Posted on 10/30/2019 2:04:50 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
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...1630s Dutch Tulip Mania is a good place to start a serious discussion about what one could call "The 2019 North Syria/Save the Kurds/Trump is a Monster" mania, or put more simply, President Trumps northern Syria retreat in the face of Turkish belligerence.
It seems that Trump has learned some of the lessons of the past. Before World War I, the Chief of the German High Command, Field Marshall Alfred von Schlieffen, saw the looming French/English/Russian Military Alliance as the setting for a disastrous two-front war with
1) France/Great Britain to the West and
2) Tsarist Russia to the East.
To avoid this two-front guaranteed German military calamity, Field Marshall von Schlieffen devised the Schlieffen Plan.....the two east-west fronts soon developed against Germany, and Germany eventually lost the war.
Its a simple military axiom: At all costs, avoid a two-front war.
In their hysteria, the anti-Trump defend the Kurds from a NATO Ally crowd seems to have forgotten that in the Middle East, apart from the Turks and Kurds, there is a real possibility of war brewing between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. America has tens of thousands of its soldiers in the Gulf area and in the Iranian line of fire. Given the volatile Iranian Front, President Trump made the necessary military decision, and avoided facing a Turkish Northern Front, all the while reinforcing forces against the likelihood of an Iranian attack in the Persian Gulf. President Trumps executive command decision likely has saved thousands of American soldiers' lives.
With all the Trump-bashing on The View talk show and in the halls of Congress, one would have thought the Kurds were an actual NATO ally. Lets recall some of the facts that President Trump was aware of when he made his North Syria retreat decision:
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(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
U.S. withdrawal from Syria absolutely prevented rift between Trump and his base.
Sure made gas prices go up by 40 cents in Georgia.
We were paying $2.19 per gallon a couple of days ago and now we are paying $2.50.
Aren’t troops stationed in the Syria oil fields and not going anywhere?
Last I heard Trump wants to keep ‘someone’ from taking those over and using them to supply ‘someone’ with money to support terrorist.
That’s 31 cents. :)
The oilfields have never needed to be operational to keep someone from funding terrorism with them.
Are you sure this isn’t from the normal Summer-Winter formulation changeover? I really don’t know, but it seems quite possible. Time of year is about right.
Here in Krazy Kalifornia, our prices skyed when that Arbian oil refinery was hit maybe 45 days ago. We’re already a solid buck over anywhere else in the country in CA. Anyway, as part of my trading, that spike in the real-market crude oil price lasted a grand total of 2, maybe 3 days before returning pretty close to where it was before the attack. But here we are, 4.09 is typical. 3.99 is a steal, right?
Mostly because refinery switching to winter fuel blend (higher proportion of light hydrocarbons)
Also refinery on east cost switch to home (#2) heating oil
Ahaaa! So he’s using his high office to assure his reelection! The walls are closing in. It was his duty as POTUS to get involved in a two-front war so as to avoid raising his approval rating. IMPEAT FOTY FI!
That’s a defensive position, and will remain so, I hope, to keep parties with sticky hands and low motives at bay. Definitely not something that should be permanent.
You trade crude futures? That takes a big margin and elephant balls.
a quite complex (and it appears, highly imaginary) attempt to explain a decision which didn’t require much explanation
and this explanation would only be a discredit to the administration if it were true (which i doubt!)
i could be wrong but this article doesn’t ring the bell for me
Well, I have noticed most of the top brass in the Pentagon are part of the Deep State, thriving well on the Endless Wars. They lust after another war to sell stuff. trump is killing their retirement plans.
I do not trade them that often, for no particular reason, but I’m account-enabled to trade them.
In size it certainly does require cojones but more specifically holding a position overnight is the thing that requires margin power. A crude contract is for 1,000 barrels with a minimum increment of .01. One tick is $10.
To trade them intraday is not any kind of big deal. It’s really not. Overnight margin is $4350. and there are folks who daytrade oil futes with $2.5K accounts for a single contract. Of course they can get themselves into forced liquidation situations if the market moves too far too fast on them; or, if they suffer a (for example) $350 loss it may make it so they cannot buy without recharging the acct with more money; but that is a consequence of being grossly undercapitalized, not a matter of how vicious oil trading is. (and it can be!) They just have to be sure to be out by the close. If they want to re-establish a position, they just wait until the Globex market opens, and buy the position back. But “daytraders” typically do not establish and hold “positions”....it’s kinda contradictory.
The margins are comparable to holding 100 shs of a $100 stock. Not the biggest of big deals, really.
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/crude-oil/light-sweet-crude_contractSpecs_futures.html
It’s not that big a deal, really. And it is a reasonably orderly market that trades well. That’s not to say it cannot rip your eyeballs out under the right (or maybe I should say wrong) conditions. You do not want to be holding any oil contracts Wednesdays at 9:30 CST when the EIA reports come out.
But that’s not hellaciously different than not wanting to hold a stock position upon a Fed announce or an employment number.
Thats the way I see it, that Trump may have saved us from a deadly and meaningless war. If not, there was nothing lost by withdrawing because there was nothing to gain.
Is there oil fields other than those.
BTW.... Drudge has completely gone leftist insane. Posts headlines from places I don’t want to go to.
T don’t know about all that.
But Russia and Iran’s common interests are no more.
Now they’re competitors in Syria.
I like that situation.
I just look at the charts, and conclude that this is not for me. Too much volatility for a mere option-jockey.
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