#23. Mine Games in the Strait

Ep. 23 is basically a full Iran panic board. The boys open on the Strait of Hormuz becoming the real story of the war: mines in the water, tankers refusing to run the gauntlet, insurance chaos, oil ripping past $100, and the dawning realization that even if America and Israel own the skies, reopening a mined shipping lane is a totally different problem. Andrew lays out the broader picture: Iranian missiles flying at every American-aligned target in the region, Gulf states getting dragged into the mess, and Trump suddenly looking a lot more exposed than he did after the “easy win” in Venezuela.

From there, they get into the market angles. Joel and Matt lean hard into the idea that this thing is not ending quickly, which makes the longer-dated no ceasefire bets look attractive. They also talk through why the off-ramp feels murky: Iran can’t just eat the humiliation and move on, Israel has every reason to keep pushing, and Trump may not have thought through how ugly the Strait of Hormuz problem could get. There’s also a side thread on southern Lebanon, where Matt makes the case for fading the market’s confidence in a major Israeli ground offensive before March 31.

The back half widens out a bit. They check in on Rubio, whose odds in the Republican race keep rising as JD Vance seems to disappear from view, and they kick around whether Rubio’s foreign-policy profile is a real asset or a liability if Iran turns into a full quagmire. They close by teasing next week’s IPO talk and admitting, once again, that despite their best intentions, Iran has eaten the whole podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Sure, how are you gonna do an intro without an intro, man? How are you gonna be a preamble? How has to be the what's it called again? Can't even think of what's called. Cold open. Cold open. How are you gonna have a cold open without a cold open?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Alright, everybody. Welcome to episode 23 of the Play Marks Podcast. I'm your host, Joel, here with my brothers Matt and Andrew. This is your weekly reminder that gambling on the future or betting on the future is easier than predicting it. We've got an exciting few things to talk about here. Iran has popped off. Um we've got uh a lot of interesting markets going on related to that. I wanted to talk a little bit about the IPO market and financial spaces, and then we also wanted to talk a little bit about the Republican race and uh our boy Rubio in general. Uh the memes have started coming back. I know I've talked about this before, you know. It's like they've come back uh for him uh becoming the leader of whatever different the one of him being the cardboard cutout. I I don't even know what the origins of the cardboard cutout thing is.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

But it's because the new the new leader of Iran, the new Supreme Leader, who may or not be not be in a coma and severely injured, right, had his initial statement and they had a cardboard cutout of him. Um I also saw one of Rubio in like the like this big minesweeper gear. Like he has to go he has to go through the straight.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Someone made uh a minesweeper board like from the whatever windows in the 90s, uh in the shape of the Straits of Hormuz, so you have to uh sweep all the mines, which I mean maybe that's a good place to get into the start.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

All right, uh that's a good place to start. Uh Andrew, give us the sort of updates since last week on Iran, where we are at or at on the ground, what and what you think sort of the interesting developments are and kind of the market angles here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Um airstrikes have been going on across Iran, striking IRGC targets uh by both the Americans and the Israelis. The Iranians in return have been launching missiles in basically every direction they can, anywhere where it's an American ally or there's American bases stationed. Uh that means all the Gulf Coast uh countries, Oman, Bahrain, Emirates, Saudi, Qatar, all of whom have been targeted by Iran, but also Israel, and even you know, some missiles getting fired at Turkey, who's sort of the other regional power. Um, but all of those don't matter as much as what's going on in the Straits of Hormuz. So for those who don't know or haven't been listening, the Straits of Hormuz is sort of the narrow opening where the Persian Gulf starts kind of starts. Um and about twenty five percent of all oil and energy products that's shipped by boat flows through the Straits of Hormuz and then mostly over to Asia, some over to Europe, almost all of which at this point has been shut down. There's reports that some tankers, Chinese, Russian, Iranian related, have been let through, but the latest uh sort of development is that Iran is mining the straits, despite the fact that all of their boats have been taken out by the Americans. They essentially have no Navy anymore. They can just put uh you know a mine on a small motorized boat, zip out to the middle of the straits and push it overboard, and commercial carriers and shipping is petrified to try and run that gauntlet because there's a good chance that well, a they might die, b, their cargo, you know, might cause a ecological disaster if it's a tanker, and C, uh, they might not even have insurance to back up the losses if it happens. Um, because of this, the price of oil has spiked crazy. It's over a hundred dollars a barrel, and leaders around the world are panicking. The G7 says they're gonna r release basically all their strategic reserves to try and lower the price of oil. And China, I saw today, has about as sternly as they can told Iran, hey, you can't shut down the Straits of Hormuz. Uh, we need that energy flowing. But, you know, we're talking of the hundred or so million barrels that the planet uses every day, you know, a good chunk of that is should be flowing through uh the Persian Gulf and it's not anymore. And more so than any other consequences that might arise from this war, uh, seemingly at this point, the energy shock to the world is going to be the biggest problem for Trump and his supporters. I don't see this getting resolved anytime soon. Once those mines are in the water, they're very hard to get out and uh it's gonna take the US Navy sailing through there before the commercial ships are gonna be satisfied, feel safe enough to go through themselves.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah, it seems pretty crazy to me that I mean, like we you talked about this, Andrew, so obviously, you know, the generals and Trump and everyone else is well aware of this, that you know, this was gonna be the play. If you attack Iran, you know, thoroughly enough, they were gonna shut down the strait. And now it seems like they have no plan to you know force it open or get it open. Um, you know, we start talking about bets and markets. Interestingly enough, the will traffic return to normal uh by April 30th is 45% for the no, 55% for their uh the yes. So small favor, it's open in two months, but that's a pretty good coin toss. Do you know what I mean? Like meaning like the the the whole global market saying we don't know if in you know 45 days if this thing's even gonna be figured out. Um it seems like a pretty big eff and deal because you know, yeah, it's uh the energy costs spike everything, right? Like all the global food prices, fertilizer costs, everything like that, it's all it's all related.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Um I think this is all downstream of the Maduro raid, which seemingly went off so well for Trump that I think he's seemingly gone off a little half-cocked here. And if if you guys remember, uh the odds of him striking Iran first peaked in January, right? Like end of January when it was in when was that day when it was up to 80%? Uh, and by all reports, you know, he'd given the go-ahead and then changed his mind afterwards. Can you imagine how unprepared America would have been if he had gone and done those strikes back then? Before they had all the Thad batteries in place, before they had all the the you know anti-ballistic missile shields. Uh and I can tell you the one thing that Trump didn't do before popping off in Iran was refill the strategic reserve uh that Biden had had already used a bunch of for like no reason, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Like just because like for pol politics, it was entirely political. Yeah, like it's not like there was an emergency. We just didn't want to have too high of uh inflation.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

So we're gonna prices, yeah, cause of votes.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah, I mean at the funny go ahead, Joel.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

I was just gonna make a my funny little comment here. I don't know what you guys are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, the Straits of Hormuz are still open for business. I'm still holding on to my 0.1% uh chance uh that uh that market will not resolve uh to a yes. So uh but yeah, go on there, Matt.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

No, I mean it it is interesting, Andrew. I mean, obviously it's all speculation at this point, but some people said, uh, like, you know, the whatever, the the people that were pushing for this Iran war, they, you know, did Venezuela first so that Trump would get, you know, hey, yeah, this is go, look how amazing we are, get kind of get his like, you know, uh feeling confident, and then they're like, hey, yeah, you can do this in Iran, buddy, don't worry, it's gonna be real easy. And then, you know, yada yada, and now we're in the middle of this big dilemma.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Although it was interesting, I I guess in in follow-up to what we talked about last week in terms of how the strike actually happened. I I watched sort of a video, long form video, I didn't watch the whole thing, but you know, it's one of those situations where, yeah, between the Israelis and the Americans, they figured out he was in this, you know, going into this certain building and that there was a bunker. And I don't even know if they had to use the super bunker busters like we talked about, and took him out. And again, we don't know what the status of his son is and whether you know who the next uh actual supreme leader will be. What do you guys think is going on there?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Uh I've seen reports that most of the leadership has fled eastwards towards the Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border. I think there's a town called Mashhad there, and they're seemingly all in a bunker together. Uh, because the few videos that we've seen from leadership are seemingly all in the same place. Um, there's been no video from Moshtaba, the son. The new Supreme Leader, right? He did get elected. The new Supreme. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's what we were joking about with the cardboard uh leader, because yeah, at the at the swearing-in ceremony, he couldn't be there, so they put a cardboard cutout and started kissing it.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

But uh I I mean I that that's either he just has a pulse or you know, he's dead and they haven't figured out what they're gonna do next, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Like we or I mean I mean, considering what happened previously, you might want to keep this guy in bunker for a while. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Maybe he's in a different place from where they're broadcasting from you guys see, I mean, like they part of it too was there, I think they used the space for satellites to intercept some of these communications, right? And so that that's a little bit scary. It's like what what can they uh intercept um from these sort of military satellites that we hadn't thought about before.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, I was talking to you guys on the chat about um what they're able to do with satellites, in that um a lot of these ballistic missiles and and and Shahead missiles, they're they need to be on launchers, right? And they have these mobile trucks, they build these launchers, and then they can wheel them out from under the you know, under the mountains where they're stationed to protect them, but they still need to warm up and and uh you know fuel up the birds before they fly. And these satellites can pick them up as soon as they start warming up, send the targeting info to the nearest F-35 that's in the air, and of course the Americans and the Israelis have total uh air superiority at this point. It will fire off a missile without the pilot even having to target or do anything, as far as I'm aware, and send it straight to that launcher that's going up. The or the the technological prowess that the Americans have shown off here is very impressive. And it has to strike some fear into both the Chinese and their customers in terms of anybody who's bought in their weaponry, uh, their anti-air, their um, you know, their radars. I I'm not sure if I said it to you guys or not, but there was that meme about uh Chinese radars, and they're really good about knowing whether or not there's an F-35 in the air right above them, because if it's not blown up, then there's no F-35 there. But if it's a smoking hole in the ground, there's a good chance there's an F-35 above it right now.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

The the funny thing that I saw kind of um in a different uh market and arena that we talked about was the Russia-Ukraine stuff, sort of the progression of the drone warfare. And a lot of their, you know, the Russian systems are running on um these Chinese AI systems, and so these guys have started to slap QR codes onto their um tanks or whatever, and the QR codes are if if it gets picked up, will open a TMU page and start shopping. And so the drones start falling out of the sky because they they're just still designed to read and pick up those QR codes as part of the native Chinese software. So again, the prowess of the Americans, what they're doing, I think is on a different level than the Russians and the Chinese, like you say, are able to reproduce.

unknown 13:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Anyways, let's uh let's get back to the brackets. Yeah, let's go. Let's go to the back. So I guess I mean, kind of given my sense of where we are on the ground, you know what I mean? It seems like um everyone's taking some pretty heavy losses. Uh we're not, it's I I don't it's I feel like it's hard to get a good sense what's going on exactly in Israel, what's exactly going on on the ground in Iran. Um, but we know that uh yeah, it has a they seem to be decently well fortified right now in Iran. There doesn't seem to be uh clear next steps as far as how they're gonna get the total surrender or the complete regime change that Donald has talked about previously. Um which kind of leads me my general feeling on all these markets, whether it's the Strait of Harmuz or whether it's a ceasefire or end of conflict, um, is I I think it's gonna go on for a while. I don't think it's gonna stop soon. I I don't really see what the off-ramp is. I don't see how um like you guys, you know, again, kind of the preamble talked about how, well, Donald could just say, Donnie could just say, hey, this is over, we're done, we're pulling out, declare victory. Um, but I don't think Iran's in that position. I don't think uh why would they agree to that, right? Because for them, um, they got to make sure this doesn't happen again. They gotta make sure that uh, you know, they're whatever. They feel like they've adequately punished Israel and America for for doing this. And yeah, they're demanding reparations and all this crap. And so I just don't see what the off-ramp is, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, I mean, and and there are those different markets at play, right? Whether it's the ceasefire. I also saw one recently that I haven't touched or looked at too much, but was like, will Trump essentially announce a military pull-out or back, you know, back out from Iran? And I'm sure the rules are gonna be very different between those. I mean, on the ceasefire bet, like you say, I think it's I bet sort of on the long term. I bought the no on the May 31st. I got in at 38 cents, it's already up to 51 cents, because I feel like I agree with you in terms of there's not gonna be an official ceasefire that Iran is gonna necessarily agree to. Maybe U.S. just says, all right, you know what, this is cooled down enough, we'll pull back, let you guys figure your shit out. Maybe you let the straights open up again. But as far as like an official agreement, um, you know, ceasefire agreement, I I I think the no is still a decent alpha on some of those long-term markets.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Yeah, there's also one where it's just like whether it'll be any fighting for 14 days that I have also taken uh the no kind of long data, and I and that includes both Israel, America, and Iran, whether they are still, you know, doing any types of conflict. And I think that's the all the other really tricky thing is when you start talking about Israel and America, um, you know, these are two pretty diametric situations to some degree, especially when you start looking at like support and stuff like that, where in America, yeah, depending on the polls, 20 to 30 percent uh support for the war, where in Israel I believe it's 80% plus. And so uh did you guys listen to the uh the the all-in pod with that guy from the Kennedy Center? I forget what his name was, where he talked about his BB's war. I did, yeah. Yeah, I mean so it he was talking about that, you know, it's like it's you know you know Netanyahu has wanted this for 40 years, you know what I mean? And I don't think I think it's even harder for Israel to off-ramp than it is for America, you know what I mean? Uh because this is kind of their I assuming they're like thinking like this is the Gulas big chance to get the regime change or get the defanging of Israel that they've long viewed as a major regional threat to them uh and to their security.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

So yeah, I mean I I think the defanging has already happened to a certain extent. I mean, we we talked sure we talked last week where nobody's worried about nukes, you know, in the next few months here.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Yeah, I agree like a lot of other stuff. Right, but I mean I I understand what you're saying, Andrew, but let's say there was a ceasefire tomorrow. Like, what's gonna happen, right? We know Israel's gonna continue to ramp up and sorry, Israel and Iran are gonna continue to ramp up, you know, getting ready for essentially what is the next round of this of this war, right? Meaning, like if there's nothing that stops the situation, why would they ceasefire then just start it again a year later? And they're both gonna be, you know, trying to manufacture as many munitions and stuff like that as possible. And perhaps Iran's gonna start saying, okay, we're racing towards the nuke. And, you know, now we have no formal relations with you guys. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

So the I mean, I stupidly had some no ceasefire beds for April and May. Um, I got antsy, and I feel like I should have a rule like, hey, I I should lock in my beds. I should not not have the ability to sell once I lock in the trade.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Just I'm never gonna get I'm never gonna get smarter once I lock in. I'm not paying close enough attention to most of these markets and end up like barely being able to escape. Yeah, with my eyes. I'm like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

I think there's certain markets you can be like yeah, like I did for like you know, some of these like long one or two percent is like human where you're just like, oh, I'm trying to get a triple and then I'll I'll get up. But for these ones when you're coming in at 20, 30 percent, like just put a put a number on you like and just yeah, I think you should mostly ride it out unless you see something dramatic change where you're like, oh, I'm out of the market, and I can sell the system.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

You kind of ride out the long shots sometimes, and then for like the mid-range, it's just like I I don't want to deal with the resolution, and I'd rather take my hundred or 150% return. Like even on some of the the Cuba bets, you know, kind of like we're talking about these regime change things. There's the will we've talked about before Miguel Diaz Canal be out as president by X date June. Um, it's up to like 50%. And I'm you know, it doesn't seem like Trump is gonna if he's busy with Iran, he's gonna figure out Cuba. So I almost want to sell this because it's already up 150%. I don't know if you guys are still active in those markets, but it's like I, you know, whether that's gonna happen by June, it doesn't seem super.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

I think this, yeah, this might be a big focus for the next uh few months here.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Well, my my point was to say is that the Iranian regime, unlike in the 12-day war, where they were able to conclude a ceasefire relatively quickly, where um Israel and America said, Okay, ceasefire. And Iran said, We won't do a ceasefire, but if you stop firing, we'll stop firing, which is essentially the same thing, right? And they were able to do that within a few days. And it kind of scared me when Trump started talking, like, oh yeah, we've hit all the targets. Yeah, I don't see much more happening. And it it it in my mind, I'm like, hey, this could settle really quickly. But then the the statement by the Supreme Leader, again, who knows if he's even conscious to be able to make it, but the word that came out was we're getting revenge, we're getting reparations, like you said, Matt, and borrowing all that, we're gonna you know exact some sort of toll on America and Israel to make them suffer for what they've done. Because of course, this is far more of a blow to the regime's um prowess, uh, you know, reputation, I guess. To to I mean it's like that's that scene in uh uh in uh Chappelle show, right? Where I try to kill my father, you know, like they they killed his father. That's a um that's a public embarrassment that they could not just walk back from uh Um, as easily as they did, I think, in the 12-day war. And once they start mining the straits, like, it's on. Like, those aren't coming out of the water. And I ironically, I think I just saw that the like the two remaining minesweepers that the American Navy had just got mothballed. Uh, so if they don't even have ships to be able to go through the streets, people still do that? Yeah. D-mine the straits. Uh yeah, I don't see this. Again, even if America says, you know what, okay, we're done now, Iran is aside from pressure from China, which is real and important, but they're not going to be under any real pressure to um reopen the Straits, especially if they can't get their own oil out. If they can't get their own out, nobody's getting their oil out, I imagine, will be their play.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah, and I think I feel like this is their big, this is their big card to play, right? Like, hey, you know, we can we can hold on longer, you know, severely, you know, degrading the world economy, you know, then you guys can, you know, you guys can keep throwing bombs, but they're throwing bombs back, and you know, who knows how much they have, yada yada.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

But the more threatened they feel, the more likely they are to act, you know, irrationally and destructively, uh you know, maybe not in a in entirely in a in a game theory optimal type way, right? Well, it is game theory optimal.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

It's why, it's you know, it's why, it's why Israel, you know, lets people know about the Samson option, right? It's the uh it's the saying that like, hey, like the game theory is to say, hey, don't mess with me, we'll go crazy, right? That's the that's the optimal play because it is um it's not a continuous game, right? If somebody does something crazy and takes out all the energy infrastructure, you know, in the Gulf, there's no turning around, right? That can't be rebuilt shortly, right? So that's that's kind of like the big threat they have is to really amp some of this uh yeah, the energy production on both sides, really.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah, they kind of pushed the uh the big red button, right? Like they kind of pushed the self-destruct on the entire Gulf economy.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Well, it hasn't right, it's but this but they still have more to do, right? Because uh and they I feel like they're going a little tit for tat where they're saying, okay, you hit our banks, we'll hit the Gulf banks. And apparently Israel struck some uh the energy strikes in Iran and America kind of castigated them for it because that's the last thing anybody wants is like this permanent damage to all the energy infrastructure uh all throughout the Gulf, because yeah, if you were to actually destroy a bunch of that stuff, I mean that's permanent, right? Like that's not easily turned back on.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Crazy times. It is crazy times. Sure would be nice if we as Canadians had the ability to.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Oh my god, I was thinking that's so I mean it's so effing insane that like we can't we can't open a Nat gas terminal to feed and we like like where would we safer? Like, or just provide more than a lot of people. Straits of your moose? Yeah, Straits of Hermuz with Qatar is where everybody has to buy their LNG from. Yeah, not from us. It's insanity.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Like we can't have like 10 pipelines going from Alberta to the some some coast somewhere, whether Hudson side or Pacific side, and just sell this stuff to the rest of the world. Like people, Canada wants to be, you know, all we're trying to be environmentally friendly. It's like, y'all realize all of our natural resources are gonna require extraction and utilization over the next 30 years if we're gonna stay alive, and they're all like, I don't know what you're talking about. That's not something I am into.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

I mean, it is the franchise, but it's more so the boomers like we saved the world. You can thank us later. Yeah, exactly. You'll you'll you'll thank us when uh no oil production bald eagle and a hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

And when the tides, when the coastlines don't rise 50 feet like they were supposed to, uh as of 2010, you know, like oh boy, yeah, you guys really saved us.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

We did a I saw a a statistic the other day, because um Britain's shutting down all their coil coal-fired uh power plants, and of course, energy costs are through the roof. Something like in the 150 years of industrialization, the last 150 years, Britain burned as much coal as China currently does in about six days. And it really just it it makes you not like have you seen also like the chart of like power production, like how many you know, uh gigawatts or terawatts or whatever it is that China's putting out compared to America? Like they are winning the electron race, and it's not even close. Not even close.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

And they're on this exponential rise where the US has taken this plateau, and it's like you like nuclear power.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

We can't start doing any of that. You you you thought you could do stuff in America still, like especially in Texas and certain places, you know you can't build stuff in Canada, but there's still a ton of pushback, even in most places in America, about all these data centers and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

The German water or the native fauna, or it's just like guys, we're we're in an existential race with the rest of the world. We need to we need to worry about other things. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Okay, let's hop back in a little bit. Andrew, one other thing that we talked about last week um involving the Middle East here was the invasion of southern Lebanon by Israel, which I knew nothing about, and uh that didn't stop me from putting a nibble on it this week and buying some buying some of the know. And you know, sometimes I feel dumb about this stuff. I'm like, yeah, I don't even know about it. Sometimes I think it's actually um smart. I feel like some of the bets I've made have been kind of from an uninformed perspective, but kind of like taking a quick snapshot of like what I think's gonna happen based off just kind of like what the the big parameters are, and I kind of find it similar about this one. I am down, I got in uh you know 30 whatever cents, um, and it's now at 75% that Israel will launch this major offensive in Lebanon. Um, but my thoughts were just like, really, you're gonna send a thousand troops into southern Lebanon in the middle of this big war, you only got a few more weeks. There's some stories I know about them uh trying to land some amount of guys, and they had to like get the helicopter and get back out because they were facing resistance from Hezbollah or whatever. So, yeah, that was my indication to just say, hey, I I don't think this is gonna happen. I'll take the two or three to one on my money. Um, now you can get in a four to one if you'd like. Andrew, I I know you bet this a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

It's at like 75%. Yeah, I'm looking at that no as pretty juicy.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Uh yeah, but get into the no, it's better than what I got in at. Hell yeah. I mean, there is only a few weeks left. I know they just told everyone to evacuate Southern Lebanon, but again, thousand troops in seems like a pretty big deal. I don't know if it's gonna happen. What do you think, Andres?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Uh, I actually did buy the no at 17 and then I sold it at 34 after I kind of doubled my money. I like the issue that I have is a thousand troops is nothing in the grand scheme of thing. We're like we're talking about like they've called up hundreds of thousands of reservists uh and Israel has been invading southern uh Lebanon since the 80s. Like it's happened multiple times. Um every time it's been a disaster that they've gone up there, and uh because yeah, ground wars are tough when you gotta deal with uh insurgent populations, like America you know, found out in the 2000s.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Um talk to me about the rules on this, Andrew. Again, I'm I'm hovering on buying a no on this, but one of the interesting things to me, obviously we talk about a thousand troops, but this says a major ground offensive is defined as a large-scale military operation that involves more than 1,000 Israeli ground forces entering Lebanese territory that was not under Israeli control at the start of the offensive. This excludes smaller raids, special operations, or limited incursions directly bordering buffer zones already under Israeli control. Because I think though that last part is where I think the no becomes more attractive. It's like, well, what if we have five smaller raids with 300 troops each in a buffer zone? You know, that gets us up to, you know, or you know, and then two other things that get you up to 2,000 troops, but by the rules, it would seem like that should still resolve to a no if it's all in a buffer zone or if it's all small raids on these border territories, right? Which seems like a likely option if you're just trying to do a show of force and just kind of entering those border areas. But yeah, I mean again again, that's that's the interesting rules discussion we have on these markets sometimes that uh get a little interesting.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

I mean, they're not going to do, I don't think, small. Um if it does happen, it's not going to be small incursions. Uh Southern Lebanon has been a problem for Israel since the early 80s, ever since Hezbollah was established by Iran amongst the the Shia population that makes up that part of Lebanon. Um there's been a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon for who knows how many years now. Uh don't really do much, neither does the Lebanese army, because they don't have really the training or the munitions or the supplies to really root out Hezbollah. But um if Israel is going to take advantage of obviously Iran being distracted, not being able to rearm Hezbollah, now is the time to do it. Whether or not it's gonna happen before March 31st, I guess that kind of depends on the timeline of how the war goes in Iran. If Israel sees, hey, maybe we are gonna be doing ground war, uh, I imagine the Americans would expect them to be involved in some capacity. Uh maybe the maybe it'll be you know doing their own grand ground offensive in southern Lebanon. But uh I like I said, I sold my position after doubling my money. The odds have now gone back up that it's gonna happen. I would stay away from this market personally, but I mean you guys tell me your reasons why you like it.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Like I said, my like I I my reasons are pretty simple. I just think, I mean, you're currently still getting shelled. You got this whole thing going on with Iran. I know that Hezbollah's actively um, you know, also essentially firing munitions from Lebanon as well. It's a coordinated attack somewhat. Um that being said, I just yeah, I just just I'm just hoping that I feel like they'll retaliate, right? You retaliate with bombing them as well, you retaliate with F-35s, you retaliate with whatever. I don't know if you uh you get the whole gear, guys get up and you start actually trying to take new land actively, you know what I mean? In the middle of this thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

This this the history on this market sort of reflects how how big of a hurdle the rules are because it was something that's you know, since it started back in essentially December, has been twenty twenty percent or less. And obviously things have popped off since Iran happened, but I kind of agree with Matt that it's like, yeah, if you've got your hand in the Iran pot and you've got you know, I if if I the US is already saying, hey, we kind of got in this because Israel vo forced our hand because they said they were gonna do something, you know, which has been said, I think, by I don't know if I remember if that was Rubio or not. But you know, I do I don't think the US or Israel, you know, the US if if if Israel just says, well, we're gonna do this major ground incursion in Lebanon, and then maybe the US gets pulled into that. U.S. is gonna be like, hey guys, cool it. Like we're we're in the middle of some stuff here, we're figuring it out. And I'm going along on the Iran's, you know, lack of a ceasefire, the no. And so I feel like if this is at 70%, I just I I put down a a big chunk of what I had in terms of cash on this because I feel like whether it temporarily goes down, you know, I would sell this like you did, Andrew, if I made a uh one or two X return before it resolves at the end of the month.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

But yeah, I I I just it's it's one of those nice ones too, because it's it we're we're literally like what 17 days away, you know what I mean? Or maybe 18 here. Yeah, like 70%. That's crazy. Every day it doesn't happen, you know. You're just gonna see the drop, right? And so um, anyways, you know, we've talked a lot about this different Lebanon bets. Let's maybe stretch out uh a little bit from Iran.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Well, we were just we were just talking about our boy Rubio there. Maybe we could go a little bit into the uh Republican presidential nominees here. My Rubio bet, which we've talked about historically, I got in at an average of 13 cents. I think Andrew did similarly. It's already up to 27%. We've doubled our money if we were to sell now. I've thought about selling part of this now, but I also have this weird feeling. I'm like, maybe I want to go long Rubio. Like maybe I just pet on the bet on this guy to be the next president over JD or whoever else on the Democratic side.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

I mean, what before you even get to the presidential nod, um, you know, it leaked this week that Trump asked all the major donors, you know, who they preferred, Ruby or Vance. And I think the word was overwhelmingly. Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

It was based on like crowd reaction amongst these donors and the cheers for Rubio, I think.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Almost unanimous. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

So and it was interesting the commentary I've seen around that because people are saying, well, kind of haven't seen JD in a while. And again, I he's been really silent. But it's like, yeah, I haven't seen him in a long time. It's been Rubio doing a lot of stuff, and and Trump seemingly um, you know, not hiding uh him necessarily, but also not putting him forward as like he used to.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

JD was conspicuous conspicuously? Conspicuously. Conspicuously. JD was conspicuously absent from like the situation room bunker um in all those picks with Trump uh during the Maduro raid. And yeah, both Venezuela and Iran, I don't think I've seen JD making any public comments at all, unless I miss them.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

No, no, he's been he's been fairly absent. He hasn't been doing the Sunday shows like he used to do, uh, kind of famously. And I thought really, really well that was kind of his main thing, was that he was really good on going on these shows, especially some of these older boomer programs, and you know, getting the narrative out. And I, you know, we everyone found it quite compelling. But now I think he if he doesn't have the backing of the donors, um yeah, I yeah, I don't really see a path forward. I told you everybody I wanted to short him, you know, a couple months ago. He's down uh from 50-ish five, I think at the time, down to 39. And that's basically all been taken by Rubio. So you're probably up yeah, at least double your money now at this point. Um and uh yeah, it'll be interesting to see if there's any other real names come out there, if this is just gonna be a JD Rubio kind of fight, or if there's ever gonna be you have to assume, you know, it's gonna be six or seven other names that are gonna spring forward. And you know, we've seen this a lot in the past with DeSantis's and you know, the Jeb and Bush's and all this different stuff, where being the leader a couple years ahead of time doesn't always work out. So who knows?

SPEAKER_01 38:42

But if Iran turns into a global quagmire with energy prices through the roof and you know, potentially boots on the ground, uh maybe that will be the time to sell my Rubio bet, as that will bode well for JD and sort of the Tucker wing of the right who don't want for any foreign wars and uh are very worldworth.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

That was something I was sort of I'm almost feeling like like I again, I'm um I'm up a hundred percent on my on my Rubio bet. It's like I feel like I almost want to sell half, you know, take take out essentially my profits and put that back into JD because I feel like this also sets up the opportunity for him to say, look, when this was happening, there was a reason I pulled back, you know, it wasn't something that I was interested in doing. Obviously, I don't want foreign conflicts. And and again, that could set him up again to have a strong push later if the public, as opposed to the donors, is saying, no, we want to be anti-war, which hey, I pray for, baby. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

Yeah. Yeah, no, it'll be interesting for sure. Um I don't know, but yeah, who knows about I think the whole administration could get tied to this thing if it goes very poorly, right? Like if this drags on, becomes subtype of Vietnam, Iraq, uh, Quagmire, you know, over the extended period of time, they might all go down with the ship. Um, which is why I switched my I talked about uh month or so ago that I had bought the uh midterm Dems win, the House, uh Republicans keep the Senate. Um I was about even, and I just after this war started, I was like, if this goes bad, like I think they're gonna lose get swept at everything. So I picked the sweep of the Dems in the midterms. It's up a few points since then. What do you guys think? Do you guys like that? Do you think that this is gonna lead to them getting crushed in the midterms, or are they gonna be able to hold on to at least the Senate?

SPEAKER_01 40:48

I mean, the Senate map is very um favorable to Republicans. The seats that are up for grabs aren't red states for the most part. There's not a ton of flippable seats. I mean, this is I mean, I talked about my my Jasmine Crockett bit, which unfortunately uh lost a lot of money on that one. I should have seen the writing on the wall when they did the the stunt on the Colbert rapport, which is you know, Boomer Abloum. But I mean that's the they're they're they're talking about that race because it's one of the more winnable, plausible scenarios for them to win a seat, which is taking Texas. Oh, Tal Rico wins a seat, yeah. Yeah, which shows you, you know, how tough a cycle this is gonna be for Democratic Senate hopes. But hey, like I had some. Is it Cruz he's going against? Or it's not Cruz, it's the other guy, right? No, it's Cornyn who's up against who they're still he's still doing the secondary, primary, whatever. Right. Yeah, their new runoff. But I mean, I had a bet. Uh I took the no on will oil be over$90 a barrel at the end of the month. And I made a good profit on it, but then I I I sold it today when I when I started reading about you know what it means to mine the straits. Like, even if they did have minesweepers in uh like on hand, it takes weeks to de-mine a strait, like sufficient enough that you're like, Yep, everybody's good. Start rolling through. And remember uh my um months ago at this point, I was talking to you guys about what I thought the Venezuela uh situation was really about, was those underwater like UAVs that Ukraine had been using in Russia to strike the port facilities in the Black Sea and Noble uh Rusisk there. They had a similar strike against uh you know ships in port, in I don't know, somewhere like some you know, Thai boat was hit by one of these underwater, um, you know, remote controlled torpedoes, essentially, that Iran got from somebody, if not domestically produced. That's the other thing that you gotta be worried about, right? Even if you have great anti-air, even if you've taken out the mines, that all it takes is you know, a not that big uh uh you know sized UAV in the water, remote it up to a boat, blow it up, and nobody's gonna want to set sail again. It's not just about what America wants. You gotta convince the captain of the boat, the owner of the boat, and the crews of those boats to want to put their life and you know financial well being at stake to to sail through. Through a war zone, most people are going to say no.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

So how do you think um obviously Iran is to some degree implicitly approving of you know some of the Chinese and Russian ships coming through, or maybe they're turning off their transponders and going at night. Do you think they're gonna be pissed and stop supporting Iran, or do you think Iran's gonna be more hesitant to like severely mine things based on you know those countries buying their support?

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Russia's actually probably pretty happy about this because this has been a boon for them. Right. They're they're they're sort of natural resource as well. Well, yeah, like they're they get to now sell their oil at$100 a barrel. They're an oil country.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Uh they said today that they were gonna allow them people to buy their oil without the usual sanctions. Yeah. Uh that's how worried Americans are about the price of oil. I mean, it sounds like Beston and Trump are doing everything they can to try to keep this because but it's all it's still just shocking that they didn't have a plan ahead of time. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Turns out it turns out Donnie goes off half cock sometimes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Yeah. I mean, we should get our our resident oil expert in the family in here someday to talk about this. But uh maybe next week, yeah. Uh you know, uh I've also seen kind of an interesting narrative too where you know people are talking about hey, all these oil traders are taking like these long bets on the on the price of oil, buying them at$100, and the price wasn't going up like they expected. Um because, you know, like you say, it's you know, Andrew, you've kind of got out of this because it does seem so volatile and things do seem to be changing in terms of where things are coming from.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

But yeah, I mean Haralabob, who's uh you know, a trader, I guess, or one of these quant guys, he he was suggesting that Bessent is really, you know, playing with these fiddling, you know, as Bessent has known to do, like he's a macro hedge fund guy. He's that he's really trying to manipulate this market to keep it as low as possible to you know try to limit the damage. But you wonder if how long they can do that. You know, you wonder how long uh we, you know, they can hold off before this thing does spike to 150 or 200, and what happens then? Because then it really, really does get crazy.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

I I mean I'd be interested in putting a little tickle on, like, because that that is the thing, right? Is that's what Iran threatened today. I think they actually said the phrase$200 barrel of oil. Because everybody knows what's at stake here. And I certainly don't see that it's outside the realm of possibility. Again, if you take out a quarter of the world's supply, that's gonna, you know, skyrocket the price. It's just you know, math.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Especially with this no, when there's no there's no obvious end date, right? Everyone starts hoarding everything, everyone starts saying, hey, like uh, you know what I mean? Oh, I'm gonna uh I'll buy it at 120 now before it's you know what I mean? It is 200 kind of thing. Um anything else you guys like as far as markets? I mean, sorry, Iran's not going away. I'm sure we'll have more markets to discuss. Maybe it would be good to get uh Jeb on here and talk a little more details about the oil maybe next week because it is kind of like the interesting side piece of this whole war. Um Jeb, if you hear this, you have to come on to the next podcast.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

That's the rules now.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

We'll pretty sure he's got some sort of non-compete, uh non-disclosure. Probably enough to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

I mean, Iran Iran seems to be a constant issue, and again, we've uh I think we promised to talk about more things than Iran uh this week. Uh we slightly did that by talking about some of the Republican nominee bets, but let's wrap it up there. Um, next time if you uh have a little more, but yeah. This was good. No, no, no. Hey, I I will keep it secret. I've I've made a bet. If anyone looks at my profile, you see what it is. Uh I think there's some interesting IPO action going on, but uh let's save that for next week.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

Okay, sounds good, boys. Love ya. All right, love ya. Have you guys night, boys?

unknown 48:22

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