Israel attacked Iran and oil is down 6%?!?
That’s because Israel sent 100 fighter planes into Iran this weekend for “Operation Days of Repentance” (hopefully sounds cooler in Hebrew) but they ONLY hit Iranian military installations and avoided any contact with oil and nuclear facilities – leaving Iran’s 1.7Mbd Oil exports flowing uninterrupted and both Biden and Harris have warned Iran not to retaliate as this attack makes things “even” after Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel back on October 1st. That attack had popped oil by 4% from $68.41 at the open and, guess what – we’re back to $67.37 this morning!
Other than early September, when Oil hit $66, $67.50 has been a good bottom for /CL so, when we cross back over that line – I think it’s a great time to take a long bet (over $67.50) and set tight stops ($67.44) below that line and you can repeat it until it works at a cost of $60 each time we stop out but the upside potential at $70 is $2,500 – so one winner can take care of a lot of losers!
See – go long at the green line. Stop out below the green line. Simple enough? On top of Israel NOT blowing up Iran’s production facilities, the rest of OPEC is INCREASING their production capacity so it is possible that, without anything crazy happening – oil could slip even further into the low-demand winter.
Speaking of low demand, China’s Industrial Profits for September were down 27.1% from last year – even worse than August’s -17.8% reading. For all of 2024 through September, Corporate profits are down 3.5% for the year – so rapidly accelerating in the last couple of months because – as I warned you just 10 days ago: “Feng Shui Friday – China’s Economic Mess Causes Disorder in the Global House!”
I know it seems like I’m just rambling but sometimes I do say important things!
Speaking of important things, the Lincoln Project translated Trump’s rally statements into German and it’s a terrible thing. Poor Donald Trump, so misunderstood. It is so unfair to compare his proposed policies to Hitler in 1933 because, as Ted Cruz said, Trump didn’t do all that stuff in 2017 – so why should we expect him to be like Hitler in 1941? This will be 1937 Hitler at best. Look at JD Vance – he compared Trump to Hitler in 2016, calling him “reprehensible” and “an idiot” (Trump, not Hitler) – and now they are best friends – can’t we all just get along?
This was the NY Times this weekend, using Trumps own statements and telling their readers to believe him – clearly a ringing endorsement of the President. Mass deportation of immigrants is Trump’s closing argument for the election and it’s very popular – among voters who haven’t had it explained to them – as noted by John Oliver this weekend.
There have been many studies already and the American Immigration Council’s $88Bn annual cost estimate for deporting 1.3M Immigrants per year (aiming for 13.3M deportations in 10 years) COULD be put to better use, like:
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- Build over 40,450 new elementary schools in communities around the nation.
- Construct over 2.9 million new homes in communities around the nation.
- Fund the Head Start program for nearly 79 years.
- Pay full tuition and expenses for over 4.3 million people to attend a private college for four years, or over 8.9 million people to attend an in-state public college for four years.
Now, keep in mind that’s enough money to BUILD 2.9M homes per year rather than deport 1.3M illegals per year to “solve the housing crisis“. The only crisis not being solved by doing these other solutions is how to put $88Bn into the pockets of Trump contractors – who will overcharge the Government for detainment camps and processing centers and removals. Gosh that sounds familiar:
“Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to “detention” centers in occupied Poland. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as “resettlement to the East.” The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation meant transit to killing centers for most Jews. Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states to hand over their Jews.“
See, Rubio is right, it wasn’t until 1942 that the Germans actually began EXTERMINATING minorities, homosexuals and immigrants – so Trump is still like 1941 Hitler at worst. For those Trump supporters who wonder “how can we profit from this?” how about investing in US Rail Companies like Union Pacific (UNP), BNSF, CSX of Norfolk Southern?
Union Pacific is the largest, with about a 20% market share and they are trading at 19x forward earning but most analysts haven’t factored in the boom caused by shipping people around the country to detention centers (more on that opportunity later!). UNP currently makes about $7Bn per year and that’s $4,494 per carload and we haven’t even begun to calculate the untapped market for human cargos:
☠ I can calculate the maximum theoretical capacity of people in a standard boxcar to be approximately 120 illegals. This would be extremely crowded. The Nazi transports used 80-100 people because:
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- Need for minimal movement space
- Air circulation requirements
- Multi-day journey considerations
- Physical limitations of human bodies
- Weight restrictions of the cars
The historical 80-100 people represents a grimly “practical” maximum for multi-day transport, however inhumane that was but the US has crowded people much more densely in immigrant detention centers than the Nazis did at prison camps and President Trump promises to ramp up capacity by ten times that if elected.
By the way, I had to use Elon’s Grok AI to do the calculations because my AIs refused to engage in such an “inhumane” exercise, even as a thought experiment – but gosh – isn’t he doing a great job?
So, at 120 “people” per carload, we’d need 10,833 freight cars to transport the immigrants and that’s just the ones we’re sending out of the country so x2 for in and out processing is about 22,000 x $4,494 is a $98,868,000 bonus for the rail industry but we should also take into account that 10-15% of the “passengers” didn’t survive the trip and that was in relatively cool German environments. In the southern US, in the summer, by the time the trip was over there would hardly be anyone left to unload – problem solved!
As to the “Detention Centers” for the survivors of the trip – The US Prison system currently houses 1,270,843 prisoners and that’s only about 10% over capacity and it costs $182Bn a year to maintain them ($143,212) per prisoner.
Trump is a hotel guy – he gets this. Just adding another 1.3M “guests” per year to the system will allow Trump and his buddies to pocket Billions of Dollars in building contracts as well as the ongoing “guest fees” – it’s genius really – and there’s 13.3M “Questionable Americans” in his target market and that list gets longer every day – talk about an opportunity!
Remember that when you vote next week….
