Monday 3/9 MM

Tuesday 3/10

Deep dive but worth the read…

https://x.com/alaliqasem/status/2032477662543753318?s=52

Happy Monday 🤣🤣🤣

Bonds and groups
Monday 3/16

Oil…black gold… small RV update.
https://youtu.be/jDEd2uOrQUs

This is exactly what I was talking about on the video today. This guy is a great person to follow regarding oil.

https://x.com/alaliqasem/status/2036489083426369939?s=46

JUST IN: While Trump declared “we’ve won this war” and Leavitt warned of “unleashing hell,” Putin just signed a decree banning the export of refined gold bars over 100 grams. Effective May 1. The world’s second-largest gold producer just locked its output inside its own borders. Nobody on the trading floor blinked. They should have.

Russia produces 310 metric tons of gold per year. The decree blocks individuals, companies, and entrepreneurs from exporting refined bars above 100 grams. Commercial banks are exempt, which means institutional flows continue while retail capital flight is sealed. The official rationale is shadow economy cleanup and anti-money laundering. The timing says something else entirely.

The Central Bank of Russia sold 15 metric tons of gold reserves in January and February, the largest two-month drawdown since 2002. It sold at peak prices, generating approximately $1.68 billion. Then it signed a decree preventing anyone else from doing the same thing. The state sold high. Then it locked the door. The remaining reserves sit at 74.3 million troy ounces, valued at $384 billion, representing 47 percent of Russia’s total foreign reserves. Gold is now Russia’s primary sovereign asset in a world where $300 billion of its other assets remain frozen by Western sanctions.

The BRICS Unit, piloted October 2025, is a hybrid trade settlement currency backed 40 percent by physical gold and 60 percent by BRICS member currencies. Gold vaults are being established in member countries for same-day settlement. Russia’s export ban ensures its 310 tons per year stays inside the system the Unit requires. The gold does not leave. It becomes collateral. The collateral becomes settlement. The settlement replaces the dollar.

Now connect the two chokepoints.

The Strait of Hormuz collects tolls in Chinese yuan. Russia’s gold stays home to back a settlement system denominated partly in Chinese yuan. Iran’s war is creating the energy shock that drives oil surpluses into non-dollar channels. Those surpluses are settling in yuan, which buys Chinese goods, which generates trade balances that rotate into gold. The gold that Russia just locked inside its borders. The circuit is: Hormuz toll in yuan, surplus in yuan, goods in yuan, residual into gold, gold locked by decree, gold backs the Unit, the Unit replaces the dollar in trade settlement. Every node in the circuit is accelerated by the war that Trump says he has won.

The bombs that struck 9,000 Iranian targets contain Chinese rare earth magnets. The toll booth collects Chinese currency. The gold backing the alternative settlement system is locked inside the country supplying China with energy. The $200 billion supplemental cannot be replenished without Chinese minerals. The war is not weakening the system it was designed to contain. It is accelerating the system it was designed to prevent.

Gold trades at $4,517 per ounce, up 48 percent year on year. Brent at $104, up 43 percent in a month. Central banks bought 863 tons of gold in 2025, BRICS members accounting for 40 percent. The decree is not an isolated policy decision. It is a node in a network that includes Hormuz tolls, BRICS vaults, yuan settlement, and a war making all of it move faster.

Putin did not sign the decree because of the war. He signed it because the war is doing what sanctions alone could not: forcing the monetary transition from promise-based settlement to collateral-based settlement at a speed no peacetime policy could achieve. The molecules are trapped in Hormuz. The gold is trapped in Russia. The dollars are trapped in a system that both chokepoints are working to replace.

Two chokepoints. Two lockdowns. One transition. Saturday arrives.

https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2037037316792074280?s=46