Interesting TACs of the Week (March 2 – March 8, 2026)

Summary – A top-down review of interesting calls and comments made last week in Treasuries, monetary policy, economics, stocks, bonds & commodities. TAC is our acronym for Tweets, Articles, & Clips – our basic inputs for this article.

Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting Tweets, Articles, Video Clips with our comments. This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television, Tweeter, and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever. No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Macro Viewpoints & its affiliates expressly disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken based on any or all of the information in this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerance.

 

1.A couple of positive signs emerging!

Something really interesting happened on Friday, March 7. All the major players in the World realized they had one common aim, at least in the near term. They faced the snarling Devil wielding a blazing, ferocious weapon that could burn them all.

By all the players we mean, USA, Russia, China & all the participants in the joint suicide campaign that unfolded in the Persian Gulf last week. And the first weapon hurled against the Devil’s fire came from President Trump. Look what Karoline Leavitt said on Friday:

• “what the President means is that when he, as Commander-In-Chief of the US Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to United States of America & the goals of Operation Epic Fury have been realized then Iran will, essentially, be in a place of Unconditional Surrender whether they say it or not. Frankly, they don’t have a lot of people to say it for them” .

But what fiery weapon did the demon from hell brandish before which all the powerful men trembled by Friday? 

Clearly they all realized that the fire of the demon had to be cooled & eventually made powerless without much delay. So the commander in charge of the cooling spoke up & assured the world that his army would begin releasing the coolant that would quell the fire. Look what Treasury Secretary Bessent said to Larry Kudlow on Fox on Friday:

• “… the other thing Treasury can do here, Larry, is there are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of sanctioned crude on the water and in essence by un-sanctioning them, Treasury can create supply and we we are looking at that. We we will await to hear from CENTCOM and 8 in terms of when they think safe passage is possible, but we’ve actually seen some Iranian vessels go out. We’ve seen some Chinese the vessels go out“

 

The raging fire that threatens to burn the world economy is the price of oil. And cooling that or at least stopping its intensity is, in our humble opinion, the most important & immediate job at hand. Kudos to President Trump & Secretary Bessent for releasing the coolant. 

We saw in Indian YouTube that Russia told India that they have 9-10 million barrels floating in the vicinity & these could be sold to India but at a $5/barrel premium. And we discovered a clip in English dated Thursday, March 5 that explained why Russian oil is returning to India and this clip names the two oil tankers (with photos) that are together carrying about $1.4 mm barrels to India. 

Nothing was up last week except the price of Oil & the price of the Dollar, a last resort for money fleeing from the Devil. 

• Dollar was up 1.4% on UUP & up 1.3% on DXY:
• Gold down 2.2%; GDX down 12.5%; Silver down 10.3%; Copper down 3.4%; CLF down 7.8%;  FCX down 12.8%; MOS down 5.5%; Oil up 34.8%; Brent up 27.3%; OIH down 6%; XLE up 1.2%;

• EEM down 8.4%; FXI down 8.9%; KWEB down 4.4%; EWZ down 1.6%; EWY down 6.3%; EWG down 7.9%; INDA down 2.2%; INDY down 4.4%; EPI down 4.5%; SMIN down 4.3%;

The above says it all. Oil was up 34% last week and everything else got trashed! That is why we laud the efforts of Treasury Secretary Bessent to create additional & new supply of Oil. 

Seriously, how huge was the move in Oil?

And,

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – Fri 3-6 – $XHB homebuilders worst week since June 2022 @stockcharts

 

 

2. Back to the United States

Friday morning 8:30 am delivered a shock, the opposite kind of the one above.

How did the major US indices act?

• VIX up 48% to 29.49; Dow down 3%; SPX down 2%; RSP down 3.3%; NDX down 1.3%; SMH down 6.4%; RUT down 4.1%; MDY down 4.6%; XLU down 2.1%;

That should be good for Treasury Bonds, right? Not this time:

• 30-year Treasury yield Up 14 bps on the week; 20-yr yield Up 17 bps; 10-yr Up 18 bps; 7-yr Up 21 bps; 5-yr Up 21 bps; 3-yr Up 21 bps; 2-yr Up 22 bps; 1-yr  Up 7 bps;
• TLT Down 2.6%; EDV Down 3.1%; ZROZ Down 3.9%; HYG Down 1.3%; JNK Down 1.4%;

This is really bad news with oil inflation rocketing up and interest rates rising hard. Emily Rolland of ManuLife said on Bloomberg that “there is a smell of stagflation in the air“. Julia Coronado focused on another negative:

• “We are in a very low labor supply environment. That was a choice. That is restricted immigration. That is an aging population. We don’t have growth in the population, in the labor force. So there is nobody to hire”.

And then there is a dark cloud named Private Credit hovering over the economy. As the veteran  Steve Eisman said in his clip this week: He wrote – The Bad News is getting Worse in Private Credit Land:

• First, a fraud was uncovered. A UK based private lender called Market Financial Solutions with a loan book of 2.4 billion is being liquidated and it looks like there is double pledging of assets. Some major firms are exposed including Barclays, Apollo, Jeff, and Wells Fargo. While MFS is not a big lender, this is the third lending fraud that has been exposed during the last 6 months. The other two being first Brands. Once again, a lack of adequate due diligence allowed fraud to grow unhindered. Double pledging assets is discoverable or it would be if the private asset lenders were more careful.
• Second piece of news, another relatively small private credit manager In VICO Capital, at least that’s how I think it’s pronounced, that manages around 3 billion has been receiving large redemption requests for one of its funds from its institutional investors. To deal with these redemption requests, Invico adopted what is called a structured liquidity management plan. Now, what that exactly is was unclear from press reports, but it sounds like some form of Gating where Invico restricts redemptions as it tries to wind down the fund. So, now it looks like it is not only retail investors who are getting fearful of private credit, but institutional investors are worrying as well. Because of this, on Friday of last week, the entire financial sector suffered a correction and it continued to act badly this week as people have more and more reason to worry about a credit cycle. These financial stock price declines represent fears that a credit cycle is unfolding for the first time since the great financial crisis. … And here we are less than a month later and it’s not fine or at least there are fears that it is not fine. This is an example of how a narrative can change very quickly.
• Third piece of news occurred this week. Blackstone got hit. Blackstone’s 82 billion private credit fund called BCR got hit with redemptions amounting to 7.9% of the fund. But the fund only allows 5% record early redemptions. Blackstone paid out the entire redemption partially by increasing the limit of quarterly withdrawals from 5% to 7% and using company and employee capital to cover the remaining 400 million of redemption requests. Now you know things are dicey when Blackstone is afraid of being compared to Blue Owl and chooses self-funding over Gating. The fund starts to go out of these high-paying jobs when your own money is lined up to backs stop redemptions.
• And the fourth piece of bad news occurred on Thursday. BlackRock has a small public BDC called BlackRock TCP Capital. The symbol is TCPC. Now BDC’s are companies that make loans. And many BDC’s make loans that fund acquisitions by private equity companies. The market cap of this BDC is only 350 million small. And the stock is down 25% this year. On Thursday, here’s the news. TCPC changed its valuation of a $25 million loan to a company called Infinite Commerce Holdings, an Amazon aggregator that buys up online sellers of products. It marked that loan from 25 million, which was par, to zero, worthless. Three months ago, TCP valued that same load at a hundred cents on the dollar. To sum up the narrative about private credit, I’ll quote Lakshmi Ganopathy of Unicus Research, a guest on our show many times. Getting in was easy, but getting out is a whole different story. Keep in mind, when it is not just institutional money running for the exit, that’s one thing. TCP is public, so shareholders can sell. Now, we discussed a similar lack of liquidity playing out in venture capital in our episode with Stuart Elman on August 4th, 2025. Is gated private equity turning into venture capital with fewer exits existing to grow assets and collect fees? Check out that interview that we did.

Eisman added:

• So far this year, the private equity group has been obliterated. Year-to- date stock performance, Apollo down 24%, Blackstone down 26%, KKR down 26%, Aries down 28%, Blue Owl down 31%.
  The private equity, private credit narrative was once all bullish and now it’s all bearish.

Take a look at the financial stocks this week:

• BAC down 2.4%; C down 3.3%; GS down 3.9%; JPM down 3.6%; KRE down 2.8%; EUFN down 7.5% ;  SCHW up 34 bps; APO up 3.9%; BX down 2.6%; KKR up 4.2%; XHB down 8.5%; ITB down 8.5%; NAIL down 24.1%;

But there is a silver lining for the private credit cloud & it comes from another investor from the great financial crisis. Danny Moses, now a Hedge Fund manager, pointed out that “it’s in the back of people’s minds… if private credit goes, the Fed’s going to have no choice but to bail it out, and they’re probably right“.

 

This issue came up with problems in lending to software companies, a sector that has 23% share in the direct lending business while being only only 7% of all publicly listed companies and only only 1% of companies in the US. Pointing this Bruce Richards of Marathon Asset Management said on Bloomberg:

• “the economy is so much bigger and diverse than this. And so it’s not going to do anything to cause any kind of disruption to the broader private credit markets or the or the broader credit markets or the economy. I don’t believe that at all is the case.”

Then he added the positive from the private equity point of view:

• “First of all, I think in the public private equity markets, they’re going to be a really good position to buy a lot of this at pennies on the dollar. You that because they’re the ones that are going to have the capital, the cash flow, the margins to be able to do so. Smart private equity will also come in and recapitalize and buy new companies and but they’ll pay a lot less. …. The whole ratings of where, you know, what multiples you pay for the company has come down substantially. And private equity traditionally doesn’t pay more than 12 times for a company traditionally. “
• “And the second thing is private equity has all the upside. Imagine a company for creative destruction if they can reposition instead of making two or three times of money, they make five or six times more money so they can afford a few zeros. And still come out. Okay.”

That he points out is the critical difference between private equity & private credit:

• “Private credit can’t afford the zeros. They only get paid that part. They don’t have the upside. So what you need, Matt, is certainty when you allow. It’s an uncertain business right now, and that’s why capital will not come become available. “

 

 

Ergo, the need for a large, liquid pool of capital that can “afford the zeros“! For that we go below:

 

3. “Human beings do very badly with crises that unfolds very slowly” or To Life Insurance in America and onwards to Overseas 

To be absolutely frank & candid, below is stuff that we have no experience in or have anything more than a superficial understanding of. We will simply present two views from people who seem reasonable & enjoy good reputation. The clips below are long & we strongly recommend you listen to the entire content & not just once or twice.

• 3.1 The Scramble for Liquidity Is On – McAlvany Financial – March 4, 2026

We mainly look at Section 3 of this clip titled Private Equity, Private Credit & Systemic Risk at minute 5:00. Below is our synopsis created from the clip’s transcript via statements & reasoning stated at different points in the clip, a synopsis using our peripheral understanding & common sense. It should only be taken as a service to readers about an interesting set of views:

• “We have both liquidity and solvency issues emerging in in the private markets and I think it is likely to spill over into the public markets unless we have some form of of intervention whether that’s verbal or or an actual commitment from the Fed and the Treasury which could be very inflationary and so unless we have some sort of bailout coming in like for private equity.”
• “Yeah, I think that the game for leveraged buyouts um what we what we also today refer to as private credit, ….So, private equity has a problem. So, you just launch a new shingle, call it private credit. And so, the pivot to private credit has been crucial for kind of extending and pretending. Um, private credit is typically offered at floating rates which again ratchets up the income potential to the private credit operator even as pressures mount for the companies the debtors that are in those structures.”
• “So, private equity picked a source of liquidity that has a longer term time horizon. … The insurance companies. Insurance companies. That’s the one thing everyone just assumes is without infection. But what you’re talking about is this is an infection that’s built into the insurance company system.”
• “Yeah. Buying out insurance companies gave them an opportunity to avoid redemption requests by selling credit instruments directly into the portfolios of those insurance companies. So, you know, where annuity investors and policy owners, they don’t have a clue how their premiums are being invested. uh and frankly they have no control over the redemption requests which it it’s a brilliant move by private equity and the private credit operators uh but it’s a huge and it’s a growing systemic risk.“
• “I mean we’re always worried about bank runs. You know, you go back to the history of the 1930s and you had thousands of banks failing because depositors wanted their cash back, but the money had been loaned out, right? And so you had illquid loans and yet depositors wanted their cash back.”
• “… banks face a liquidity mismatch. It is a fact that’s kind of implicit to their business model. Uh which is why regulators are so strict about having adequate reserves so that in the event of a run on deposit or cash you’ve reduced the risk of forced liquidations whether it’s of securities or or longer term loans doesn’t damage the loan book. Um there has to be a cushion.”
• “So banks face a liquidity mismatch. It in fact that’s kind of implicit to their business model. Uh which is why regulators are so strict about having adequate reserves so that in the event of a run on deposit or cash you’ve reduced the risk of forced liquidations whether it’s of securities or or longer term loans doesn’t damage the loan book. Um there has to be a cushion.”
• “But what a beautiful thing with the insurance companies because you can’t trigger a run. Nobody even knows. I mean you can’t ask for your money back. ….Private credit has no such cushion and 13:30 private equity has no such cushion. Insurance assets represent a nonable source of liquidity and and that’s of 13:37 course why they’ve been flogging it, abusing it.” 

 

Now to a discussion about what might be the Next Financial Crisis! The previous huge financial crisis was the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. If you haven’t seen the film The Big Short that covered that crisis, you should watch it as soon as practical for you. One of the main investors who discovered that crisis & pursued it was Steve Eisman. His guest in the clip below is forensic accountant Tom Gober. 

• 3.2 The Next Financial Crisis? Private Equity, Private Credit & Life Insurance | Real Eisman Playbook – Mar 2, 2026 – Minutes 48:50

 

The sections in this clip are:

• 00:00 – Intro 01:20 – Tom’s Background 04:55 – The Life Insurance Scandal Explained 09:50 – The Private Equity Takeover & Issues with Reinsurance 31:42 – Inaccurate Ratings 33:25 – Back to Leverage 37:59 – People Are Starting to Listen, Potential Issues 43:46 – Lack of Transparency 45:20 – Outro & Steve’s Takeaways

You might want to go to minute 45:25 and listen to what Steve Eisman says what “his take away is“. His first line is:

“first of all, …. human beings do really badly with crises that unfold really, really slowly“

 

4. A personal note

The crisis in the Middle East has been personal hell for so many people. People generally know that India has a large number of Muslim citizens with Shia Muslim concentrations in several states. However, very few know that India has a substantial number of Jewish citizens including the “oldest Jewish community in the world“. So we thought we would share a short but sweet clip titled The Jews of India. The diversity of their backgrounds is simply amazing.

 

 

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