Ultimatum Day

Deadlines

A quick nugget that I learned from https://globalsouthintel.com/ via Speevr. There is a 40-day mourning period after the death of a religious leader in Iran and that 40-day mourning period after Ali Khamenei’s death likely raises the political cost of publicly advocating a ceasefire before it ends. In Iranian Shi’a political culture, the 40th day carries symbolic weight, and Mojtaba Khamenei’s early legitimacy is closely tied to his father’s death and the regime’s martyrdom narrative.

If you count from the reported death on February 28, 2026, the 40th day is Wednesday, April 8, 2026. If you count from March 1, 2026, when Iranian state media publicly confirmed the death and mass mourning events were underway, the 40th day would be Thursday, April 9, 2026. Either way, the Trump deadline pretty much coincides with day 40 of mourning. There is no obvious takeaway from that; I just thought it was an interesting coincidence or non-coincidence.

Meanwhile, in markets, the stalemate continues. 8 p.m. tonight is the latest deadline for Iran to surrender, or something.

• Tensions rising but daily “We’Re NeAr a deAL!” headlines keep the risky asset bears at bay and a significant cohort feeling that the rolling ultimatums from Trump are not credible. Market reaction to Trump social media posts is now pretty much zero.
• Commodities markets like corn, etc. not reacting at all to experts’ predictions of pending supply shock doom.
• No visibility on the end of the war, but stable oil prices.
• Market long USD in case of further escalation, but stocks, gold, and CNH trade well and put a lid on USD gains.
• Market afraid of missing the bottom in stocks, but plenty of remaining headwinds from private credit, AI capex fears, higher interest rates, and tighter financial conditions.

As discussed yesterday, risk/reward for long USD is bad because few are truly bullish dollar, but many are long. This apparent contradiction comes from the fact that long USD is a decent hedge for further escalation and short USD is too scary given the perception that the USD works as a safe haven. But does it? Or does the dollar simply unwind positioning when there is a shock?

In April 2025, the USD sold off on risk aversion spawned by huge tariffs, even though the universal consensus was that tariffs are bullish USD. This time, the USD rallied even though the universal consensus is that this war is medium-term bearish dollar. It’s just position unwinds. Now that the positioning has unwound, you could feasibly argue that long oil / short dollars is an interesting pair trade if you want to play for further escalation. But do you?

I have no idea what to do today. The market is obviously showing extreme complacency but that’s understandable. We have seen the “escalate to deescalate” movie so many times it’s moved from comedy to irony to tragedy. So I plan to sit this one out and wait for clarity on what is going on.

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SNDK

I have been mentioning SanDisk here and there as I am tempted by the possibility that the DRAM cycle has peaked. You can add another behavioral nugget to my thesis. The Roundhill Investments DRAM ETF (Ticker: DRAM) launched last week! Thanks Ramiro!

There is a long and checkered history of new ETFs filing applications to chase overheated sectors and finally coming to market right at the top. BITO, MEME, METV, MJ, ICLN, and KOL are some notable examples. These ETF launches coincided closely with the peak euphoria in bitcoin, memestonks, the Metaverse, weed, ESG, and coal. The MEME ETF actually launched at the peak, shut down at the lows, then relaunched at the new recent peak. Dumb.

Now, of course there are examples of sector ETFs that have been successful. But they tend to follow a different pattern. They are early[1].

The DRAM ETF pretty much holds three stocks: Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Those represent 75% of the ETF and the rest is a bunch of smaller 5% holdings (SNDK, STX, WDC, etc.) Meanwhile, DRAM prices appear to have peaked in early January (see black line on chart).

This is not investment advice. SNDK is hard to trade. It flies around in $30 clips for no reason. I think it’s making a major top and can correct back to $500 or something like that. The way I trade it is I sell the spikes (especially on the open, when it often gaps around in $20 increments for no reason) and then trade like I am long gamma (buy back a bit every $10 on the way down if and as it falls). Sometimes I sell short-dated puts against my shorts to help my average. As simplistic as my view is, I do feel it makes sense. DRAM prices are the driver/anchor and they are going lower. The launch of the DRAM ETF tells you it’s not early. It’s getting late.

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Final Thoughts

Skip this section unless you want to read in the weeds altcoin chatter.

Thank you to everyone who sent me their thoughts on HYPE and PURR. I decided not to do the trade, mostly because despite all the coverage, the revenue story isn’t that impressive so far. In fact, HYPE TVL and fees peaked in the summer of 2025. I found that surprising given the amount of excitement around it.

https://defillama.com/protocol/hyperliquid?groupBy=weekly

The idea behind HYPE is compelling. But there is also a ton of supply ready to be unleashed each time it rallies. And while it has become the go-to for weekend prices of crude oil and equity futures, that is not yet translating to rising fees. The fees appear to me to be the key reason to be bullish because the way it works is that roughly 97% of all core trading fees are utilized in a “burn flywheel,” where the system automatically buys back HYPE tokens and permanently burns it. The model is cool, but as a noob, there is zero chance I am early. And every time it rallies, it gets smacked back down by insider selling.

It’s too hard to figure out whether the model (bullish) or the large future supply (bearish) will win out. Seems like the alpha comes more from buying low on panics and selling high before the next wave of insiders slam it back down. Too hard.

Iron condors in PURR (HYPE DAT) … Selling $3/$4 put spread vs. selling $6/$7 call spread might actually be the play. The options market is extremely thin but you can do stuff like this if you’re patient and you know what you’re doing.

All this said, next time I am bullish crypto, I will buy HYPE or PURR simply because HYPE appears to be a token that has a believable narrative. If we get a crypto bull run, I would guess it’s a good horse to ride.

Have a wordy day.

https://www.myvocab.info/en/results

Interesting how it falls off in old age. Memory loss? Matt Gittins is off the top of this chart, for sure.
Note it’s “word families” not words. E.g., Limited, limit, limitless, unlimited = 1

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[1] IBIT is a meaningful exception to the “ETFs mark the top theory” as it came out years into the bitcoin bull trend and bitcoin still doubled after it came out.

good luck ⇅ be nimble