where the administration eased sanctions on some Russian oil, enabling purchases that would otherwise be barred. The Trump administration issued an initial waiver in March and a  second  after the first expired in April — both applying only to a subset of Russian oil that had already been loaded onto tankers.  The waivers have been controversial, especially with European allies who see sanctions as essential to starving Russia of crude revenue and depriving Moscow funding for its war in Ukraine. Critics say the sanctions relief has served to enrich Moscow — even though it’s been limited to waterborne oil — especially as crude prices surge.  But some countries, including India and Indonesia, had lobbied the Trump admini...

Iran said transit through the critical Strait of Hormuz will flow once the conflict with the US and Israel is over, but the sides are no closer to resolving their differences or finding a path to achieve it. President Donald Trump returned from a two-day summit with Iran’s close ally, China’s Xi Jinping, where both agreed the strait should be open but made no apparent progress toward that goal. Iran has shown little interest in loosening its hold on the waterway, insisting it wants to maintain a degree of control even after the end of the war. Iran’s threats on ships in the Persian Gulf have brought exports from the oil-rich region to a near-standstill, sending energy prices soaring and giving Tehran significant leverage in talks with the US. “Naturally, once the current state of insecurity is resolved, navigation conditions in the Strait of Hormuz will return to normal,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was cited as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. Ira...

Russians are starting to acknowledge that President Vladimir Putin has led the country to a dead end and can’t shape its future, according to a former senior official in the Kremlin. In a recent Economist op-ed authored anonymously, the former official pointed out that fellow government peers in Moscow, regional governors and businessmen have stopped using the first person plural when describing Putin’s actions. In other words, Russia’s elites found a subtle way to no longer express solidarity with Putin, describing what “he” does rather than what “we” do. That shift took place last spring, but does not signal a rebellion is imminent, the former official added, as the state still controls key levers of repression and fear. At the same time, the regime has stopped bothering to sell a narrative of national restoration or modernization to the rest of the country, which is losing enormous amounts of blood and treasure in the battl...

Global oil inventories are approaching their lowest point in eight years, with Goldman Sachs analysts estimating that stocks could fall to 98 days of global demand by the end of May.  Yet if you’re looking at the markets , things look relatively rosy.  Brent crude prices are hovering around $100 a barrel, down from a post-Iran war peak of $126 in April. West Texas Intermediate crude also stood around $100 a barrel in the past week, down from its April 7 high of $113. (Both benchmarks are still far above their pre-war levels). “The market has been complacent,” Chen Chien-Ming, an associate professor of operations management at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), says. “There’s clearly an oil shortage, but the futures market is heavily suppressed by market-moving headlines and investors’ wishful thinking that the war will soon end.” Experts and analysts estimate that oil prices could skyrocket past $150 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz rem...

Berkshire Hathaway more than tripled the size of its investment in Google’s parent company and bought over $2.6 billion worth of Delta Airlines stock as Greg Abel  settled into the CEO job  after taking over from  Warren Buffett  at the start of the year. The conglomerate also dumped a number of other stocks, including Visa , Mastercard , Domino’s Pizza, Amazon and United Healthcare after  the departure late last year  of Todd Combs, who was one of the two investment mangers Buffett hired to help manage the portfolio. Buffett was always reluctant to invest in tech companies because he said he didn’t understand them well enough to predict the long-term winners. Buffett did make an exception to that rule near the end of his career by buying a massive Apple stake after he recognized how devoted consumers are to that company’s iPhones and computers. Abel appears to be more comfortable because by the end of March Berkshire...