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Los Angeles renters can now search a massive new online database exposing years of alleged housing violations tied to apartment buildings across the city.

Trump Talk, Taiwan, & 'Thucydides Trap' Threat Triggers Market Mayhem Overnight

Traders are waking this morning in the US to some relative market mayhem and questioning what came first - the oil spike or the geopolitical angst - to trigger these moves as it appears the market finally remembered there's more going on in the world than trading 'short compute' demand to the moon...

Oil prices are up significantly (WTI >$100)...

Bond yields are breaking out everywhere (10Y 4.5%, 30Y UST 5.10%!, 30Y Gilt 5.82% - highest sine 1982)...

Equity markets sharply lower overnight (Kospi -6%, Japan Semis  approx. -5%, Japan momentum approx. -2.5% Nasdaq -1.5% as levered ETF exposure and high concentration clearly exacerbating the sell off)...

The catalysts are intertwined with what appears to be a nothing-burger in terms of outcomes from Trump's trip to China (exacerbated by Xi's not so hidden threat) and Trump's comments on the Strait of Hormuz..

China Summit

As Goldman Sachs one-delta desk-head, Rich Privorotsky, notes this morning, the Xi/Trump summit appeared to yield little in the way of immediate tangible outcomes.

Despite all the positive rhetoric, Boeing sank,  KWEB closed -4.6%, the details around NVIDIA H200 exports remain murky and even some of the headline “wins” looked shaky.

Reuters reported that Chinese customs “halted export clearances for hundreds of U.S. beef plants” just hours after approvals had seemingly been renewed during the summit. 

For now this still looks more like stabilization than a durable reset. 

Feels like the US side came hoping for transactional risk deals while China was looking for a broader multi year reset and foundations for more constructive dialogue.

Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said that the two leaders talked about Taiwan "a lot," NBC News reported.

“On Taiwan, he does not want to see a fight for independence because that would be a very strong confrontation," Trump said.

Trump said he hadn't made any decisions about sales of arms to Taiwan, but he will "make a determination," the Associated Press reported.

Xi told Trump that he opposes Taiwan's independence, and Trump said he heard the Chinese leader out without offering any response.

The references to the “Thucydides Trap” did not go unnoticed either:

Xi invoked whether China and the US could “transcend the so-called Thucydides Trap” (the theory that when a rising power threatens to displace an established great power, war becomes highly likely).

...very deliberate language and clearly aimed at framing this as something much bigger than tariffs or trade.

Trump later had to go on a posting offensive clarifying that he must have been referring to the Biden administration...

When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct. Our Country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and so much more!

President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401K’s, military victory and thriving relationship in Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran (to be continued!) — Strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again, with a record 18 trillion dollars being invested into the United States by others, best U.S. job market in history, with more people working in the United States right now than ever before, ending country destroying DEI, and so many other things that it would be impossible to readily list.

In fact, President Xi congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time.

Two years ago, we were, in fact, a Nation in decline. On that, I fully agree with President Xi!

But now, the United States is the hottest Nation anywhere in the world, and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before!

However, as Privorotsky noted, the market probably came in pricing deal momentum and instead got managed coexistence. 

That is still positive in macro terms, just less catalytic for risk assets immediately.

Now, to the second part of the double-whammy...

Oil

This is where Privorotsky says 'the rubber meets the road.' 

Feels like the US held back from escalation ahead of the China summit, hopeful Beijing might lean on Iran to de-escalate.

But China’s messaging remained diplomatic rather than forceful, saying “the most urgent issue is to keep the ceasefire” and calling for “good-faith negotiation between the two sides.” 

Trump said he and Xi agreed that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, returning market focus to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Reopening the waterway has been a key objective for the US in diplomatic efforts since a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran took hold about five weeks ago. But Iran insists it keep an oversight of traffic through the maritime chokepoing as part of any peace agreement, stoking fears of a prolonged disruption in energy exports from the Persian Gulf.

Trump oscillated between threatening further attacks on Iran, including in a Truth Social post between meetings with Xi, and insisting the US does not rely on energy imports through the Strait of Hormuz.

“They need the Strait more than we need it open, we don’t, we don’t need it at all,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News.

Trump says US is “doing it to help Israel and to help Saudi Arabia” and other gulf allies.

“It also helps China”

That comment triggered a jump in crude prices, rise in the dollar, and drop in gold...

For now, it appears the combination of Trump's nonchalance about the Strait and the over-arching geopolitical threat from Xi (combined with a disappointing outcome from the talks in terms of tangible trade deals) are enough to trump the Gamma Squeeze in AI/Semis (so far).

So now the question becomes:

Does the US feel compelled to escalate further (with China... or Iran)?

Markets are understandably skittish into the weekend risk window, which combined with the options expiration removing a chunk of positive (stabilizing) gamma, leaves markets more free to move (up or down).

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2026 - 11:00

Buffett, Curry and his wife Ayesha Curry will join the winner and up to seven guests chosen by the winner on June 24 in Omaha, Neb.

"So, I can still reschedule the airline?" the passenger asked the judge.

"Off Campus" star Belmont Cameli said he and Ella Bright will be in future seasons. “At the end of the season, they've decided to be together. That will come with its own challenges. So, that'll be fun to explore.” 

The new season will look quite different compared to Season 2.

Kelly ridiculed Schlossberg’s Ivy League credentials while arguing his career accomplishments failed to justify his congressional ambitions.

The "Hustlin'" rapper exclusively spoke with Page Six this week while promoting the new Luc Belaire Alcohol-Removed Rare Rosé and his upcoming studio album.

The "Hustlin'" rapper exclusively spoke with Page Six this week while promoting the new Luc Belaire Alcohol-Removed Rare Rosé and his upcoming studio album.

Four years after retiring from football, Duck Hodges is off the free agent market.

Netflix's latest true crime documentary details a fatal car crash.

Happy birthday, America!

Several donors said Spencer Pratt’s performance in a recent mayoral debate helped convince them he was a serious candidate.

The Stagflation Narrative: What Doomers Get Wrong

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The stagflation narrative dominating financial social media isn’t completely wrong. That’s what makes it so dangerous. After more than 30 years of managing client portfolios through actual inflationary cycles, not watching them on YouTube, I’ve learned that the most damaging investment advice isn’t built on outright lies. It’s built on partial truths, stretched past the point where the data still holds.

If you haven’t read Commodity Supercycle: The Enemy Of The Bull Thesis (Part 1), it is an important primer to today’s discussion.

Let’s dig in.

The doomers have legitimate inputs. Supply chains are genuinely under pressure, and the dollar currently faces real structural headwinds. Central banks have been buying gold at a historic pace. Equity valuations in certain segments are stretched, and every one of those observations is defensible. However, the leap from those observations to “sell everything, go all-in on commodities, bonds are dead forever, the great reset is here,” is where the analysis ends and the storytelling begins.

I want to do two things here. First, I’ll score the stagflation narrative claim-by-claim. We will give credit where it’s earned and expose where the logic collapses. I’ll lay out what a sound investment framework actually looks like when the data, not the narrative, drives the decision. Moreover, why the boom-bust nature of commodity markets and the AI-driven capex cycle both fundamentally change where allocations belong.

The Stagflation Narrative Spreading Across Social Media

Spend an hour on X, and you’ll encounter some version of the same script.

• The Federal Reserve has destroyed the currency.

• The 1970s are back, only worse.

• Commodities are going to surge for the next decade.

• Gold is the only real money.

• Bonds are a guaranteed way to lose purchasing power.

• Anyone still holding a diversified portfolio is either naive or not paying attention.

The 1970s comparison is the narrative’s analytical spine. Commodity prices surged for the better part of a decade while equities went nowhere in real terms. Gold went from $35 an ounce to over $800, and the people who held hard assets looked prescient for years. It’s a compelling story, with the added appeal of casting the narrator as the maverick who sees what the establishment refuses to acknowledge.

Here’s the problem.

The 1970s worked the way they did because of structural economic conditions that no longer exist. Both the boom-bust nature of commodity cycles and the emergence of the AI-driven capex boom create dynamics that the doomer framework fails to incorporate.

Before I take this apart, I want to be clear about something. The inputs behind the stagflation narrative deserve serious consideration. As such, dismissing them entirely would be just as intellectually sloppy as swallowing them whole.

As I laid out in Part 1 of this series, supply inelasticity is real. More than a decade of ESG-driven capital discipline, underinvestment in exploration, and production curtailment has left several commodity markets unable to respond quickly when demand rises. That constraint doesn’t vanish because we want it to. It gives the commodity cycle real legs, supporting the bull thesis for select commodities over a meaningful but finite window.

The dollar does face genuine headwinds. Structural fiscal deficits, a Federal Reserve with a long track record of accommodation, and geopolitical pressure on the reserve currency system are all real concerns. JPMorgan projects gold at $5,000 per ounce in 2026, as central bank accumulation runs at roughly 585 tonnes per quarter. There are also pockets of equity valuations that are stretched enough to carry real multiple-compression risk if earnings disappoint.

So the inputs are legitimate. Therefore, there is a version of the commodity trade, sized correctly and timed with discipline, that makes sense right now. The doomer narrative isn’t wrong about the forces in play. It’s wrong about what those forces mean, how long they last, and how to construct a portfolio around them.

Where the Narrative Falls Apart

The entire doomer framework rests on one foundational assumption: the 1970s stagflation cycle will repeat itself. Therefore, a 1970s portfolio, heavy on commodities, short on bonds, light on equities, will produce 1970s results. Unfortunately, that assumption doesn’t survive contact with the structural differences between the two economies.

The U.S. economy in the 1970s was built on manufacturing, which accounted for roughly 25% to 28% of GDP. Most crucially, it had a large unionized workforce with cost-of-living clauses written directly into labor contracts. When commodity prices rose, wages rose automatically. In other words, rising costs triggered wage increases, which sustained purchasing power, which kept spending alive even as prices climbed. That feedback loop extended the cycle for years.

The U.S. economy today is roughly 70% to 75% services, and manufacturing accounts for approximately 11% of GDP. The COLA-adjusted workforce is gone. Therefore, when commodity prices rise today, the increase doesn’t trigger wage catch-up. Instead, it functions as a direct tax on purchasing power, and consumers absorb it immediately. What took years to produce meaningful demand destruction in the 1970s now shows up in six to twelve months.

“The 1970s cycle ran on wage indexing. Without it, commodity inflation becomes a demand tax, and demand destruction arrives fast. That is the analytical flaw at the core of the doomer stagflation narrative.”

The Inflation Sequence

The doomer version of the stagflation narrative treats the inflation phase as permanent. It isn’t. It’s a phase inside a sequence, and the sequence has a specific ending that the all-in commodity thesis is completely unprepared for.

1. Commodity prices rise. Input costs surge.

2. Consumers carrying record debt loads pull back.

3. Business investment contracts.

4. Growth slows.

5. The Fed pivots.

6. Rate cuts follow.

7. Bond prices rise.

In other words, the same event that terminates the commodity rally launches the bond recovery.

We saw this exact sequence in compressed form between 2022 and 2024. Commodities surged amid the Russia-Ukraine shock and pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. Bonds had their worst calendar year in modern history. The doomers called it permanent. Then growth wobbled, the Fed pivoted, and by 2024 intermediate Treasuries had recovered sharply while commodity prices corrected from their peaks. The people who abandoned bonds entirely after 2022 missed a significant rally and held concentrated commodity exposure through the drawdown.

The doomer stagflation narrative is built to profit from Phases 1 and 2, but it has no plan, framework, or exit discipline for Phases 3 through 6. That is where the damage happens.

The Gold Logic and the Bond Mistake

Gold deserves a real discussion, because this is where the doomer stagflation narrative contains its most glaring internal contradiction. Own gold, the argument goes, because the dollar is collapsing and you need to escape a failing monetary system.

Gold is priced in dollars and traded in dollar-denominated markets. Its entire value proposition is measured against the purchasing power of the US dollar. When someone argues that the dollar is collapsing and the solution is a dollar-denominated asset, the argument refutes itself. Central banks buying gold aren’t abandoning the monetary system; they’re diversifying their reserve compositions within it. The Chinese People’s Bank is reducing its concentration in dollar-denominated Treasuries, specifically, but that is a rotation within the system, not an escape from it.

Gold earns a real place in a sound portfolio as a hedge against policy error, inflation (which is what the debasement argument refers to), and geopolitical stress. A 5% weighting of a portfolio allocated to gold, sized appropriately for its volatility, is a defensible position backed by institutional demand data. 50% of a portfolio concentrated in gold because the financial system is “about to collapse” is speculation with an apocalyptic narrative.

The bond mistake is where the most retail damage has been done. The doomers drew a permanent conclusion from 2022’s historically bad bond year. What they missed is that the inflation phase that crushed bonds in 2022 is the same mechanism that eventually forces the Fed to cut rates, which drives bond prices higher. Walking away after the loss and missing the recovery is the most expensive way to be partially right.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the most dangerous market narratives are the ones that are right about enough to feel credible all the way through. The stagflation narrative qualifies. Here is every major doomer claim, scored against what the data actually shows.

High Prices Cure High Prices

There’s a mechanism the doomer stagflation narrative never seriously models, and it’s the most reliable force in commodity markets: high prices cure high prices. When commodity prices rise far enough, they do three things simultaneously.

• They incentivize new supply investment

• Activate marginal producers who couldn’t profitably operate at lower price levels (increasing supply)

• And they accelerate demand substitution as consumers and businesses find alternatives.

The ESG and underinvestment thesis that Part 1 establishes is real and important, as it delays the supply response and extends the cycle beyond what a typical demand shock would produce. But it doesn’t eliminate the supply response. It sets the clock to a longer timer. The critical insight for portfolio construction is that the timer runs at different speeds for different commodities, and that determines how much of each you should own and how tightly you need to manage the exit.

The 2011 oil market is the canonical example, as West Texas Intermediate Crude traded around $100 per barrel for three consecutive years. During that stretch, the price level didn’t feel unsustainable to the doomers of that era, either, and peak oil narratives were everywhere. Then, oil producers, directly incentivized by those high prices, flooded the market with supply. By early 2016, WTI was trading at $26. The doomers who held concentrated energy positions through that collapse, because the “structural case was intact,” experienced the full arithmetic of boom-bust without a framework for managing it.

CONSISTENCY WITH PART 1  The ESG and underinvestment constraints that Part 1 identifies extend the supply response timeline, but they don’t eliminate it. Gold has the longest clock. Energy has the shortest. That difference in supply response curves should directly determine relative position sizes and exit discipline.

Investment Strategy For Today’s Environment

The doomer stagflation narrative misses a second major dynamic entirely: the AI-driven capital expenditure cycle running through the U.S. economy creates a domestic earnings multiplier that didn’t exist in prior stagflation episodes. Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon, and Meta alone are spending hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure that will approach $1.1 trillion by 2027. That capital flows directly into semiconductors, power infrastructure, and data center supply chains, which in turn creates a domestic growth differential with no comparable international analog.

That “multiplier effect” is critical to this story as discussed previously in “The Deficit Narrative May Find Its Cure In AI.”

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that every $1 billion in infrastructure investment creates 13,000 jobs and adds $3 billion to GDP over a decade. Therefore, if the U.S. invests $1.8 trillion in AI infrastructure by 2030—plausible given the $500 billion energy need, $300 billion for data centers (150 new centers at $2 billion each), and $200 billion for chip production—GDP could rise by $5 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $300 billion annually. However, that $1.8 trillion is only the beginning. McKinsey & Company expects spending to reach $6 trillion by 2030, just 5 years from now, equating to $18 trillion in economic growth.

That effect was already evident in the Q1-2026 GDP report, where nearly 75% of the 2% annualized growth rate was attributable to business investment in data centers. Currently, the U.S. is projected to grow at roughly 1.8% to 2% in 2026, while Europe struggles to hold 0.5% to 0.8%, and China manages a structural property and debt overhang. That earnings growth differential is real and durable throughout the buildout. The previous case for rotating toward international equities on valuation grounds has also weakened considerably. While European equities ran hard in 2024 and Indian equities now trade at multiples rivaling those of U.S. mid-caps, the broad international valuation discount has compressed.

That said, the AI capex argument carries two important constraints.

• First, the earnings are highly concentrated in roughly 8 to 12 companies. The rest of the S&P 500 still faces the same multiple compression risk in a stagflationary environment described in the article. Therefore, owning the broad index is not the same trade as owning the direct beneficiaries.
• Second, the capex cycle carries borrowed-demand risk, as these companies pull years of infrastructure investment into a compressed window. When capex growth plateaus, the GDP contribution reverses. The 1990s telecom buildout produced genuine earnings growth in infrastructure, yet ended in a brutal equity cycle when spending decelerated.

The framework that holds together across all of these dynamics, the commodity boom-bust cycle, the structural compression of demand destruction, the AI capex differential, and the bond recovery sequence, requires four separate allocation legs, each sized for its own cycle duration and exit trigger.

THE REVISED FRAMEWORK  The doomer stagflation narrative gets the commodity direction right for the first leg and wrong about the duration, the differentiation by commodity, the bond thesis, and the domestic equity landscape transformed by the AI capex cycle. Own what the data supports. Exit on the supply response clock, not the narrative.

Conclusion

Fear is a durable marketing strategy. The stagflation narrative will keep finding new audiences because it wraps legitimate macro concerns inside an emotionally satisfying story, a villain, a hero, and a clear trade. The people selling it know that partial truths are more persuasive than outright falsehoods. They also know that by the time the cycle turns and the narrative fails, their followers will attribute the losses to bad luck rather than bad analysis.

I’ve watched this play out repeatedly in commodity markets, from the commodity supercycle of 2007 to 2009 to the metals boom of the early 2000s to the oil market in 2011 to 2014. Every time, the same pattern: a legitimate supply constraint, a genuine price move, a narrative that extrapolated the trend into permanence, and then the eventual supply response that high prices had been quietly incentivizing all along. The cycle doesn’t announce its end. It just ends.

The commodity cycle developing now is real, and the AI-driven domestic growth differential is real. However, the bond recovery that follows demand destruction is also real. A portfolio that acknowledges all three, with targeted U.S. growth exposure in the AI infrastructure beneficiaries, U.S. value for the commodity cycle with a domestic earnings anchor, commodity and gold exposure sized by supply response clock rather than apocalyptic conviction, and intermediate bonds providing ballast, is built to survive the full sequence.

That’s the difference between investing in a cycle and betting on a narrative.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2026 - 10:30

Iran Says It Has "No Trust" In US, Insists There Is "No Military Solution"

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that Tehran has "no trust" in the United States and remains interested in negotiations only if Washington demonstrates seriousness, as talks aimed at ending the war remain stalled. Speaking to Indian media during the second day of the BRICS foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi, Araghchi said military initiatives are ineffective in resolving regional crises, Turkey Today reported.

“There is no military solution, and the U.S. must understand this reality,” Araghchi said, according to a statement shared by Iran’s Foreign Ministry. “They cannot achieve their goals through military action, but the situation would be different if they pursue diplomacy,” he added.

Araghchi also said the United States and Israel had “tested” Iran at least twice during the conflict.

The Iranian foreign minister said one of the main obstacles during negotiations with Washington has been inconsistent messaging from American officials. Araghchi said contradictory statements, interviews and communications from U.S. officials created deep mistrust between the two sides.

Iran has repeatedly accused Washington of pursuing diplomacy publicly while supporting military pressure against Tehran behind the scenes.

Regional tensions escalated after the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, triggering retaliatory attacks by Tehran against Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf region.

Although a prolonged ceasefire is currently in effect, negotiations aimed at reaching a permanent settlement have largely stalled.

Commenting on the Strait of Hormuz, Araghchi said Iran continues to allow passage for “friendly countries” while imposing restrictions on what he described as “enemy ships.”

“The Strait of Hormuz is not closed to friendly countries. Restrictions are for enemy ships,” he said, although it is unclear why Iran then claims Chinese ships had been blocked until yesterday since China remains Iran's largest, if not only, oil export client. 

“In recent days, many vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz with the assistance of our naval forces, and this process will continue,” he added.

Araghchi said ships belonging to friendly states and other commercial vessels must coordinate with Iranian armed forces while transiting the strategic waterway.

“The only solution is the complete end of the aggressive war, and afterward we will guarantee the safe passage of every ship,” he said.

He also reiterated Tehran’s position that Iran acted within its right to self-defense following the outbreak of the conflict.

Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2026 - 10:10

It’s truly one hell of a hotspot.

We can't wait to see the squad take on the Patriots, Ravens and Chargers at home.

The Vanderpump Rules alum is the breakout star of Perfect Match Season 4.

Ex-Mayor Eileen Wang seen in Arcadia as she awaits sentencing on Chinese spy charges.

He was raging against the machine.