🎯 TUESDAY TARGET: ExxonMobil (XOM) | 👇 Reveal the Play
Washington wants cheaper long-term borrowing and a stronger yen. The Treasury doubled its long-bond buybacks to push yields down, a few billion against forty trillion of debt, then joined Tokyo to prop up the yen, the first joint move since 1998. Japan paid by selling nearly ninety billion dollars of Treasuries, which pushes yields back up. One hand pours a bucket into the pool, the other asks a friend to pull the plug.
Fed chair Warsh has the same problem. His boss demands 1% while the 30-year Treasury yields 5.3%, its highest since 2007, because bondholders fear inflation more than they fear the Fed. Here’s what I think: the hawk’s move and the dove’s move are the same move. Hike once, kill the fear, and the 30-year falls further than the overnight rate rises. Hold, and the long bond keeps pricing a central bank that takes orders.
Expensive money in Washington, expensive power in the counties. Elon Musk stopped arguing. Counties are freezing datacenter permits over power bills, so SpaceX plans a $100 billion launch site in Louisiana, beside Henry Hub where America prices the natural gas Starship burns, to put datacenters into an orbit that never leaves the sunlight: power around the clock, no grid, no county board. Position with the leavers: own power, fuel and launch capacity. Treasury, the Fed and the county boards will still be arguing with gravity and the bill in 2029.
Below, as always, the minimum you need to know to get a feel for what’s cooking:
Crude Is the Headline, Diesel Is the Bill
Brent trades above $98 after weekend attacks on tankers and Iran’s threat to declare an exclusion zone across the Gulf. Ship traffic through Hormuz is at its lowest since May. The sharper pain sits in refined products: US diesel at record prices, Shanghai crude above $100, and a strategic reserve near 287 million barrels, little cushion left.
Midterms: The Sweep Nobody Is Hedging
Prediction markets put a Democratic sweep of both chambers near 50%, a split Congress at 35% and a Republican hold at 10%, with presidential approval in the mid-thirties. A sweep points to higher taxes and tighter regulation, a weaker dollar and lower bond yields as growth cools.
A Smarter Model Changes the Demand Curve
OpenAI’s Astra claims a generational leap; SoftBank and Oracle rallied as proxies. Bulls say smarter models create new uses, so spending keeps climbing. The trap: Astra finishes tasks with fewer tokens, the units AI is billed by, and if prices fall faster than usage grows, spare computing capacity becomes the risk.
Food Inflation Arrives Uninvited
The UN food price index climbed to 133.3 in August, its highest since 2022, every category rising: sugar up 12% on the month, wheat 15% above a year ago. A broad agriculture index posted its largest monthly gain since 2011. Record diesel, pricier fertilizer, El Niño and shipping trouble in the Black Sea and Hormuz push the same way. Central banks can slow demand. Wheat grows on its own schedule.
Hard Assets Refuse to Blink
Gold holds above $4,400 and central banks keep buying dips. Copper hit a record in London on supply worries and tariff fears. Bitcoin slipped below $79,000 after touching $82,000. Brazil is the crowded corner: EWZ has rallied 15% in three weeks as runoff polls flipped toward Bolsonaro, the candidate markets read as fiscally tighter than Lula. Call open interest sits at records, so the next poll decides the direction.
China Refills Banks Nobody Borrows From
Beijing injects $56 billion into eight banks and insurers, the largest recapitalization in nearly two decades. The reason is weak demand: Chinese households and companies repaid more loans than they took out in July, a first on record, and credit growth sits at its weakest since 2008. Fresh capital keeps the banks safe. It cannot make anyone borrow. Speculators are buying call spreads on Chinese indexes anyway, betting Beijing forces a rebound.
THE WEEK: Two Inflation Prints Decide the Fed
Markets reopen today after Labor Day with OpenAI on stage at Goldman’s tech conference and a 3-year Treasury auction. Apple’s event lands Wednesday. Thursday stacks PPI, jobless claims, the ECB’s near-certain hike, and Oracle and Adobe earnings after the close. Friday brings CPI and Michigan sentiment. Fed officials stay silent in their pre-meeting blackout; the decision itself comes September 16, with the Bank of Japan and record options expiry two days later
One lesson from last week’s live Elite Trader call. Real portfolio, real positions, a few minutes long. The full session and the archive sit behind the Elite Trader Plan:
Tactics for this Tape
Hedge while it is cheap: skew at the first percentile means index puts cost less than they have all year. Keep energy and power exposure as the inflation hedge. Avoid chasing first-half leaders; leadership flips weekly. Hold cash at 4%-plus and a shopping list for mid-October, when buybacks and earnings return. Size Brazil and China as options, never as core.
Don’t guess. Reach out. Let’s build a capital-efficient yet risk-managed strategy from the option chain up.
Get Rich Overnight with Options? Yeah Right...
TUESDAY TARGET: ExxonMobil (XOM)
Slightly bullish iron condor on ExxonMobil never hurt anybody.
Oil options are priced for a war, the chart shows a stock grinding higher along its 50-day. We take the difference. Sell the October 16 iron condor, 38 days out, with the short put resting on the rising 50-day and the short call above the August high.
Earnings land after expiry. The machine says sell energy premium. I say collect it while everyone else argues with gravity.
The inspiration is taken straight from one of the Daily Doze trade boards.
This is not an official trade entry, just food for thought. Official trade entries are posted in the Trade Alerts section. Over there, we relentlessly innovate and deliver novel setups.
All our recent trades and the reasoning behind them can be found in the Trade Alerts section. Think of it as a behind-the-scenes look into our process, so you can decide if it’s worth adopting (or adapting) in your own strategy.
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