264 Hours of Flight.
The trade was way too crowded.
1. The era of arms control over nuclear arsenals is set to end this week as the last legal check on the size of Russia and the US’s deployed nuclear weapons expires. The New Start treaty, which caps the number of operational missiles and warheads in the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, terminates on Thursday. With the prospects for future talks looking dim, it potentially opens a new era of great-power atomic brinkmanship. “I genuinely believe we are now at the threshold of a new arms race,” said James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I don’t think in my lifetime there is going to be another treaty limiting numbers.” (Source: ft.com)
2. President Trump said Iran was negotiating “seriously” with the US over its nuclear program as the president weighs military options after deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the Middle East. “I hope they negotiate something that’s acceptable,” Trump told reporters as he travelled from Washington to Florida on Saturday night. He added that Tehran should embrace an agreement “with no nuclear weapons”. “I don’t know that they will, but they are talking to us, seriously talking to us,” Trump said. (Source: ft.com)
3. Iran’s supreme leader warned of a “regional war” as tensions continued to mount over potential US strikes on Tehran and top Israeli military officials visited Washington. “We don’t want to attack any country,” 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a public speech broadcast on state television on Sunday. “But in response to anyone who harbors ambitions, wants to attack, and seeks to cause harm, the Iranian people will strike back forcefully.” Weeks of escalating tensions have pushed Iran and the US to the brink of conflict, following threats by President Donald Trump in January to attack over Tehran’s deadly crackdown on protests against poor economic and living conditions. (Source: bloomberg.com)
4. President Trump’s promised “armada” has arrived in the Middle East, headed by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group, and sophisticated F-35 jets have moved closer to the region. Trump has yet to say whether and how he might use force. But American airstrikes on Iran aren’t imminent, U.S. officials say, because the Pentagon is moving in additional air defenses to better protect Israel, Arab allies and American forces in the event of a retaliation by Iran and a potential prolonged conflict. The U.S. military could conduct limited airstrikes on Iran if the president were to order an attack today, U.S. officials say. But the kind of decisive attack that Trump has asked the military to prepare would likely prompt a proportional response from Iran, requiring the U.S. to have robust air defenses in place to protect Israel as well as American troops, the officials say. (Source: wsj.com)
5. Gold extended losses, after its biggest plunge in more than a decade on Friday, while silver’s year-to-date gains were wiped out as a record-breaking precious-metals rally unwound at breakneck speed. Spot gold fell as much as 10% on Monday and is now down almost a fifth from an all-time high reached in the last-but-one session. Silver slumped as much as 16%, following on from an intraday loss on Friday that was the steepest on record. “The bottom line is that the trade was way too crowded,” said Robert Gottlieb, a former precious metals trader at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and now an independent market commentator, adding that a reluctance to take further risks would constrain market liquidity. (Source: bloomberg.com)
