Sherwood News With attacks on vessels in the narrow transit corridor escalating last week, Bloomberg data shows that daily ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged 98.5% over the past three weeks, from 67 vessels on February 22 to just one ship on March 16.
4. INDA India ETF Hit -20% from Highs…Closed Below 200-Week Moving Average
StockCharts
5. Value of Private Equity Deals Held for More than 7 Years Hits $1T
Financial Times
6. Quarterly Performance of S&P 500 When Yield Spreads Narrow vs. Widen
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright The economy and the stock market are not one in the same, but there is a typically a strong relationship between the two and US equities have historically performed significantly better when high yield spreads are narrowing, indicating favorable economic conditions. The table below shows the quarterly performance of the S&P 500 when high yield spreads are narrowing versus when they are widening. It is also apparent that the magnitude of the change is also change is also significant as the S&P has performed better during quarters when spreads narrowed significantly and worse when they widened by a large amount.
Nasdaq
7. High Dispersion Under the Hood of S&P
Axios
8. VC Backed Crypto Companies Investing in Non-Crypto Businesses
Pitchbook-So far in 2026, VC-backed crypto companies have invested $1.4 billion in startups outside the industry, more than twice the $600 million they invested in crypto-focused startups, according to PitchBook data.
PitchBook
9. Probability of a Rate Hike Higher than Cut as of March
10. Cultivating a Lucky Mindset
Looking for the lucky explanations in life can transform our experiences-Psychology Today Dayna Lee-Baggley Ph.D.
Key points
Train your brain to find lucky interpretations with practice and repetition.
Acknowledge reality and reframe it positively without ignoring negative events.
Practice finding the lucky explanation to create new neural connections and change your mindset.
There was a study of people who considered themselves lucky and people who considered themselves unlucky (see Wiseman, 2003). They had to read a scenario and discuss it. One of the scenarios: You’re at the bank, and while you’re at the bank, there’s a robbery, and you get shot in the arm.
The unlucky people said, How unlucky am I? I’m at the bank, and I get shot during a robbery.
The lucky people said, How lucky am I? I only got shot in my arm.
This begs the question: Do they have a lucky life, or did they find ways to find a “lucky” interpretation?
Cultivating a Lucky Mindset
Most of us don’t automatically come up with a lucky explanation when faced with adversity. It requires conscious effort and practice. However, with time and repetition, you can spontaneously train your brain to expect and generate these positive interpretations.
Acknowledge the Reality: It’s crucial to understand that adopting a lucky mindset doesn’t mean ignoring or downplaying negative events. The lucky participants in the study acknowledged the fact that they had been shot. They weren’t engaging in toxic positivity, which involves denying or minimizing genuine distress.
Reframe the Situation: After acknowledging the reality, intentionally look for a positive angle. For instance, “I got shot in the arm, but how lucky am I that it wasn’t more serious?” In psychology, a well-known effect highlights the importance of who you compare yourself to. When researchers examine the happiness levels of Olympic medal winners, they find an intriguing pattern: gold medalists are the happiest, followed by bronze medalists, with silver medalists being the least happy. This phenomenon occurs because each group has different reference points for comparison. Bronze medalists tend to compare themselves to those who did not win any medal, which makes them pleased and grateful for their achievement. In contrast, silver medalists often compare themselves to gold medalists, feeling disappointed that they did not win the top prize. Think about your comparison group when proposing a lucky explanation.
Practice Regularly: Like any skill, this mindset requires regular practice. Whenever you encounter challenges, make it a habit to finish the sentence with, “How lucky am I?” As you repeat this process, you create a new neural connection. Over time, your brain will begin to do this automatically.
Conclusion
Science shows us that adopting a lucky mindset doesn’t mean ignoring life’s challenges. It’s about finding a balanced perspective that acknowledges difficulties while recognizing the positives. Consciously practicing this technique can train your brain to seek the lucky explanation. This can make life feel way more manageable and hopeful.
Jet fuel. “Jet fuel costs have increased by 81% since the start of the war in Iran and are up by 124% this year.”
Joseph Brusuelas – RSM
6. 87% of Asian Crude Flows thru Strait of Hormuz
Barrons -87%-The percentage of crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz that was sold into Asian markets in 2025.
The problem is that the strait can’t be cleared solely through a bombing campaign, or an attack by destroyers. Iran’s navy has been severely depleted by the U.S., but the country doesn’t need large attack ships to scare commercial vessels away. Its weapons include mines, fast attack boats, missiles and drones. Layered on top of each other, they become exceptionally difficult to remove.
“They’ve created an integrated, vertical stack of threats that can cover the strait from undersea all the way to above the surface,” said Jonathan Schroden, chief research officer at the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded nonprofit that does research for the Navy.
Once mines are in the water, this becomes “one of the most dangerous scenarios that people who focus on the Middle East have been thinking about for decades,” he said.
Over the last 4 years, the New York Times has successfully pivoted away from its 175 year history as a news-first company.
News-only subscribers have collapsed by 65%, while bundle and other single-product subscribers have increased by 157%. Now, only 1 in 10 subscribers are coming to the New York Times strictly for the news.
This successful pivot is a byproduct of the New York Times’ growth in mobile gaming (acquired Wordle in 2022), podcasts, cooking content, and personalized sports content (acquired The Athletic in 2022 as well).
This rebrand also helped revitalize the business from a profitability perspective. From 2007 to 2022, operating income at the New York Times went from $187 million to $202 million. Over the last 3 years, operating income has exploded to $432 million.
Fiscal.ai
8. Venezuala Owes $150B to Foreign Creditors
Google
9. Share of New Car Sales that are EV’s
Semafor
10. Shane Parish Interview with Marriott
J.W. Marriott built the foundation of the world’s largest hotel company.
But he didn’t open his first hotel until he was 55.
Everything started with a nine-seat root beer stand in Washington, DC, and a simple goal: serve people well and build something that lasts. And of course, he didn’t just go from restaurants to hotels; along the way, he started the airline catering industry.
This episode explores the timeless principles that guided his success, including his obsession with downside risk, his practice of isolating variables, and his expansion during the Great Depression while his competitors folded.
A few of the Tiny Lessons I took away:
“Manage your time. Short conversations to the point. Make every minute count.”
Take care of your people before your customers. People who feel disposable deliver a disposable experience.
“Guard your habits. Bad ones will destroy you.”
The person who wrote the rule might say yes if you actually show up and ask.
“Discipline is the greatest thing in the world. Where there is no discipline, there is no character.”
Dave Lutz Jones Trading Retail traders in Asia are loading up on borrowed money to fund purchases in their brokerage accounts, traders and dealers said, as they chase oil and energy prices higher and scoop up sinking stocks. Investors have made fresh margin payments to extend positions as well as top up where they have incurred losses, brokers said. The behavior is emblematic of a habit of dip buying honed in seemingly unstoppable markets in the years since retail trading exploded in popularity during pandemic lockdowns – one which has repeatedly proven highly lucrative.
3. 2012-2024 Tech vs. Energy/Materials
The Kobeissi Letter
4. Banks -10% Correction
Barchart
5. TSLA Holds Level for 4th Time in One-Year
StockCharts
6. HIMS Pulled Back to 2024 Levels Before this Week’s Rally…40% of Float Short
StockCharts
7. Tether And The Hidden Demand For U.S. Treasuries-The Crypto Advisor Blog
One of the more remarkable data points in digital assets today is this: if Tether were a country, it would rank among the top-20 foreign holders of U.S. government debt. According to the company’s most recent attestation, Tether holds roughly $122 billion in direct U.S. Treasury bills backing its USDT stablecoin. At that level, it would sit around 17th place globally, ahead of countries such as Israel and Germany and just behind major sovereign holders like Saudi Arabia and Brazil. For context, the threshold to enter the top 10 foreign holders of Treasuries is roughly $310 billion, meaning Tether would need to add about $190 billion more – more than double its current holdings – to reach that tier.
What makes this especially notable is how quickly those reserves have grown. Tether’s Treasury exposure has expanded dramatically alongside the growth of stablecoins and digital-dollar liquidity inside crypto markets.
Q4 2021: ~$34.5B in U.S. Treasury bills
Q4 2022: ~$39.2B
Q4 2023: ~$63.1B
Q4 2024: ~$94.5B
Most recent: ~$122B
Over roughly four years, Tether’s direct Treasury holdings have increased by more than $85 billion, including about $27–28 billion added in just the past year. This rise closely tracks the expansion of USDT itself. Tether’s market capitalization has grown from roughly $68 billion at the end of 2021 to more than $180 billion today, reinforcing the direct relationship between stablecoin issuance and demand for short-term U.S. government debt.
3. Iran Volunteer Militia-Basij…40k-54k Bases in Country
Perplexity
4. American Support for Military Action-Prof G Newsletter
Prof G Markets
5. History of Bitcoin -50% Bears
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright
Nasdaq Dorsey Wright-There have been six other instances in which BTC fell more than 50% from highs before returning to all-time highs. Once Bitcoin officially moves 50% away from its highs, it tends to do pretty well over the following months. Specifically, it averages a 14% return, which is roughly in line with Bitcoin’s 17.1% gain over the last month. However, things usually take a turn for the worse after the first month. Of those six instances, five of them were lower after a full year, averaging a one-year decline of 19%, which bodes poorly for the upcoming year. That said, if Bitcoin’s outlook has taken a turn for the worse, when could we expect the cryptocurrency to potentially bottom and recover?
Of those six instances in which Bitcoin fell an initial 50%, it averaged a maximum drawdown of 76.6%. Said differently, Bitcoin typically gets cut in half for a second time after the initial 50% decline. Additionally, it took an average of 5.7 months after falling 50% before it reached those respective bottoms. Extrapolating that to our current environment, six months from our initial 50% decline would mean that things could bottom in August of this year, but downside has persisted for more than a year as well. Once Bitcoin finally bottomed out in those instances, it took an average of 15 months to get back to all-time highs. However, it’s also taken as long as 25 months and as short as 4 months.
One interesting trend with Bitcoin is that it tends to see a pronounced decline roughly every four years, bottoming in late 2011, 2015, late 2018, and 2022. However, those steeper declines have gradually become less intense over time. For context, Bitcoin was down 76.6% in 2022, but it would’ve needed an additional 70% decline from that point to match 2011’s 93.1% decline. Using some guesswork and continuing that trend, it wouldn’t be surprising to see things bottom out around a drawdown of 70%, which would correspond to a price of around $38k for Bitcoin. Granted, that’s a guess assuming things continue lower, but it also falls roughly in line with the ~75% average drawdown when Bitcoin does fall 50%.
6. Fear & Greed Index
CNN Network
7. U.S. Gasoline Consumption Sideways for 25 Years
Wolf Street
8. Solo Leisure Activities Trending Up
Chartr
9. Number of Countries by Continent
Linkedin
10. Americans Support for Election Law Policies-Gallup
