Pre Market Briefing

War Day 41 — Ceasefire Rally Fades

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I mean imagine steering a massive physical oil tanker through a heavily mined waterway in the Middle East. You're carrying millions of barrels of crude. The insurance on your hull is just astronomical. And uh to get safe passage through the danger zone, you have to pay a digital toll in Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Directly to a foreign military.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Right. And that's not a scene from some sci-fi movie. That is the literal reality of global trade this morning. Welcome to today's deep dive, where we are navigating a completely unprecedented and honestly highly volatile moment in the commodities market today.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Aaron Powell Yeah, the landscape we're looking at is just completely fractured right now. Less than thirty-six hours ago, a US Iran ceasefire was announced, and it triggered the biggest single-day plunge in crude oil since, well, since the pandemic crash of April 2020.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Which is exactly why we're doing a complete Tier 10 source sweep for you today. Our mission is to cut through the noise, you know, figure out what this historic repricing event actually means for your portfolio, the global supply chain, and really the broader economy. And we're drawing today's insights entirely from this incredible piece of research. It's the Canon Trading Company pre-market commodities briefing for Thursday, April 9th, 2026. This breakdown is offered by Eli Levy. And if you are trading in this kind of environment, you can actually reach him directly at Eli at Canon Trading.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

It's a must-read.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

We're going to unpack the energy shockwaves, the uh physical realities of these digital shipping tolls, the surging metals market, and a massive agricultural report dropping today.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

But before we pull back the curtain on these charts, we do have a piece of mandatory housekeeping that is absolutely crucial to cover, especially in our market moving this aggressively.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Trading futures, options on futures, and retail off exchange foreign currency transactions and other financial instruments involve substantial risk of loss and are not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Carefully consider if trading is suitable for you in light of your circumstances, knowledge, and financial resources. You may lose all or more of your initial investment. Opinions, market data, and recommendations are subject to change at any time.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Okay, so with that out of the way, it's time to untack the macro story that's basically dictating the movement of every single asset class right now. And we really have to start at the epicenter, which is the Middle East ceasefire.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Okay, let's unpack this timeline because it reads like a thriller novel. On Tuesday evening, roughly 90 minutes, literally just an hour and a half before President Trump's 8 p.m. deadline to strike Iranian civilian infrastructure, a conditional two-week ceasefire gets brokered.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Right under the wire.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Exactly. And the diplomatic heavy lifting here was done by Pakistan's Prime Minister Shibaj Sharif, who is acting as the intermediary. So now they've got permanent settlement talks scheduled for Friday in Islamabad, and they're working off a 10-point Iranian proposal.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And you know, the entire global economy is essentially holding its breath for Friday. The centerpiece of those terms, like the specific line item that caused the market to violently reprice, is the requirement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Aaron Powell, which normally handles a staggering 20% of the world's global oil and liquefied natural gas. So the market algorithms hear the words ceasefire and Strait of Hormuz reopening, and WTI crew just falls off an absolute cliff.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, it was brutal. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

It plunged over 16 percent on Wednesday to close at$94.41. And just to give you some context on how elevated we still are, I mean, pre-war WTI was sitting at$56 a year ago. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Right. And we should probably clarify for anyone tracking the energy markets, when we talk about WTI, we're talking about West Texas Intermediate. That's the U.S. benchmark for crude oil.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Brent crude, on the other hand, is the global benchmark, and that's heavily tied to European and Middle Eastern physical flows. Now, both plummeted, but the drop reveals this fascinating psychological shift in the market. Geneve Shaw, he's the VP of Commodity Markets at Rest Ed Energy, he pointed out in Eli Levy's briefing that this ceasefire eliminated the panic premium from the market, but it absolutely did not eliminate the risk premium.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Wait, let me try to break down the mechanics of that because I think it's a vital distinction. So if the panic premium is the fear of the unknown, like the fear of a wider regional war or massive uncontrolled escalation, or even a total permanent closure of global supply lines, then the risk premium must be the actual measurable physical cost of sailing a ship through those waters today.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

That is the perfect way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Because the ceasefire is just a piece of paper, right? It doesn't instantly remove the naval mines from the water.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Exactly. The market initially celebrated a formalization of existing conditions. It acted like a heavy sedative, basically treating the immediate symptom of panic. But the underlying disease, the physical disruption of maritime trade, that remains completely untreated.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yeah, the passage of ships remains entirely contingent on real-time coordination with armed forces on the water.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

And here's where it gets really interesting, and honestly, where the cracks in this paper ceasefire are already showing. Tanker passage is already halted again. Iran is claiming that ongoing Israeli strikes in Lebanon violate the ceasefire terms. The U.S. and Israel strongly disagree, maintaining that Lebanon wasn't covered in the specific language of the agreement.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

So while the diplomats argue over the fine print of the treaty, the physical reality is escalating. The IRGC, that's Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, has actively charted what they're calling a danger zone right along the normal transit routes in the strait, which heavily suggests the deployment of naval mines. We currently have over 800 commercial vessels just sitting in holding patterns, completely trapped.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

And this brings us back to that mind-bending detail from the hook. According to the source material, Iran is reportedly preparing to charge these trapped ships cryptocurrency tolls for safe passage through this danger zone. I really have to push you to explain the mechanics of this. How does a digital toll booth actually function in an active mined war zone for a physical oil tanker?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I mean, it is a brilliant, albeit totally disruptive, bridge between ancient choke point warfare and modern decentralized technology. Let's just look at the plumbing of the global financial system. Usually, if a shipping company needs to pay fees, they use SWIFT, the international banking network, to wire US dollars. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Right, standard procedure.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Trevor Burrus, but Iran is heavily sanctioned. Those traditional banking avenues are completely blocked. By demanding a decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Iran completely bypasses the US dollar hegemony and global sanctions.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Aaron Powell Because the shipping company's captain or their corporate office in Copenhagen can just open a digital wallet and transfer the crypto directly to an IRGC controlled wallet. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Precisely. It's borderless, it clears instantly, it cannot be blocked by a central bank. And once the blockchain confirms the transaction, the IRGC theoretically guides that specific physical vessel safely past the alleged mines. It completely rewrites the rules of maritime extortion and tolling.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

That is just staggering. Yeah. You have a massive physical asset, a tanker carrying$100 million of physical crude oil, forced to pay a digital, untraceable toll just to navigate a physical minefield. And we have the data to prove this is choking the supply chain. The briefing cites Kepler data. And for contest, Kepler is this massive analytics firm that uses satellite data and AI transponders to physically track every single commercial tanker on the ocean in real time.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

And their data is showing that right now, only 10 to 15 vessels are moving through the Strait of Hormuz per day.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Which is the exact same pace as during the absolute height of the war. Nothing has physically improved.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Right. Halima Croft, the head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, she offers us brilliant analysis of why this physical flow hasn't changed. She notes that Iran didn't even need to deploy its traditional naval fleet to effectively close the strait. Oh, really? No. The mere threat of cheap asymmetric drone and missile attacks was enough to completely spook the maritime insurance markets.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Ah, because if the PI clubs, you know, the maritime insurers, refuse to write a war risk policy for the whole of the ship, the ship simply doesn't sail. Full stop. I mean, no captain is moving an uninsured vessel into a minefield.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Exactly. The physical flows simply haven't changed because the insurance math hasn't changed. And the long-term structural damage is already baked into the global energy grid. The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that 9.1 million barrels per day of production from major players like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the UAE have been shut in.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Not to mention the infrastructure destruction. Qatar's Raslafan complex, which is the largest liquefied natural gas facility in the world, had 17% of its capacity destroyed by strikes.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, it's massive.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

These aren't facilities you just patch up with some concrete. These are massively complex, custom-engineered pressure systems. The briefing estimates it'll take$25 billion and up to five years to rebuild.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Which is exactly why Goldman Sachs is issuing a severe warning. They're saying if this fragile paper ceasefire fails to translate into physical maritime movement, we could see Brent crude rocket back up to$115 a barrel by the fourth quarter. The energy market is in a state of total geopolitical paralysis.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

But that$25 billion rebuilding effort in Qatar doesn't just happen in a vacuum. You can't rebuild miles of specialized pipelines and LNG terminals without physical materials. The shockwave from this energy ceasefire instantly jumps straight into the industrial and precious metals markets. Capital is basically fleeing the uncertainty of oil and looking for a golden lifeboat.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

The structural bid for precious metals in this environment is incredibly aggressive right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah, gold is absolutely surging. According to the Canon Trading Briefing, it's trading between$4,734 and$4,800 right now. That is up over 53% year over year. Silver spiked 5% to hit$76.70.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

It's wild.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

But actually, I want to push back on the core logic here for a second. Let's look at the causality. If the initial panic around oil is fading and crude prices just drop 16% in a single day, shouldn't the panic buying of gold cool down too? Why is gold completely ignoring the oil drop and continuing its rocket ship ride toward$4,800?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

You know, that is the exact question institutional traders are wrestling with, and the answer lies in the deeply interconnected mechanics of macroeconomics. It feels counterintuitive, but the massive drop in oil is actually acting as rocket fuel for the gold rally.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Walk us through that mechanism. How does cheaper oil equal more expensive gold?

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Well, it's a domino effect based on inflation expectations. When the price of oil drops 16%, the market assumes that the cost of manufacturing, shipping, and everyday living will soon drop too. That immediately eases global inflation fears.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Okay, makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

And when inflation fears drop, the bond market assumes central banks, like the Federal Reserve, won't need to keep interest rates artificially high to cool the economy.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Aaron Powell Right. And when expectations for interest rates drop, the yield on holding US currency drops, which weakens the US dollar on the global stage.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

You've got it. And because gold is priced globally in US dollars, a weaker dollar means gold becomes fundamentally cheaper for international buyers holding euros, yen, or yuan. That international buying pressure drives the sticker price of gold straight up.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Add in the fact that central banks around the world are still aggressively buying gold in bulk to diversify their own reserves away from dollar dependence, and you have established a massive structural concrete floor under the price of gold.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

It is fascinating how a geopolitical event in the Middle East manipulates the value of the dollar, which then dictates the price of a precious metal. And then you have silver, which is just a wild asset right now. It was down 37% at one point during the conflict, and now it's surging 5% in a day.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Silver has a severe case of split personality in the markets. It has a dual identity. On one hand, it's treated as a monetary safe haven, riding the exact same macroeconomic waves as gold. But on the other hand, it's a critical industrial necessity. You need physical silver to manufacture solar panels, electric vehicles, and modern electronics. So it gets whipped around violently by both monetary fear and fundamental supply and demand.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

And speaking of industrial necessity, the briefing highlights aluminum. It is surging so aggressively that analysts over at Bar Chart are explicitly calling it potentially the next oil in terms of how much geopolitical attention its supply chain is attracting.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I mean, think about that for a second. If you're listening to this, you interact with aluminum countless times a day, from your car to your beverage cans to the framing of your home. What does it mean for the baseline cost of living when an everyday ubiquitous metal is suddenly treated with the exact same geopolitical anxiety and hoarding behavior as crude oil?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

It paints a stark picture of how fragile and infrastructure dependent our modern world has become. If you have to spend$25 billion rebuilding energy facilities, the supply of vacuum for industrial metals is going to be felt in every sector of the economy.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Every single sector.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Now think about those elevated shipping costs for a second. If tankers are paying crypto ransoms just to move energy, what does that do to the cost of moving food? While energy and metals are being whipped around by warheadlines, the absolute base layer of global survival agriculture is experiencing its most critical day of the month today. The release of the April WANs Day report.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Right, and for anyone operating outside of the agricultural space, WASDA stands for the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. It's published by the USDA.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

It's essentially the ultimate corporate balance sheet for the Earth's pantry. Everyone, from massive hedge funds to local farmers, opens this report to see exactly how much corn, wheat, and soy the world actually produced, consumed, and has left over.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

And the focus today, according to Eli Levy's notes, is hyper-targeted on two specific metrics. First, U.S. ending stocks. This is the exact surplus of grain sitting in American silos that will carry us over until the next harvest. The market needs to know if that cushion is shrinking. Second, traders are laser focused on the massive Brazilian corn crop.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, the average estimate for Brazil's corn yield is sitting at 132.5 million metric tons, and they're already 65% of the way through their harvest. But uh this is where the interconnectedness of these markets genuinely blew my mind. The source notes that corn and wheat futures actually saw massive money outflows today, meaning their prices dropped sharply, and that drop was driven specifically by the crude oil crash. Let's break this down for the listener because it sounds absurd on the surface. How does a political ceasefire in the Middle East physically drag down the price of winter wheat being traded in Chicago?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

It comes entirely down to the mechanics of institutional portfolio risk and margin calls. We have to remember that the massive players moving these markets, you know, hedge funds, commodity training advisors, algorithm-driven funds, they don't just trade one isolated asset. They hold massive, highly leveraged, diversified portfolios.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Okay, so imagine a hedge fund manager who's holding a massive, long position in crude oil, betting it will go up, and a steady, profitable position in agricultural grains.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Exactly that scenario. Suddenly the ceasefire is announced. Crude oil craters 16% in a single trading session. That massive drop instantly throws the hedge fund's entire portfolio risk out of balance. Their broker looks at the cratering oil position and issues a margin call, demanding that the fund deposit millions of dollars in cash immediately to cover the losses.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

But the fund doesn't just have piles of cash sitting around. They are fully invested.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Right. So to raise that cash immediately, they are forced to sell off their other more stable positions. They hit the sell button on their corn and wheat contracts, not because the fundamentals of global farming changed overnight, but simply because they desperately need the liquidity to plug the bleeding hole that crude oil just blew in their accounts.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Wow, so it's just forced liquidation. The weather in the American Midwest didn't change. The Brazilian harvest didn't change, but the capital structures holding those commodity contracts collapsed.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

That is how a geopolitical shockwave transmits from a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz directly into the price of a loaf of bread. Furthermore, soybeans are facing their own unique fundamental pressures right now. You have this massive 132.5 million metric ton supply coming out of South America, pushing prices down, but there are also growing fears that the ongoing Iran war dynamics might disrupt Chinese purchasing patterns, especially as new Chinese import regulations come into play.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

It's a spectacular domino effect.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

So what does this all mean for you, the listener? How do we actually synthesize all this chaos into actionable intelligence?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Well, Eli Levy's briefing gives us a very clear five-point roadmap of what to watch today. Let's walk through how these pieces connect. First, the April Waz Day report dropping today. As we just discussed, expect serious algorithm-driven volatility in corn, soybeans, and wheat the absolute second those inventory numbers hit the wire.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Second, we have to monitor the physical flow of oil. Watch the Kepler tanker traffic data in the Strait of Hormuz. The magic threshold here is 15. Because we know 10 to 15 vessels a day is the wartime pace, breaking materially above 15 vessels will be the first verifiable physical proof that the paper ceasefire is actually working. Right. If that number breaks higher, it's a profoundly bullish signal for global normalization. If it stays flat or reverses, expect WTI crew to start marching right back toward$100 a barrel. Third, on the roadmap is the Islamabad talks scheduled for Friday. You have the U.S. and Iranian delegations sitting down at the table. It is crucial to understand that trading algorithms scan news headlines in real time. Any headline coming out of Pakistan, positive or negative, is going to instantly inject volatility into oil, natural gas, and the entire metals complex.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

And fourth is the IRGC danger zone report. We need to watch maritime analytics firms like Kepler or massive shippers like AP Mullermarisk for any official confirmation of naval mining or those cryptocurrency tolls actually being enforced.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Well, yeah, that would be huge.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

If a major Western shipper confirms they're being forced to pay a digital ransom in Bitcoin to cross the strait, you will see an immediate, violently upward spike in oil prices as the risk premium gets priced in permanently.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And finally, number five, tomorrow's CFTC COT release, the Commitment to Traders Report. For those who don't read this weekly, it's essentially a government-mandated snapshot of how the largest institutional players are betting their money.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

And tomorrow's report is going to be incredibly revealing because it'll be the very first positioning snapshot that covers the week of the ceasefire. It will show us exactly how the massive managed money funds are repositioning their bets in crude gold and natural gas. It'll strip away the diplomatic spin and tell us if institutional traders actually believe this peace deal is durable, or if they're quietly hedging their portfolios for a total collapse of the agreement.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

It is basically a high-stakes poker game.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

And the COT report forces everyone to show their hands. We are in a tense waiting game across every single asset class.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Aaron Powell We truly are. And you know, if we pull back from the minute-by-minute charts for just a second, there is a much broader, almost philosophical takeaway hidden in today's briefing. We've been conditioned to think of geopolitical conflicts as having a clean start and a definitive stop. A war begins, risk assets spike, a peace treaty assigned, prices fall neatly back to normal. But this situation breaks that paradigm.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, completely.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

When you look at the physical reality, a mandatory$25 billion five-year rebuilding timeline just to restore Qatari LNG capacity, and the very real possibility that geopolitical cryptocurrency tolls are becoming the standard unavoidable cost of doing business on the water, it fundamentally changes the math of global trade. Wow. That risk premium we analyzed earlier, it stops it being a temporary spite on a chart. It calcifies, it becomes a permanent structural tax on the entire global economy. It raises a critical question for all of us over the next decade. If the world's most vital waterways are no longer reliably free to navigate, how does that permanently alter the cost of every physical good on Earth?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

That is a heavy, profoundly important thought to leave on. The map of global free trade is quite literally being redrawn today, both physically with naval mines and financially with digital ledgers. We want to give a massive thank you to Eli Levy and the Canon Trading Company for providing the absolutely essential tier 10 groundwork for today's deep dive. If you want to dive deeper into these futures markets, review the raw data, or discuss your own trading needs in this volatile environment, you can reach out to Eli directly at Eli at Canon Trading.com. And as we wrap up, remember that while the global economy might have just taken a heavy sedative with this diplomatic ceasefire, the underlying physical vital signs of the supply chain are still flashing red. We have one final crucial piece of housekeeping to close us out today. Trading futures, options on futures, and retail off-exchange foreign currency transactions and other financial instruments involve substantial risk of loss and are not suitable for all investors. Carefully consider if trading is suitable for you in light of your circumstances, knowledge, and financial resources. You may lose all or more of your initial investment. Opinions, market data, and recommendations are subject to change at any time. Keep your eyes on the data, and we will catch you on the next one.