# Daily Brief — 2026-04-15 — 1. Market Snapshot – S&P 500 closed at 6,967 (+1.18%) — less than 1% from the all-time high at 7,002. Today’s futures show stability: the market is waiting to see whether the second round of negotiations with Iran will be real or rhetorical. – Nasdaq +1.96% to 23,639 — … Read more
Market Snapshot Lithuania and the Baltics Europe Ukraine Geopolitics IPO Radar What to Watch Tomorrow Meška’s Comment Hormuz today is not an oil story and not an Iran story. It is a test: can the US in 2026 still dictate to others what sails through that strait. The answer is still unclear, but the contours … Read more
Author: Meška | unwind.wtf From time to time someone notices that I mention XRP – in articles, conversations, analysis. And asks: why this one specifically? The answer is simple: 95% of my investments are currently in this asset. Then comes the second question – why not Bitcoin, not Ethereum, not something else? I tried to … Read more
150 years ago, an Ohio farmer who had lost everything in a financial panic sat down at his table and drew a chart. The chart contained the years when markets would rise, the years when they would fall, and the years when panic would arrive. From 1875 to 2059. In pencil. On paper. Academics still … Read more
Life’s Trade The moment I’ve been waiting for since January is approaching. Maybe even since last autumn, when I started assembling this whole mechanism. Now it’s coming together. Not perfectly — nothing in life comes together perfectly — but clearly enough that I want to talk about it openly. This letter is about one number, … Read more
# Daily Brief — 2026-04-10 – Fed speakers (after hawkish FOMC minutes). – Gold: will it hold $3,250? 1. Market Moment – S&P 500 gained two weeks straight, ~6,825 — already the seventh session in a row, the longest streak since last autumn. The market rode ceasefire euphoria, but yesterday Tehran’s comments began to overturn … Read more
Market Moment Today everything revolves around one word: ceasefire. The US and Iran agreed on a two-week truce, Tehran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and markets reacted as if after a long oxygen-deprived period — with a deep breath. S&P 500 up 2.55%, Nasdaq up 3.50%, Dow up 2.17%. Oil fell sharply — … Read more
Week’s Signal The Hormuz blockade remains essential: a security premium, not a geopolitical trick. The two-week US–Iran ceasefire is melting away, and fleet transit through the strait remains severely restricted. Since March 27, when the IRGC closed the strait, maritime movement dropped to nearly zero. It later returned to about 30% of normal levels, but … Read more
On Easter morning people speak of resurrection. I speak of capitalism. The metaphor is not accidental — the system we are accustomed to periodically declaring dead repeats the same movement with astonishing patience: it falls, it breaks, and it returns. Different, but it returns. This text is about mechanics. About a structure identified a hundred … Read more
2026–2030: A Regime Switch, Not Just a Chain of Events Why So Much Chaos Right Now Chaos emerges when several cycles running at different tempos converge at the same point in time. That’s when the system starts to “crack” — you see risk-on and risk-off simultaneously, euphoria and fear at once. I think of it … Read more
Market Snapshot Tuesday revolved around one question — would Trump press the button at 20:00 Washington time, or not. Markets bet that he probably would. S&P 500 fell 0.9%, Nasdaq dropped 1.3% to 21,854, Dow lost 382 points. WTI oil broke through the $115 mark — up 3% for the day, as Hormuz remains closed … Read more
Sharks On April 9, 2026, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. One sentence from that piece hasn’t left my mind: “The next generation of financial innovation must be built on American rails, American institutions, and American dollars.” American rails. Not European. Not Chinese. American. Bessent urged Congress to … Read more
Market Snapshot S&P 500 – 6,816.89 (-0.11%). The technology sector held its ground (Nvidia +2.58%, Amazon +2.05%), but traditional industry retreated under the full weight of geopolitics. Nasdaq – 22,902.89 (+0.35%). The only one of the three major indices to close in positive territory today. The AI wave’s centre of gravity is holding. Dow Jones … Read more
The 18.6-Year Cycle: Land, Credit and the Moon’s Mysterious Connection In 2007 I was twenty-three. I took out a loan of unimaginable size and bought my first home. Half a year later I was standing in a shop counting coins — would there be enough to pay for my groceries. A car and fuel were … Read more
Market Snapshot S&P 500 closed at 6,886 points (+1.02%), Nasdaq – 23,184 (+1.23%). Markets are rising for the second consecutive day, even with oil above $100. The reason: the probability that the Hormuz crisis will not escalate into a broader military conflict appeared greater today than yesterday. Gold – $4,748 per ounce, near record highs. … Read more
Tactics Sold as Strategies In 2007 I was twenty-three. I took out a loan, bought an apartment – and six months later I was counting cents at the grocery store. I believed what everyone believed: a long horizon smooths everything out. It did – but only after six years. And those six years I paid … Read more
existing
We’ve written about cycles before. Kondratiev waves, the hegemonic cycle, the Benner window, the liquidity sine wave. All useful as a map – you can see where you’ve been, you can see where the system is heading over the long term. But one question remains: how do you know where you are right now? The … Read more
SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC for an IPO. April 1, $1.75 trillion valuation, $75 billion offering, targeting June. If it goes through, this will be the largest IPO in history. Larger than Aramco, larger than Alibaba, larger than anything ever listed anywhere. The question is not how much, but why now and who benefits. … Read more
The American presidency in 2024 cost roughly $1.2 billion. Who paid, what they bought, and how the returns schedule works — sector by sector.
April 2024, Mar-a-Lago. At the table — a dozen oil CEOs. Trump tells them: raise a billion, I’ll pay you back with deregulation. Nobody gets up and leaves. Because this isn’t a provocation — it’s a commercial offer with specific terms. That dinner was reported by the Washington Post, confirmed by attendee quotes and FEC … Read more
Scenario. $107 a barrel, Hormuz blocked, Russia's Baltic export terminals in flames — and Texas oilmen who had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago two years ago are posting margins they haven't seen since 2022. If you think that's coincidence, read on. If you think it's a coordinated plan, also read on. The truth sits somewhere … Read more
Markets are falling. Economic forecasts are darkening. Global trade is collapsing under a wave of tariffs. And against this backdrop, more and more serious analysts aren’t talking about an approaching disaster — they’re talking about the final rally. A strong one, fast one, euphoric one. A rally that’ll come before the crash, not after it. … Read more
On March 2, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 18 million barrels of oil per day—nearly one-fifth of global supply—stopped flowing. WTI crude jumped 44 percent in a single month, breaking the $99 mark for the first time since 2022. The media called it war. Analysts called it a risk shock. Neither description captures … Read more
In late 2006, Casey Serin, a 24-year-old internet entrepreneur from Sacramento, owned eight houses. His annual income was roughly $30,000. Banks approved his mortgage applications without verifying his earnings. Eight times in a row. On one application he declared income three times higher than reality, and nobody checked. Within two years he lost everything. His … Read more
Eight days. That’s how long between the Supreme Court stripping the president’s tariff authority and the first missiles hitting Iran. On February 20, the Court ruled 6-3 that IEEPA doesn’t grant tariff powers. $160 billion in collected revenue, $1.4 trillion in projected revenue over the next decade—gone. On February 28, the bombs fell. A week … Read more
Hormuz closed, BRICS Unit launched, the S&P falling for a fourth straight week, and the Fed doing what it always does: pretending it’s in control. A week where everything came together. Iran rejected Trump’s peace plan. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut, with the IRGC declaring that “not a drop of oil will pass.” … Read more
Every bubble cycle ends the same way: not just with prices down 70 percent, but with rules that change who gets to play and how. That isn’t a side effect. It’s the main operation. 2026 Q4–2028: The Shakeout and the Institutional Operation This is the phase where leverage gets flushed (wave after wave), bounces deceive, … Read more
If the world is segmenting, and it is, one practical question rises above the noise: what serves as universal collateral between systems that don’t trust each other? The dollar is the strongest candidate, but it’s not politically neutral. Other currencies are even less so. This creates space for two things: an old collateral instrument (gold) … Read more
When the conversation turns to “the end of the dollar,” I keep going back to one moment: Bretton Woods, 1944. Britain was still an empire. Sterling was still a serious currency. But America had four things no one else had: the largest economy, the deepest financial markets, trust (a legal system with predictable rules), and … Read more
One story keeps coming back to me. Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant minds in history, invested in the South Sea Company bubble of 1720. He sold early at a profit. Then, watching the stock double and triple, he bought back in at the top. He lost a fortune that would be worth several … Read more
Pets.com spent $300 million in nine months. It sold dog food online at prices lower than what it paid suppliers. Its mascot, a sock puppet dog with a microphone, appeared in a Super Bowl ad and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The IPO launched in February 2000 at $11 per share. Nine months later the … Read more
October 30, 1989. Mitsubishi Estate paid $1.4 billion for Rockefeller Center — the heart of America’s most iconic capitalist symbol in Manhattan. The Japanese press celebrated. The American press panicked. Newsweek ran a cover showing Japanese buyers purchasing the Statue of Liberty. Six years later, Mitsubishi surrendered Rockefeller Center to its creditors, having lost nearly … Read more
Jesse Livermore made $100 million on October 29, 1929. In a single day. While all of America was losing its savings, he was shorting the market and holding the largest speculative position in the country. The press called him the “Wall Street Bear.” He was the smartest man in the room. Eleven years later he … Read more
George Hudson, son of a York cobbler, controlled a third of all British railways by 1844. They called him the “Railway King.” Parliament sought his counsel. Aristocrats invited him to dinner. The shares he controlled rose 500 percent in a year. Three years later he was bankrupt, expelled from Parliament, charged with fraud. He died … Read more
Isaac Newton bought South Sea Company shares in early 1720. He sold at a profit — £7,000, a solid return. Enough for his brain, but not for his nerves. Watching the price climb further, he couldn’t resist and bought back in near the peak. He lost £20,000 sterling. In today’s money, roughly $4 million. The … Read more
Semper Augustus. A white tulip streaked with red flames, weighing a third of an ounce. In January 1637, a single bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — the price of a house on Amsterdam’s finest canal. Thirty-seven years of a skilled craftsman’s wages. For the same amount you could buy eight fat pigs, a ton of … Read more
Nobody ever says “I’m in a bubble.” From inside, everything looks logical. There’s a narrative. There are numbers. Smart people explain why this time is different. Friends are already making money. Articles, conferences, funds, products — all confirming the thesis. And underneath it all, the fear that if you don’t get on the train now, … Read more
The one framework that explains wars, market crashes, currency moves, and trade wars — all at once. The hegemonic cycle and why everything you see in the news is connected.