Weekly PROPHET NOTES 10/21/24

Global Outlook: Middle East turbulences, Trump serving McDonald's

Happy Monday! Welcome to another week on this planet. While the world is busy fighting over everything, we are here to determine the winners and losers. The political theater is giving us a busy schedule with two weeks left till the US elections. That being said, most of the stuff happening is noise and today I will try to find some signal in it.

Last week passed with ongoing focus on the Middle East and continued bafflement of some around US election odds. Truth be told, I am looking forward to the end of the election cycle as I yearn for some other topics. Since last week X is almost unusable as majority of the posts are election propaganda. In that aspect, I am rooting for Trump as X is mostly right-leaning and his victory will mean more focus on other stuff, while Kamala’s victory will mean focus on election cheating.

Also geopolitics topics should accelerate once we get clarity on presidential succession which means more markets that are difficult to price. And that is what we like the most here.2025 is shaping up to be crucial geopolitics-wise so if you are not subscribed, click below to be up to speed.

Enough of introduction, let’s move towards a short summary of the week and what lies ahead.

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Weekly Recap

There is a lot to unpack here so let’s go and see the mix of ended markets and other events that unfolded in the last week.

US Politics

Since last week, Trump has managed to solidify his lead over Kamala on Polymarket:

There was an attempt to change the odds, with around $1 million bet on Kamala, but it failed in establishing the new equilibrium. Is there a Fredi9999 premium? Not really in the end as it seems that Fredi9999 have built their position and there is no willingness to put enough money on Kamala to balance the scales.

While all the swing state odds favor Trump currently, the difference is minimal and polls suggest that we have a toss-up. I am repeating myself here weekly, but that is the reality of the race.

From other election news, we had Donald Trump working at McDonald’s in an attempt to discredit Kamala Harris. Nice campaign from him, no wonder he caught up in the polls.

I will be back with more US politics later on.

Wars

We had another busy week in the Middle East with three new developments.

First on, we had an unexpected death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, where he was supposedly caught during a supply run. An accidental killing with major repercussions on the conflict. With him dead, I thin that all original proxy leadership is now eliminated. This had a potential to cool Israel’s retaliation urges, but the second development may have balanced the scales.

Because this week, Hezbollah has tried to assassinate Netanyahu in his home, using a drone. Bibi was obviously furious, while I was expecting it to happen sooner or later. That is the trade-off to assassinating opposing leadership.

Thirdly, we also had a major leak of classified documents on Israeli retaliation. Supposedly plans were to do it before the elections. But when such allegations surface, I have trouble to believe that the leak is not controlled in order to justify the delay in attack. After all current admin is not in favor of retaliation before the elections.

Be your own judge on the leaked documents, ut the fact is that now all the plans need to be changed and we can expect the retaliation to further delay.

On Ukrainian front we had interesting news on North Korean troops joining the conflict on the Russian side. One could say that we can name it now WW3 as the countries participating in the war are Russia, Ukraine, NATO, North Korea, China to some extent and Iran to some extent.

Additionally, there were some rumors on Ukraine getting nukes (sic!) and supposed willingness to admit Ukraine to NATO if Kamala Harris wins the elections. Interesting.

That is all major news from last week, let’s look ahead.

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Global Outlook

I am looking ahead and I do not see much. World is holding its breath ahead of US elections and the only thing I could comment on would be the Middle East, which I have already covered and it still applies. There will not be any October surprise.

Only thing I am expecting this week is some clarity on either Kamala or Trump appearing on the Joe Rogan show. With 15 days left, this week we should have the announcement. Otherwise, we can dismiss the claims.

Markets ending this week