How to Profit When the Oil Market Splits

Posted on August 21, 2026 by MN Gordon

“Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.”

– John D. Rockefeller

Hard Knocks

One of the more enticing things about financial markets is not that they’re predictable. Or that they’re not predictable. It’s that they’re almost predictable – or at least they appear they should be.

When the Strait of Hormuz was first closed following the ill-advised military strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel at the end of February, it was all so obvious. Oil prices would skyrocket.

With 20 percent of global petroleum liquids abruptly taken offline, the price of oil had nowhere to go but up. Simple minded speculators went all in on oil ETFs like the United States Brent Oil Fund (BNO). Some also bought call options and then counted their chickens before they hatched, purchasing first class tickets to Maui.

Those who were quick to act were able to buy shares of BNO on March 2, for $37. As of August 20, these shares were trading for $53 – up 43 percent. But after peaking on May 4, at $60, BNO is now down 11 percent. Continue reading →

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Weights and Measures

Posted on August 17, 2026 by MN Gordon

The magic of the free market involves millions of voluntary decisions setting prices, driving innovation, and multiplying human wealth. Politicians, on the other hand, look at this infinitely complex, self-organizing miracle and think, “Yeah, I could run that better.”

The sudden, trendy rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), armed with nifty slogans and a misguided suspicion of free enterprise, threatens to intervene in the natural functioning of the economy. When you replace Adam Smith’s invisible hand – where free individuals trade value for value – with the heavy hand of state control, the market stops sending accurate signals. Bureaucrats start picking winners, price controls distort reality, and the incentive to create wealth vanishes.

History is lucidly clear on what happens next. Whenever politics forcibly overrules economics, you don’t get a utopian paradise. You get a tangled, dysfunctional mess that suffocates enterprise and ultimately leads to widespread poverty. You cannot redistribute wealth that was never allowed to be created in the first place.

This tension between voluntary choice and political coercion isn’t new. It’s the fundamental rift of human civilization. Continue reading →

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Why the Bond Market is Squeezing Fed Chair Warsh

Posted on August 14, 2026 by MN Gordon

Making sense of conflicting economic data can be tricky. Particularly when the data is fabricated by government bean counters. The task for the casual observer is to discern what is real and what is just statistical sleight of hand designed to obscure economic weakness.

If you quickly perused the July employment report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on August 7, you likely noted two contradictory data points. In July, the U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs. Wall Street was expecting the addition of 83,000 jobs. Yet, at the same time, the official unemployment rate dropped from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent.

How can an economy lose over twenty thousand jobs and end up with a lower percentage of unemployed workers? What gives?

Are discouraged workers simply dropping out of the labor pool, or is advanced number fudging happening behind closed doors? To better understand the July employment situation, we must look past the top line numbers. In addition to losing 23,000 jobs in July, the data fabricators at the BLS also reported substantial downward revisions for previous months. Continue reading →

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Why the Housing Affordability Crisis Could Last Another Decade

Posted on August 7, 2026 by MN Gordon

“I don’t want to survive. I want to live. And I want to buy a house.” – Wall-E

Locked Out

The U.S. housing market is currently stuck in a morass of rising mortgage rates, low sales, increasing inventory, and stubbornly elevated prices. If you’re a middle-class earner trying to buy your first home right now, a quick entry into a monthly payment calculator will deliver a heavy dose of disappointment.

What’s going on? Shouldn’t house prices be declining in response to rising inventory? Isn’t that how supply and demand are supposed to work?

Moreover, it’s not just 7 percent 30-year fixed rate mortgages that prospective house buyers must contend with. There’s rising property taxes and soaring insurance that are also contributing to housing being completely unaffordable.

To understand why the housing market is sick, you must look back to the days of the faux pandemic. If you recall, after massive intervention by the Federal Reserve, mortgage rates hit historic lows below 3 percent.

Millions of buyers and millions of existing homeowners who refinanced locked in those remarkable rates. Borrowing costs were nearly free. And the ultra-cheap credit drove house prices to record highs. Continue reading →

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