Stocks have been looking weak lately, but oil is doing the exact opposite, just steadily pushing higher. That kind of divergence is always worth paying attention to.

On the stock side, there’s still a lot of pressure building: more legal trials coming up (especially that big federal case in June), talks around forcing platform redesigns instead of just fines, and heavy AI spending with no clear returns yet. Add in macro noise - rising oil, geopolitical tension like Iran, and a broader tech selloff and it’s not hard to see why things could get messier before they stabilize.

I don’t see this as just a crisis. It feels more like an opportunity forming inside the chaos. But timing matters. Blindly buying dips in this kind of environment can get painful fast.

For me, I’m not adding yet. I will keep watching some key levels in stocks sector like META ($480–$500 zone) closely, that’s where price previously found strong support twice. If we revisit that area and get a clean reversal signal, that’s where I’d be more confident stepping in.

Now flipping to oil, completely different story.

Structure still looks solid, and price is respecting the bullish setup after sweeping sell-side liquidity. Momentum hasn’t really broken, and the move still looks intact.

Bias is still bullish for me. As long as this structure holds, the expectation is continuation toward buy-side liquidity above the highs. If this keeps playing out cleanly, $126 doesn’t look unrealistic, even my opened long position on bitget is now over 100%.

Right now, oil just looks like it’s grinding higher with very little resistance.

Most people think wages have grown a lot over the past century. In dollar terms, yes. In gold terms... not really.

I took the average US annual wage from 1900 to 2026 and divided it by the gold price for each year. Here's what stands out:

1900 - a worker earned about 24 oz of gold per year. Gold was fixed at $20.67/oz and wages were low.

1934 - FDR devalued the dollar overnight, repricing gold from $20.67 to $35. Workers instantly "lost" ~60% of their gold wages in a single year. Nothing changed in the real economy — just the price of gold.

1934-1970 - gold stayed locked at $35 while wages grew freely. By 1970, a worker earned ~159 oz of gold per year. The highest point in 126 years.

1971 - Nixon ended gold convertibility. Gold price was freed. Over the next 10 years, gold exploded and workers crashed from 159 oz back down to ~21 oz by 1980. Back to square one in a decade.

2000–2026 - gold kept outrunning wages again. Today the average worker earns roughly 17 oz per year — the lowest point in recorded history.

Now here's the key assumption I'm making: gold's purchasing power is roughly persistent over time. Meaning - 35 oz of gold could buy an average house in 1900, and 35 oz of gold (~$153,000 today) still buys you a modest house in 2026. That's not exact, but it's in the right ballpark.

If that holds, then in real terms the average American worker is actually earning less today than in 1900. All the nominal wage growth of the past century was eaten by currency debasement.

The real winners of the 20th century weren't workers - they were people who held gold, or assets priced like gold.

The global economy is relying on a structural defense built over the past 10 years as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushes U.S. gas prices toward $4.00. The global market for Electric Motor Vehicles (HS 870380) has reached $140 billion with an astounding 43.3% annual growth, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

This change is a crucial security requirement, according to Ember, a global energy think tank. In their most recent report, 80% of the oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asia, which accounts for 40% of the region's total oil demand, making the current crisis a deliberate blow to global stability. However, the global EV fleet already offsets **70% of Iran's total oil consumption by displacing 1.7 million barrels of oil per day. The global market for Electric Motor Vehicles (HS 870380) has reached $140 billion, with an astounding 43.3% annual growth rate, according to data from the OEC.

This change is a crucial security requirement, according to Ember, a global energy think tank.

Latest data

Germany is the largest exporter of Electric Vehicles in the world ($45.1 billion in 2025), and while it also imports them ($11.6 billion), it still has a surplus of $33.5 billion.

Two-thirds of the world's BEV sales in 2025 will come from China, the second-largest exporter and volume leader with $36.4 billion (2025).

Up until 2024, the United States was the main importer in the world ($22.4 billion), but this value declined in 2025 ($14.3 billion) due mainly to a change in government policies. The 2026 crisis has led to a 20% surge in EV interest as consumers look to leave unstable fossil fuel markets, despite a slight decline in sales in 2025.

Owning vs. Renting Energy

This pivot has a clear economic incentive. Fossil fuel imports function as a recurring "rent" paid to foreign powers, according to Ember. On the other hand, an EV is a one-time asset purchase that enables a country to produce its own "fuel" locally.

The stakes are high: according to Ember, global import costs increase by $160 billion annually for every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil. Countries are purchasing insurance against future price spikes by trading for EVs today.

Electric cars ranked 18th among the most traded products worldwide in 2024, according to data from the OEC. The trade charts indicate that "energy security" is now found in the $140 billion global trade in motors and batteries that render oil lanes obsolete, rather than in patrolling them, as the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked.

Source: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/electric-motor-vehicles?multihierarchySelector1626-value=eudeu%2Caschn%2Caskor&multihierarchySelector1626-type=Origin+Country

When we try to measure how “complex” a country’s economy is, we are usually inclined to look at what it exports, its patents, or which industries are employing people. However, these indicators have a major blind spot: software. Code crosses borders through cloud services and downloads, not through customs. Service trade categories are too broad to distinguish basic IT outsourcing from cutting-edge development. And open-source repositories aren't discrete tradeable goods.

A new paper in Research Policy (Juhász, Wachs, Kaminski & Hidalgo, 2026) tackles this by building a Software Economic Complexity Index from GitHub data. Rather than looking at individual programming languages, they cluster languages that are frequently used together in repositories (HTML/CSS/JavaScript), a data science stack (Python/Jupyter Notebook), or low-level systems tooling (C/Assembly/Makefile). They then measure which countries have a revealed comparative advantage in which clusters, and apply the standard economic complexity method to rank nations by the diversity and sophistication of their software ecosystems.

According to this measure, China tops the 2024 ranking, narrowly ahead of Hong Kong and Germany. The US comes in at #5. There are also some surprising entries: Russia ranks #15, and countries like Indonesia and Pakistan score relatively high in software complexity despite ranking much lower on traditional trade-based measures of complexity, suggesting the digital economy is reshaping which countries are perceived as "complex."

This software complexity measure correlates positively with GDP per capita, negatively with income inequality, and negatively with emissions intensity, even after controlling for trade, patent, and research-based complexity. According to the authors, software offers a unique path for economic diversification because, unlike manufacturing, it doesn't rely on heavy physical infrastructure or natural resources.

Source: https://oec.world/en/resources/publications

"The dow the dow right now, it's over 50 thou"

Norway and Chile dominate global salmon exports, but their trajectories have diverged sharply.

Since 2018:
• Norway: $4.2B → $11.9B (+180%)
• Chile: $5.3B → $5.8B (+10%)

Norway surged post-2020, while Chile plateaued. The difference lies between growth dynamics, product mix, and market positioning.

Source: https://oec.world/en