To The Moon

The 2026 Action Against Hunger report identifies Sudan, Gaza, and South Sudan as the world’s most critical hunger hotspots, where famine conditions are present or imminent. Driven primarily by armed conflict, these regions face catastrophic food shortages, displacement, and destroyed infrastructure. Other high-risk nations include Haiti, Afghanistan, and Mali, where extreme weather and economic collapse have made basic food unaffordable. In countries like the DRC and Nigeria, over 50 million people face crisis-level hunger. Vulnerable groups, particularly pregnant women and children, suffer disproportionately from acute malnutrition. The report emphasizes that while conflict and climate change fuel these crises, severe humanitarian funding shortfalls are preventing life-saving aid from re

Iran bombed Qatar's helium plant. 33% of the global supply is gone. Here's who's bleeding right now: South Korea — 64.7% of all helium imported from Qatar ($226.9M). Samsung and SK Hynix fabs on a countdown clock. Taiwan — home to TSMC, makes 18% of global chips. Said "monitoring situation." Translation: quietly panicking. Japan — major chip fab and MRI manufacturer hub. First to run out if Qatar outage extends beyond 60 days. Singapore — regional semiconductor hub. Heavy Qatar helium dependency flagged by Scientific American. India — imported helium from Qatar for thousands of hospital MRI machines. MRI costs already rising, scan delays starting. Germany — hosts major industrial gas distributors (Linde HQ). Helium spot prices up 100% — Linde, Air Liquide rationing supply. United S

Can it get much worse? Fresh food into the Gulf. Roughly 70% of food consumed in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq moves through the Strait of Hormuz — and replacing disrupted imports would require moving 191 million pounds of food into the region every single day. For context, the WFP delivers 15 million pounds per day globally. Project Syndicate The maths don't work. Air freight facilitates the shipment of pharmaceuticals for the wealthy. Bulk staples—rice, flour, cooking oil—cannot be moved that way. Blackouts and hospitals. The cascade is already running. Bangladesh closed universities. Pakistan and the Philippines are on four-day workweeks. These are demand-destruction signals — governments reducing consumption because they cannot guarantee supply. What follows next

Impacts of Oil, Helium & Fertiliser Shortages (March 2026) The Iran conflict, attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan hub, and Strait of Hormuz closure have triggered acute global shortages. The chokepoint normally handles ~20% of oil/gas flows and roughly one-third of helium and fertiliser trade. Oil: Pre-crisis oversupply forecasts have reversed sharply. Prices have spiked toward $100–150/bbl, raising fuel, transport, and household energy costs, feeding inflation and threatening economic slowdowns and global trade. Helium: Qatar (33% of global supply) halted exports, doubling prices. This disrupts semiconductors (chip cooling and AI production), healthcare (MRI magnets), rocketry, and research—risking tech supply-chain bottlenecks and higher medical costs. Fertilisers: Blocked Gulf exports (ne

Banks have ~$300B+ in loans to private credit funds (Moody's, mid-2025 data), with JPM marking some down amid software strains. Insurers average 35% US portfolio exposure for yields (IMF/Moody's). Interconnections raise contagion risk if defaults spike (UBS downside: 15% on AI/software hits), but it's not systemic meltdown—regulators watching, many exposures managed. Gulf SWFs hit first per that article; banks/insurers next in line but buffered. Known: US banks' loans to private credit funds hit ~$300B as of June 2025 (Moody's/Fed data), plus $285B to PE & $340B unused commitments—part of $1.2T+ to non-bank lenders. PC "lends back" via synthetic risk transfers, partnerships (e.g. Citi-Apollo), & buying bank debt/securitisations. Unknown: Granular counterparty details, off-balance-s

thanks @TigerStars for this.  congrats to all

MIDDLE EAST SUMMARY 10–17 March 2026 | Days 10–17 of Operation Epic Fury --- ⚔️ MILITARY — US/ISRAEL - Iran fired 2,410 missiles and 3,560 drones since Day 1 — but launch rates have collapsed 90%+ as US/Israeli strikes systematically destroy capability. [FDD's Long War Journal](https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2026/03/israel-shifts-to-hyperlocal-targeting-in-iran-as-regime-military-power-degrades-march-11-13-updates.php) - ~6,000 targets struck in Iran; 90+ Iranian vessels destroyed; 4,000–5,000 IRGC/Basij personnel killed. [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/12/iran-war-what-is-happening-on-day-13-of-us-israel-attacks) - US war cost: $11.3B in the first six days. ~200 troops wounded; 6 killed. [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/12/iran-war-what-is-hap

My Investing Muse Layoffs, closures and Delinquencies Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers, drawn by a quality of life made easily affordable by the U.S.’s enviable salaries. - WSJ Meta layoffs could reportedly impact around 16,000 employees - MacroEdge Amazon made 2,847 engineers spend 8 months documenting every code pattern, every debugging workflow, every optimisation trick they'd learned over the years. Then fed it all to AI. Then, they fired them. No one saw it coming. The entire thing was disguised as something every senior engineer already does. Knowledge transfer. Best practices. Internal documentation. They were writing their own replacement manual. And the same playbook is running at every major tech company right now. - X user Srishti TotalEnergies: production shutti

News and my thoughts from the past week (16Mar2026) They know things that are not available in the public domain. It may not always be selling for a bad reason. Sometimes, they need the money. Sometimes, they know that it is time to get out. Let us do our due diligence. Strategic escalation unfolding. Senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti confirms Yemen is aligning militarily with Iran and preparing to declare "Hour Zero" The next move may be the closure of Bab al-Mandab. If that happens, the Red Sea becomes a choke point under fire, Saudi oil exports stop abruptly, and global trade faces another severe shock. - X user Richard Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett warns that current market conditions are beginning to resemble the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis, citing ris

Market Outlook of S&P500 (16Mar2026) Technical Analysis Overview MACD Indicator The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator for the S&P 500 is currently showing a downtrend. This momentum indicator, which tracks the relationship between two moving averages of a security’s price, signals that bearish sentiment is prevailing in the market for the time being. Chaikin Money Flow The Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) stands at 0.19, indicating there is more buying momentum than selling pressure in the market. A positive CMF value suggests accumulation, meaning investors are still showing interest in buying, which can sometimes act as a counterbalance to technical weakness in other indicators. Moving Averages Examining the moving averages, the most recent price actio