Ten31 Timestamp: DRAM Rules Everything Around Me

**Marty Bent** (0:00)
Wars back on the table, boys. Happy Monday.

**John Arnold** (0:03)
Or is it? Depends on what hour you're talking about.

**Marty Bent** (0:07)
Is this ever going to end? Is this just going to be the eternal September, the straights open, straights closed, wars over, peace deal be made, peace deal off?

**John Arnold** (0:14)
There's an oil analyst in Asahajee that I think you've had on the show before who has contended that it is in neither party's interest to actually resolve this for various different reasons. So we may just be eternally doomed to the eternal recurrence of straight-up war moves being open and then closed.

**Marty Bent** (0:31)
Yeah. I mean, we'll open with that today. That's the first page on the deck you sent, which is the headlines that we've gotten over the last week. It pertains to what's going on in the street.

**John Arnold** (0:43)
Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to read all these.
I ain't reading all that. But happy for you. Sorry, it happened.
But yeah, this is, you know, it's increasingly low signal to worry too much about any given headline here. But here's what we're looking at. As of, I think, the start of this show, the headline on the bottom right, which says US and Iran agreed to halt days of fighting over straight after a bunch of weekend slap fighting seems to be what's prevailing right now. So check back in later this afternoon, and that'll probably be flipped. But directionally, if you were going to look at this, I think on a chart chart basis and do kind of the TA of what's going on here, I think we're very much in a up and to the right from the US's perspective and up and to the right trend. Maybe this weekend was a bit of a bull flag, a little pullback, and now we're going to resume the uptrend. Generally, it looks like development's tracking more in US's favor, and we'll talk about a few indicators to that effect later in the show. But yeah, for all of our sanity, I'm hoping we can finally cancel the reruns on this one and move on to something else.

**Marty Bent** (1:48)
Yeah. As we've been saying for months, let's look at the data and not really focus on the headlines. We're looking at WTI. It's at $70.50 right now, so still relatively depressed from its highs in the heat of the war a couple of months ago. And so oil markets are at 1.25% right now, WTI is. So maybe reacting, but not as aggressively. Maybe the stalemate is not as deleterious to oil markets as many people were led to believe a couple of months ago.
But on that, I think just zooming out and thinking about broader economic strategy here in the US., you flagged Secretary Scott Bessent's speech at the New Economic Club in New York, America 250 Gala Dinner, which happened last week over the weekend. And his focus, at least in this section of the speech, was on re-architecting supply chains and highlighting where our weak points are, where they can be strengthened, and what we need to do to make sure that we can sustain the economic engine in cases of pandemic cyber attacks, war, financial shocks, whatever it may be, just auditing our economic supply chains, making sure they're strong wherever they need to be, wherever they're critical for the functioning of our economy.

**John Arnold** (3:09)
Yeah, it's a pretty comprehensive speech. It's pretty long. I recommend people either go watch it or you can read it on the Treasurer website as well.
But I think there's a lot in there.
The interesting thing to me is, like, you know, validates everything we've been talking about on the show for the last basically year and the timestamp for that amount of time. And that's not by accident. It's not because Scott is a listener. He may be, but I highly doubt it. It's, you know, the causality runs in the other direction.

**Marty Bent** (3:34)
Hey, Scott, you're listening.

**John Arnold** (3:37)
Scott, if you're out there, let's get in touch. I think you'd be a great TFTC guest.
But, you know, the causality runs in the other direction, right? Like, we're just reading the, you couldn't even call it the tea leaves, just like reading speeches like this for the last year from Bessent and Albert Colby and Trump, all of the guys kind of around the decision-making table. And they're all kind of speaking off of this one, this one talk sheet. And so I recommend people go go look at it. It's a good summary of all this. If you've been listening for a while, it won't be, it'll all seem very familiar.