I don’t know where I’m going, but I sure know where I’ve been…

By Paul Sankey Published on August 4, 2026 at 12:09 PM

Reminder: we have Valero management live as this week’s Happy Hour. Thursday, August 6th @ 2:30PM ET – note unusual time. Guests: Randy Hawkins, VP International Crude Oil Supply & Trading, and Brian Donovan, VP IR; not sure on Homer Bhullar, CFO, but would not be shocked if he is on. Submit interest: sankeyresearch.com/conference/sankey-strategy-session-valero-interest-form Five questions for Valero: Q1a: Pre- vs post-Hormuz: what changed in your crude slate and product yields, with Russia escalation on …

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Sunday: The Assyrian Came Down Like a Japanese Yen

By Paul Sankey Published on August 2, 2026 at 7:26 PM

Greetings, After sending you a UAE note yesterday that tried to start punchy with Hormuz volume charts, then later went back 2,500 years to to Cyrus the Great, Persian Empire I, today we have mostly charts. “You, me, and the UAE” was emailed to you yesterday intra-Saturday. It feels a momentous time in writhing markets, and it feels like the combination of the Japanese Yen, the new Fed Chair, and well, Korea’s Kopsi index, never …

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The Knicks, Vultures, and “The Art of the Deal”

By Paul Sankey Published on June 14, 2026 at 4:26 PM

As I write this, we are rushing to get ahead of the 3:30 p.m. ET press conference planned for President Trump today regarding the seemingly endless “Deal Very Soon” situation with Iran. Let’s repeat our quote from the 2000s Iran nuclear EU “It’s like playing chess with a monkey. You get them to checkmate, and then they swallow the king.” Watching the U.S.–Iran dynamic right now feels exactly like watching a Knicks game: we constantly …

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