Minneapolis Chaos Erupts, Iran Unrest
520: Global Regime Change, Defense Stocks, US ICE Incident
Morning everyone.
Another one of those weeks where it’s difficult to keep up with the news hour by hour.
In the aftermath of the raid in Caracas by US special forces, we had some tanker interdictions in the Atlantic and Caribbean, more activity in the Middle East as Iran grapples with social unrest, a shooting by ICE in Minneapolis that is igniting a political firestorm, and another crypto sell off/deleveraging event.
Quick highlight before we dive in today. Many of you have been DMing me about some big winners from Our 15 Stocks That Could be The Next Palantir.
Some of the names since we posted in December include AVAV 0.00%↑ KTOS 0.00%↑and UAVS 0.00%↑.
The theme of drones, defense, cyber, etc. is only going to continue to get stronger in the coming years. These names could represent some absurd upside as the world becomes more unstable in multiple regions.
Markets
Global stock markets have been choppy this week, starting with strong gains as investors pushed major U.S. indices like the Dow and S&P 500 toward new record territory.
Early rallies were driven by energy and financial stocks following heightened geopolitical developments that lifted crude prices and broad risk appetite.
However some of the momentum faded mid-week as caution returned ahead of key labor data, driving a pullback in major indices and a shift toward defensive sectors. Tech leadership softened slightly, with some selective strength in memory and AI-related plays.
The US trade deficit has fallen to lowest level since 2009
Jim Cramer warning investors should not buy stocks right now.
India's stock market recorded the biggest drop in over four months as US tariff concerns start to resurface (WatcherGuru)
Google GOOG 0.00%↑ officially surpassed Apple today to become the second most valuable company in the world
China's stock trading volume hit 2.8 trillion yuan, $401 billion, on Tuesday, the highest since September. This is more than 2.5 TIMES the daily average of 1.1 trillion yuan over the last 5 years (Kobeissi Letter)
To acquire Greenland into the US, President Trump is reportedly considering paying Greenlanders $10K-$100K each if they secede from Denmark (Unusual Whales)
Defense stocks have broadly outperformed this week as investors and degens rotated into military and security names amid rising global tensions and fresh budget momentum, with drones and autonomous systems again leading the group. Skrt.
Washington advanced new defense-spending measures tied to force readiness, munitions replenishment, and unmanned platforms, reinforcing expectations that elevated Pentagon outlays will persist into 2026.
Geopolitically, renewed instability in the Middle East, continued Ukraine battlefield pressure, and heightened maritime security concerns/tanker raids have kept defense risk premiums bid.
Within that backdrop, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions ($KTOS) saw strong interest on expectations of increased demand for attributable drones and hypersonic test infrastructure, AgEagle Aerial Systems ($UAVS) traded with high volatility as speculative capital chased UAV exposure tied to lower cost ISR platforms, and AeroVironment ($AVAV) continued to outperform on its dominant position in tactical drones and loitering munitions already being deployed by U.S. allies overseas. You will find write ups on all these names in that post I referred to at today’s intro.
I bought more of all of these this week as well the PPA ETF.
Overall this week reinforced a trend we are very bullish on. Drones, autonomy, and rapid-deployment systems will remain the market’s preferred way to express rising global conflict risk.
Crypto
Over the past 48 hours, the crypto market has shown choppy, risk-off behavior and some more liquidations. It’s frustrating for sure, but the same song and dance we have seen for the last few months.
Bitcoin cooled off from earlier gains and pulled back toward the $90K area after spiking near intra-week highs, while Ethereum has been unable to sustain a clean break above the ~$3,200–$3,250 zone, trading slightly lower on the session.
Overall, major tokens are consolidating in a tight range amid softening momentum. PEPE still looks solid. Zcash had some big drama as the entire team resigned on Wednesday following a structural dispute with its parent non-profit board. CEO Josh Swihart announced the mass departure on X, citing a governance clash with the majority of the Bootstrap board of directors, which governs ECC (TheBlock).
The token is down 13% in the last 24 hours.
The Zcash team resigned this week over disagreement on governance, the token is now in free fall
Morgan Stanley is set to introduce a digital wallet by the end of the year (CryptoBriefing)
Polymarket is showing a 29% chance of Bitcoin hitting $100K in January
Bitcoin fell under $90,000 today after the most recent run up to $94,000
I remain bullish right now despite pivoting some of my free cash from alt coin buys into defense names.
The chop is expected and sunnier days are on the horizon.
Despite this current chop and consolidation across majors, the underlying liquidity backdrop and upcoming Fed change remains quietly constructive for crypto.
This week’s completion of roughly $40B in Federal Reserve reserve management operations has eased some funding stress. When dollar liquidity stabilizes, high-beta assets tend will follow kings.
While these moves aren’t labeled as the formal easing we all love, they still functionally reduce pressure in the system and keep financial conditions looser than headline policy rhetoric might suggest.
As volatility compresses and macro uncertainty clears (which might take awhile), this type of balance sheet support historically creates room for renewed risk appetite from degens and investors, particularly in digital assets that remain highly sensitive to global liquidity cycles. Price action may be digesting initial gains for now, but the plumbing underneath the market (and institutional headlines) are increasingly aligned for a rebound as 2026 liquidity dynamics come into focus.
Stay faithful. It is coming.
Geopolitics & Global Events
I said it on Instagram and I will say it here, insane week for geopolitical nerds and situation monitors. Just too many updates to humanly keep up with. It’s literally something new every 10 minutes.
And I am not talking only US political slop, I am talking major global updates related to Russia, China, the US, Europe, and countries in the Middle East. These are paradigm shifting updates and actions that are going to define the global stage for the next 10-20 years.
Tensions in the US are exploding after the shooting in Minneapolis by an ICE agent that left a 37 year old woman dead. This will likely be the dominant story through the weekend unless something else pops off (which is possible).
Minneapolis ICE Shooting
Well folks it appears like we might have a George Floyd/Summer of Love 2.0 event on our hands in the lovely state of Minnesota.
This week a woman was shot during an ICE operation in Minneapolis, an incident that has already ignited protests and clashes with law enforcement. The shooting occurred amid a federal immigration enforcement action, immediately drawing crowds, activist groups, and political figures into the streets.
If you watch the video (all angles) which is widely available online you can see:
the woman blocked the ICE convoy
refuses to get out of her vehicle/cooperate after being told to do so
her gun the gas while the front wheels are turned into the officer in front
her accelerate into the path of the agent in front and hit him before he can completely side step out of its path
People online are split.
Either they support the decision made or they think the ICE agent is a murderer.
It is not on the ICE officer to wait until his legs are pancakes or he is crushed underneath the 4,000 pounds vehicle to THEN make a determination to use force. That logic is lost on many because they view HIM as the enemy. They don’t care that he is threatened. They believe his entire existence is illegitimate.
That is the key to understanding their “logic” about this event.
The NYPost and CBS are reporting the ICE agent who fired the shots was dragged and hospitalized by an illegal migrant driver last year.
In this situation you have now broken multiple laws, threatened officers, and potentially injured or killed the one in front. That officer clearly felt his life was threatened and he responded with force in a split second decision.
The sad part is all of this could have been avoided had she simply not chosen to interfere with the lawful operation to remove ILLEGAL criminals from a state rampant with fraud at the taxpayer’s expense.
It’s insanely ironic and dark.
Reports indicate the woman was stalking/following the ICE agents for some time, even her own wife said shortly after the shooting: “I made her come down here, it’s my fault. They just shot my wife.”
Then we have the braindead Somali man of the year lunatic Tim Walz, who must think that he is now somehow off the hook for giving billions to foreign Somali invaders in fraud schemes in his state leading last night with inflammatory language.
"If you're in Portland, or you're in LA, or you're in Chicago, or you're wherever they're coming next, stand with us. Stand with us against this."
THIS is what actual insurrection talk looks like for anyone wondering. Pitting state military resources against Federal ones.
And remember ALL OF THIS is avoidable if people were not being encouraged by the media to resist ICE.
If violent resistance to the lawful deportation of illegal criminals wasn’t being normalized.
All of this chaos is over people who are trying to stop our law enforcement agencies from enforcing the law and removing illegal criminal aliens.
Imagine?
I want to lay out a super clear framework for this event and others like it because this isn’t a matter of opinion. There’s an easy way to accurately predict how these situations are going to end up.
Now I want to preface this section with this: 90% of those arguing online and calling ICE the Gestapo/Nazis, or saying ICE murdered this woman, etc. are not good faith actors. They are not trying to have a conversation or debate with you. In fact, they are in an entirely different reality. Important I note that because in large part we are past the “have a conversation” stage. The facts do not matter to these people. They have almost zero comprehension of cause and effect or FAFO. Laws do not matter to them (and that should be apparent after 2020/2021).
They’re focused on elements of this THAT DO NOT MATTER like:
the fact she was a mother
what she was wearing
the fact ICE agents are wearing masks
what kind of car she had
where she was shot
None of that matters. What matters is she put herself in this position and acted recklessly to the point of creating an environment where an officer feared for his safety and responded accordingly.
And over something as absurd as opposing lawful deportations. A tragedy that didn’t have to happen.
The majority of Americans voted for deportations and the closing of our border.
A country with secure borders is good
An agency assigned to regulating and enforcing immigration law is good
Are deportations and immigrations enforcement pretty?
No. But most sane people realize this.
Is ICE perfect in its practices, protocol, engagement? No of course not, no agency or group of people is.
Do they get the benefit of the doubt when you have antagonists in the streets harassing, attempting to dox them, recklessly driving vehicles, interfering with their operations, and attacking them for enforcing a basic US law?
Yes. Yes they do.
The primary issue is that the media, influencers, and politicians have created the idea that ICE is evil, that deportations are evil, and that any effort to enforce basic law by the Trump administration is evil. It’s the same conditioning that makes people think violence against the right is okay (Trump, Kirk, etc.).
I don’t need to remind you how much celebration there was in the aftermath of those events OR what type of anti ICE rhetoric litters the corners of the internet.
I’d also point out that had this woman run over and killed the ICE agent, she would’ve been lauded as a literal hero. This is a fact (see above).
In this video bystanders and agitators can be heard yelling:
“We’re going to f*cking find you, and we’re going to f*cking kill you! You’re going to f*cking die, bitch!”
ICE agents have been constant targets and there have been dozens of vehicle ramming and close call incidents in the past several months.
I’m really so tired of engaging with these people on this topic and having to endure their outrage when they fuck around and then find out. This isn’t a game.
Between now and the end of the weekend I would venture to say that Minneapolis and surrounding cities have the capacity for some severe unrest as clashes are already popping up this afternoon.
Minneapolis canceled school and activities today as well as Friday due to “safety concerns”.
Here is the bottom line: for months now the media and Democrat politicians have encouraged people to interfere with federal operations and law enforcement. Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan told constituents to “put their bodies on the line” in a video this year.
People now genuinely believe they can do this without repercussions.
When authority is openly undermined long enough, escalation becomes inevitable. What we’re watching is not some random spontaneous breakdown in Minneapolis, but the predictable outcome of extreme rhetoric that has normalized obstruction, confrontation, violence, and political street pressure.
Once you cross that line, restoring order becomes exponentially harder, and the response, when it finally comes, is rarely going to be subtle or peaceful.
User bannedbeard13 on TikTok/X put it well:
You’re allowing politicians to convince you that those federal agents are evil for doing their job. They want you to go out there and obstruct and intervene so when there is a tragedy, they get to go stand on that victim and use it for their own political gain
Iran
One of our 2026 predictions is playing out in real time. Regime change or a major event in Iran seems inevitable at this point.
The country has seen a sharp escalation in unrest over the past 48 hours as protests driven by inflation, currency collapse, and rising food prices continue to spread nationwide. Polymarket odds for Khamenei out as the supreme leader of Iran by the summer are soaring, and now sitting at 38%. See them HERE.
Demonstrations have expanded and grown more overtly political, prompting a forceful security response that has included mass arrests and the use of crowd control munitions, with reports of fatalities emerging despite limited official acknowledgment.
Authorities have attempted to project control by warning merchants against hoarding and price gouging while touting subsidies, but these moves have failed to ease public anger at all. At the same time, the regime has leaned into deterrence, carrying out high-profile judicial actions tied to alleged foreign espionage and framing the unrest as externally driven.
The past two days reinforce a familiar pattern we have seen before. Deepening economic stress and repression rather than actual reform are now increasing the risk of sustained internal pressure on the regime. Israel is certainly watching this situation very closely.
Hit jobs are spreading faster than Iranian forces can stop them.
This video is wild showing a drive by killing of the commander of the local police in Iranshahr, Iran.
Just this week:
Iranian officials, the president of the Islamic Assembly are reportedly attempting to obtain French visas for their families amid protests (i24NEWS)
Cloudflare radar announced that Iranian IPv6 networks have been completely cut off from the global internet- effectively blocking all Iranian mobile users from the global internet (Faytuks News)
There are various reports (flight tracker data, media reports) that Russia is withdrawing its diplomats from Israel
An estimated 45-50 protesters have been killed since start of movement
Massive crowds have poured into the streets of Tehran as protests have now spread nationwide, with more than 300 demonstrations reported across all provinces.
Authorities appear to be moving into containment mode: a near-total internet blackout is underway, multiple state and semi-official media outlets are experiencing outages, and flights have been suspended at key airports including Tabriz. Human rights groups report at least 34 protesters and two security personnel killed so far, alongside more than 2,000 arrests.
The combination of nationwide unrest, communications shutdowns, and airspace disruptions suggests the regime is bracing for a prolonged internal crisis rather than a short-lived flare-up we forget about in a week. As of right now (1:56pm ET) there are reports of gunfire in Tehran as mass waves of protests begin.
I will likely put out another Arb Letter or episode of Risk On between today and Monday if events require it.
Next week we will take a deeper look into some tax season pointers, crypto sleeper picks, and US equities.
Enjoy your Friday and find us on X and Discord if you guys want access to more updates, meme coin picks, news headlines, and more.
Andy
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Disclaimer - I am a former trader, enterprise sales rep, and current entrepreneur with a monkey brain. Nothing I say should be considered formal financial advice or life advice, these are my opinions - always do your own research and diligence before
Man can you imagine if Kamala was in office right now? Borders wide ass open, immigration exploding exponentially, we may not even know about the blatant fraud taking place in Minnesota. People getting debanked and censored all for some letters they typed on their phone. Venezuela and BRICS shitting on our chest at will. List goes on and on