Back To The Stone Age
Back To The Stone Age
President Trump’s speech last night was taken as bearish by the market, and on the surface it was easy to see why. He made clear the war is not ending immediately, and his rhetoric about bombing Iran “back to the Stone Age” underscored that Washington is still prepared to keep escalating militarily in the near term. Stocks slid and oil jumped after the speech because investors were looking for a clearer off-ramp than the one he gave them.
But there were two parts of the speech we think the market may be discounting too heavily. The first was Trump’s reiteration that he still expects this war to be wrapped up within a matter of weeks, not months. The second was his statement that the U.S. has deliberately avoided hitting Iran’s oil infrastructure, even though, in his words, it would be “the easiest target of all.” That matters, because it suggests the White House still wants to preserve at least some pathway for Iran to survive and rebuild once the military phase is over. In other words, this still looks less like the beginning of a long U.S. occupation and more like a brutal but time-limited coercive campaign
That interpretation also fits the broader military picture. Trump’s own timeframe of another two or three weeks, combined with the relatively modest number of American ground troops in theater or visibly on the way, argues strongly against the more dire predictions of a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iran. The likelier endgame still looks binary: either Iran accepts Trump’s terms, or the U.S. and Israel keep destroying what remains of Iran’s military and military-adjacent infrastructure, including its power plants, and then declare victory and move on. The market may not like that scenario, but it is still a very different scenario from a multi-year ground war.
How We’re Trading It
That is the framework we’ve been using in our own positioning. Before this war started, we hedged against it. More recently, we pivoted toward looking for selective bullish entries several months out, with the idea that by the time those options mature, we expect to be on the other side of this conflict. We are not trying to nail every headline or every intraday swing. We are trying to position for where we think this market is more likely to be by late spring and summer than it is today.
That also means we are not chasing. In this tape, discipline matters more than bravado. We are putting in bids below our estimates of fair value and letting the market come to us. If the fear around Trump’s speech and the war gives us fills at prices we like, good. If not, we pass. We used that approach again today.
What We’ve Got Teed Up
Among the names we have teed up for later today are a semiconductor-equipment name tied to leading-edge chip manufacturing, a test-and-measurement company that sits underneath the AI and semiconductor ecosystem, a power-capacity name whose story has only grown more credible since it became a big winner for us earlier this year, and a clinical-stage biotech name from our Multibaggers workflow where we think the options are priced attractively enough to justify a defined-risk bullish shot.
The point is not that every stock should be bought here. The point is that if our timing is roughly right—and this war is in fact wrapped up within a few weeks—then some of the bearish reaction to Trump’s speech may turn out to have created opportunities rather than just danger. Our job is simply to be selective enough, and price-sensitive enough, to take advantage of them.
If you'd like a heads up in real time when we place those trades later today, you can sign up for our trading Substack/occasional email list below.
And if you think we're wrong about the war winding down, and you want to hedge against it getting worse, you can use our website or iPhone app to scan for the optimal hedges for that.
