Author: BlackMask Financial

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Oil down by 3% on Middle East ceasefire “HOPES…. IRGC says US is ‘negotiating with itself'”…

The prices of oil futures sank by more than 3% on Wednesday after it was reported that the United States would soon propose a plan for a one-month ceasefire with Iran. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump claimed that Iran had agreed not to work on a nuclear weapon. He also insisted on his country’s and Israel’s victory in the conflict in the Middle East. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for deliveries in May decreased by 3.29% at 3:02 am ET to $89.3 per barrel. Meanwhile, Brent for the same month’s settlements declined by 3.72% to $100.6 per barrel, having slid by almost 4% moments earlier

NN: Their is no deal and IF they get a deal it will be a joke. And if when they open the straights wells and refineries are so damaged product will be limited

 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared on Wednesday that the United States is “negotiating with itself,” following US President Donald Trump’s previous remarks. “There will be no news of your investments in the region, nor will you see the previous prices of energy and oil, until you understand: stability in the region is guaranteed by the powerful hand of our armed forces. Stability through power,” a spokesperson for the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters addressed Washington directly in a video message. Furthermore, the IRGC told the US not to call its “failure an agreement” and claimed that until its objectives are fulfilled, the current situation in the region will not return to “the previous order.”

“No one like us will come to terms with anyone like you. Not now, not ever,” the spokesperson rebutted
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QatarEnergy Missile Strikes May Cause $100B Revenue Loss

In a statement posted on its website recently, QatarEnergy said it expects the damage to its Ras Laffan Industrial City caused by missile strikes to cost about $20 billion a year in lost revenue and to take up to five years to repair. The company – which highlighted that the strikes occurred on March 18 and March 19 – outlined that the damage will impact supply to markets in Europe and Asia. The attacks damaged two liquefied natural gas (LNG) producing trains – Trains 4 and 6 – totaling 12.8 million tons per annum (MTPA) of production, according to the statement, which pointed out that this represents approximately 17 percent of Qatar’s exports. QatarEnergy noted that Train 4 is a joint venture between QatarEnergy, which holds a 66 percent stake, and ExxonMobil, which holds a 34 percent interest, and that Train 6 is a joint venture between QatarEnergy, which holds a 70 percent stake, and ExxonMobil, which holds a 30 percent interest.  The attacks also targeted the Pearl GTL (Gas-to-Liquids) facility, according to the statement, which stated that this is a production sharing agreement operated by Shell that converts natural gas into high-quality cleaner burning drop-in fuels and produces base oils used to make premium engine oils and lubricants, and paraffins and waxes. QatarEnergy outlined in its statement that there will be a loss of associated product production due to the outage as follows:

• Condensates: 18.6 million barrels, which the company said is around 24 percent of Qatar’s exports.

• LPG: 1.281 million tons, which QatarEnergy highlighted is around 13 percent of Qatar’s exports.

• Naphtha: 0.594 million tons, which is around six percent of Qatar’s exports, according to the company.

• Sulfur:  0.18 million tons, which is around six percent of Qatar’s exports, QatarEnergy pointed out.

• Helium: 309.54 MCFA, which the company said is around 14 percent of Qatar’s exports.

Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi – the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, and the President and CEO of QatarEnergy – revealed in the statement that no one was injured by the strikes, which he described as not “just an attack on the State of Qatar but attacks on global energy security and stability”. “This was an attack on all of us who stand for development and human progress that is sustained by a fair, reliable, and secure access to energy,” he added.“The damage sustained by the LNG facilities will take between three to five years to repair.

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US orders 82nd Airborne deployment for Kharg Island

The United States is considering deploying the 82nd Airborne Division and elements of the division’s headquarters to support its campaign against Iran, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, the potential deployment is being treated as “prudent planning.” The forces could come from the Immediate Response Force, a unit of about 3,000 soldiers that can deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. One option under discussion is to use the force to seize Kharg Island. Another scenario under consideration would deploy about 2,500 troops from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is now heading to the region, to take the island. No decision has been made, and the Pentagon has not issued any order, the report said.

NN: The Invasion of Kharg will soon happen
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Israel said to believe deal with Iran not close

A ceasefire between the United States, Israel, and Iran is believed to be out of reach for now, as Tehran does not appear to be “in any concession mode,” an Israeli official told CNN on Tuesday.

The same source suggested that the deal “does not appear to be tangible right now” and that the ongoing negotiations are a tactic to buy time to better prepare for further military strikes.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz today announced his country’s military “will continue striking Iran with full force.”

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Private Credit Defaults Starting

Stephen Nesbitt was on no one’s list of Wall Street heavyweights when he bumped into a thirty-something salesman pitching the next big thing for wealthy investors: private credit. Nesbitt — who, as it happened, had written a book on private debt — took the idea and ran with it. Within a few years, he and his son Blake transformed their modest consulting business, Cliffwater LLC, into an unlikely giant. Their strategy: rather than sweat the details of every direct loan themselves, they’d piggyback on the firms that did. They’d also invest in industry heavyweights, creating something akin to a fund-of-private-credit-funds. Now the father-and-son team, who rode private credit on the way up, risk falling hard on the way down. As investors in private credit funds rush for the exits, Cliffwater has become one of the biggest question marks in the $1.8 trillion industry. The worry isn’t so much that private loans will go bad all at once and crush the funds where Cliffwater has invested. It’s that antsy investors will keep asking for money back, prompting Cliffwater to dash for cash itself — instigating a vicious circle of redemptions and markdowns. Concerns center around the $33 billion Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund, the largest of its kind in private credit. It’s what’s known as an interval fund, a type of closed-end vehicle that isn’t traded on an exchange but rather promises to buy back shares from investors at set intervals, usually quarterly, at net asset value. Cliffwater is legally obliged to buy back at least 5% every quarter if investors ask. That promise was a key selling point in good times. “Liquidity is the first-, second- and third-most important thing,” Blake Nesbitt emphasized at an industry roundtable this month. Trouble is, investors have been asking for a lot more back lately. In the first quarter, they demanded 14% from Cliffwater’s flagship fund. The firm capped redemptions at 7% or $2.3 billion — the first time that number had eclipsed inflows. The elder Nesbitt assured investors that the fund’s performance “remains strong,” but S&P Global Ratings lowered its outlook to negative, warning its rating could be at risk if the firm kept paying out more than 5%. Other vehicles from BlackRock Inc. and Morgan Stanley have limited redemptions at 5% in recent weeks, but, crucially, they maintain the right to further restrict withdrawals if the market gets ugly.

Cliffwater’s Deep Reach Into Private Credit

Investments in private-lending funds, Q4 2025 fair-value estimates

Note: Data is for Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund. Fair values are reported by Cliffwater itself. One investment with negative fair value is not shown. Cliffwater ownership of funds was calculated based on the proportion of outstanding shares it owned. For comparability, only data as of the end of 2025 are included, but some funds may have reported more recent figures. For example, Barings Private Credit Corp. has reported that Cliffwater’s stake dropped to 28% as of Feb. 19, 2026, to about $853 million.Source: Bloomberg News analysis of N-PORT and 10-K filings

The chorus of doomsayers is growing louder. A viral report last month from David Rosen, founder of hedge fund Rubric Capital, called the firm “the canary in the coal mine” for a wider reckoning. Boaz Weinstein, the famous activist investor, said interval funds have overpromised “that you can get out, but it doesn’t work if there’s actually a fire.” “It all works great when no one wants their money back — but when you start to call those loans, we start to have a problem,” said Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Muriel Siebert & Co. A Cliffwater spokesperson said that despite recent pressure, the fund has enough liquidity to meet 5% redemptions for more than a year without selling a fund position or an asset. The Nesbitts, through the spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.Private C

NN: Private Credit will wipe out the stock market and economy. Worse then the bogus real estate loans of the 2006 CDC and CDS  blowup.. This private debt market is far bigger and the quality of the paper is far worse then the mortgage loans of the last debt crises. 
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Oil Market Saw Trading Spike Before Trump’s Iran Pivot Post

  • Contracts representing millions of barrels of oil changed hands about 15 minutes before a social media post from US President Donald Trump that sent crude prices tumbling.
  • Futures corresponding to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate were sold in the two minutes from 6:49 a.m. in Washington on Monday.
  • The notional value of those volumes was around $650 million before the Trump post sent prices plunging.

Contracts representing millions of barrels of oil changed hands about 15 minutes before a social media post from US President Donald Trump that sent crude prices tumbling by as much as 14%. Futures corresponding to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate were sold in the two minutes from 6:49 a.m. in Washington on Monday, according to exchange data compiled by Bloomberg. The average for the same time period over the previous five trading days was about 700 lots — or 700,000 barrels. Trump’s Truth Social post was published at around 7:05 a.m.

Millions of Oil Barrels Trade Before Trump Post

Derivatives changed hands before Trump delays Iran strikes

Source: ICE

Trump said in the post that the US would postpone strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, adding that it was in “productive conversations” with the Middle Eastern nation. The president had on Saturday threatened to carry out the attacks within 48 hours unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway that typically handles around a fifth of the world’s oil. “Yesterday, we were counting down the hours until Trump started ‘obliterating’ Iranian power plants; today we are counting down the days before a ‘deal’ with Iran,” said Robert Rennie, head of commodity and carbon research at Westpac Banking Corp. “The problem for traders is that we have a whole lot of risk and volatility to manage between those two extremes.” The notional value of those volumes was around $650 million before the Trump post sent prices plunging. It’s not known if the contracts were part of a wider strategy involving other derivative instruments like timespreads or options. The identities of the counterparties were also not immediately clear. “The last thing that market participants want to see are suggestions that large, and highly profitable trades were being placed just ahead of those extreme swings,” Rennie said. Crude futures have been highly volatile, as the market reacts to ever-shifting headlines on the status of the war in the Middle East, which has resulted in the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. There was also a similar increase in activity in US stock futures on the S&P 500 prior to the Trump post. Between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. in New York on Monday, 4,497 contracts changed hands, a sharp spike against an otherwise quiet premarket session, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That burst of trading, combined with a move higher in prices, represented about $1.46 billion in notional value, making it the largest trade of the morning.

NN: Yesterday was a false flag. Trump is going for Krag island to cut off Iran’s oil revenue. And the shore line around the straights so the tankers can get through. And the Marines are on the way.
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Thousands of Marines enter CENTCOM on Iran deadline

Thousands of US Marines are due to enter the US Central Command on Friday, the same day as President Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing two US officials. The report said the Japan-based USS Tripoli, the USS New Orleans, and roughly 2,200 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit are scheduled to cross into CENTCOM on Friday. It would then take several more days for the force to reach the Strait of Hormuz. The Pentagon has also ordered the California-based 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, aboard the USS Boxer amphibious ready group, to head to CENTCOM, though that deployment will take longer. The report comes just hours after a New York Times article, which states that the Pentagon is contemplating deploying the 82nd Airborne Division and parts of its headquarters to assist in its campaign against Iran.

NN: Announcing the Trump golf course and condo project on Kharg Island
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Israeli strikes hit Tehran despite Trump’s remarks

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Monday that the country’s Air Force had launched a fresh round of strikes in Tehran, shortly after US President Donald Trump unveiled that his administration had been engaged in productive talks with Iran about a “complete and total resolution” of hostilities. “IDF: Initial report- The IDF is currently conducting strikes on Iranian terror regime targets in the heart of Tehran,” the IDF posted on Telegram. In a previous post on Truth Social, Trump said that he ordered the military to postpone any strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days.

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Trump pauses strikes on Iranian sites for five days

Donald Trump says he has instructed the US military to postpone “all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure” following two days of “very good and productive conversations” with Iran. Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the pause would last for five days and was subject to “the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions”