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.
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.”
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
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.
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
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.
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
Trump says he cannot guarantee Iran deal
United States President Donald Trump stated on Monday that he “cannot guarantee” that an agreement with Iran would materialize.
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.
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”
IEA chief says 40 energy assets damaged in Middle East
International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said at least 40 energy assets have been “severely or very severely” damaged across nine countries in the Middle East due to the war in the region. Birol also told the National Press Club in Canberra that he is currently consulting with Asian and European governments on potential further releases of stockpiled oil. “If it’s necessary, of course, we will do it, but we will look at the conditions, we will analyze the markets and discuss with our member countries,” he said, adding that there’s “no specific price level” for further intervention.
The IEA chief described the energy crisis as “very severe” and harsher than the impact of the two oil shocks of the 1970s and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined. “This crisis, as things stand now, is two oil crises and one gas crisis put all together,” he stressed on Monday.
NN: I want to be crystal clear here oil is going to $150 MINIUM. And we got a good shot at $200. Any relief is 6 months in the future. ROCK ON!
Gold plummets 8%, silver tumbles 9% on Iran concerns
The prices of precious metals continued to decline on Monday, with gold and silver plunging sharply amid rising inflation fears, elevated oil prices, and strengthening expectations of global rate hikes as the US-Israel conflict with Iran showed no signs of easing. Market participants will keep a close watch on key economic indicators for direction, including manufacturing and services PMI data from the US, as well as consumer sentiment figures and jobless claims. Gold lost 8.03% at 3:06 am ET, going for $4,137.87 per ounce, while silver fell by 9.16% and went for $61.89 per ounce. Platinum plunged 3.69% at 3:09 am ET to go for $1,879.17 per ounce, and palladium dropped 2.09% and sold for $1,384.26 per ounce.