What Happened
The United States faces an hours-long decision window: launch military strikes against Iranian civilian infrastructure or accept some form of ceasefire framework. This is not a routine geopolitical flare, the event type is logged as REGIME_BREAK, meaning markets cannot price a middle path. One of two materially different macro environments emerges before the next US equity open.
What Our Data Says
Market prices as of writing are limited in analytical value. US equity markets are closed; SPY at $659.29, QQQ at $588.59, and TLT at $86.63 are all stale by 2.6 hours and reflect pre-event pricing. WTI crude at $95.55 and Brent at $97.17 (the latter nearly 49 hours old) are similarly pre-event. The only live signal is BTC at $71,489, crypto functions as a 24/7 risk barometer, but at VIX 24.17 (FRED daily, confirmed fresh), the noise threshold for a meaningful BTC signal is 7.5%, and no such move is yet registered. Do not read current stale equity or oil prices as positioning signals, they aren't.
Note also a significant VIX data divergence: the PriceSnapshot shows 34.54 against the FRED daily resolver at 24.17. That 10-point gap is unresolved and should not be used to construct a narrative about recent volatility movement. We treat 24.17 as the operative figure pending clarification, acknowledging material uncertainty.
What the structural data does tell us is this: WTI CFTC short positioning is at the 2nd percentile, historically extreme bearish positioning, which means a strike-driven oil spike would force a violent mechanical short-cover. The fundamental and technical vectors point the same direction on a strike scenario. Meanwhile, gold at $4,845 (stale, indicative) sits above its $4,500–4,700 structural CB-demand floor with CFTC positioning at only the 17th percentile, not crowded, with room to run. TIPS real yields at 1.98% and term premium accelerating +23% over one month confirm bonds remain structurally challenged regardless of the geopolitical outcome.
What This Means
The strike scenario activates every inflation accelerant simultaneously: oil shock into a tariff-driven NVI at 871%, CPI pipeline already building, real yield compression. The April 10 CPI print, already a 15–20% probability of ≥2.7%, becomes more dangerous if energy prices spike into the survey window. The macro regime doesn't just stay stagflationary; it deepens toward the catastrophic bond scenario (10Y toward 4.75–5.00%), equities -8 to -12%, gold +5 to +8%.
The ceasefire scenario (TACO) is a tactical relief event, not a structural repair. The de-escalation playbook produces VIX compression, an equity rally building over days, and modest oil weakness, but the 2nd-percentile WTI short creates a powerful mechanical offset to any supply-fear unwind, and the structural inflation thesis (tariffs, term premium, TIPS) remains entirely intact. Gold faces a tactical safe-haven headwind but the CB demand floor absorbs it.
In both scenarios, the highest-conviction trade, long gold, short 10Y bonds, remains valid. A strike makes both more urgent. A ceasefire makes gold marginally less attractive tactically but does not invalidate the 92bp structural mispricing in the 10Y (theoretical fair value 5.26% vs. 4.34% current).
Positioning Implications
Watch BTC through the overnight session as the only live risk proxy available before US futures open. A sustained move above $75,500 (>5.6% from current) would signal genuine risk-on and likely implies ceasefire. A drop below $66,500 would be the first live confirmation of a strike-driven risk-off cascade. The April 10 CPI print remains the single most important scheduled event regardless of tonight's outcome, the geopolitical binary determines the entry point, not the macro direction.
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