There's a War On—And Almost Everyone Has It Wrong (Here's How We'll Profit)

'Crisis Investing' Issue 3 / March 2026 – Vol 3

Dear Reader,

Let me say something that will probably cost us more subscribers.

This war is a big deal. A very big deal. And almost nobody is treating it like one.

The market is down a few percent. Commentators are telling people to stay calm, buy the dip, wars always end. The same people who told you COVID was nothing in January 2020, and then told you it was the end of the world in March 2020, are now your guides through a shooting war in the Persian Gulf. Good luck with that.

Here’s what I keep coming back to. Before a tsunami hits, the water recedes and the beach gets wider. People run out to pick up seashells. They’re delighted. They have no idea what’s coming. That’s where we are right now — with this war, and with the markets. The seashells look very pretty.

Now, I’m not going to pretend the Iranian regime are good guys. They’re not. But there’s something that bothers me even more than the war itself, and that’s how it started. Negotiations were actively underway when the first missiles flew. You had people at a table, talking, and then you attacked. I don’t know how else to describe that except dishonorable. At least the Japanese, before Pearl Harbor, formally declared that negotiations were over before they struck. Here we didn’t even do that. And when you launch a war that way — through deception, while pretending to talk peace — you don’t just inflame the other side. You guarantee they will never trust you again. You eliminate any possibility of a negotiated exit. You’ve closed the door yourself.

The first casualty in war is the truth — and we are already deep in that territory. You can plan your life around everything coming out of that theater being a lie, propaganda, or something slanted beyond recognition. So when someone tells you we’re winning, or it’ll be over soon, or the Iranians are about to fold — ask yourself who benefits from you believing that.

What I do know is that Pandora’s box has been opened. And once you open it, you cannot predict what comes out next. That’s not pessimism. That’s just how wars work. They grow. They find their own logic. They pull in things you never anticipated. The smarter play — the only play that made any sense — would have been to declare victory and go home. Teach them a lesson, show them you’re serious, walk away. That door is closing fast now.

Trump has demanded unconditional surrender from Iran. I want you to think about that. Unconditional surrender was considered a strategic blunder even against Nazi Germany — it stiffened resistance and prolonged the war. Against a nation of 90 million people whose backs are against the wall, it isn’t a blunder. It’s a fantasy.

And speaking of fantasies — the idea that the new supreme leader represents any kind of opening. You just killed a man’s father. His sister. His niece. You wiped out his inner circle. And Washington apparently expected moderation in return? He’s more hardline than his father, deeper in with the Revolutionary Guard, a man who has spent his entire life as the enforcer of the system you’re trying to destroy. There’s also an irony here that escapes most people — the Islamic Republic was born in revolution against a hereditary monarchy. Its founding principle was that no family rules by birthright. And yet power has just passed from father to son for the first time in its history. That’s not a regime collapsing. That’s a regime telling you exactly where it stands.

Now, about the markets. I’ve thought they’ve been grossly overpriced for a long time, for reasons that have nothing to do with Iran. The average guy is already struggling — tapping his 401k, driving a 13-year-old car because a new one costs what a house used to cost. The crisis has been building for years. Most people just haven’t had their shared experience yet — their moment where everyone around them recognizes it at once, like watching a plane fly into a tower, or the NFL canceling its season. That moment is coming. This war could be the catalyst — the pin the bubble has finally found. And when people wake up to it, they won’t wake up gradually.

War is nature’s way of teaching Americans geography. They’re going to learn a great deal about the Persian Gulf in the months ahead. Better to be early to that lesson than late.

The specific opportunities we’ve identified — and Lau will walk you through the details — are a direct way to position yourself ahead of what I think is coming. The philosophy behind it is simple. Don’t be the person running out to pick up seashells.

Regards,

Doug Casey

Recommendation

Hi,

Lau here.

This month, we sent two alerts — each with a new recommendation (catch up here, and here). One on the equity side, one in commodities. Both are directly tied to what’s unfolding in the Middle East right now.

If you’re not yet in either position, you haven’t missed it.

Below, we’ll lay out why the Hormuz crisis isn’t resolving — and why that’s the foundation for everything that follows.

Why This Isn’t Over

What a month it’s been.

Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened within 48 hours. Iran threatened to mine the entire Persian Gulf — and then went ahead and started laying mines in the strait itself. Oil spiked. Trump backed off hours before his own deadline, announcing “very good and productive” peace talks with Tehran. Oil crashed 11%. Iran denied any talks were happening. Oil bounced back above $100. Israeli strikes continued. Iran fired back at Gulf states. Shipping companies pulled out entirely. War-risk insurance premiums went through the roof — reportedly tacking on an extra quarter million dollars per passage for large tankers. Most insurers have simply stopped offering coverage at any price.

That was just the highlights. As of this writing, the strait remains effectively closed.

Now — since both of our recommendations this month are built on this disruption staying in place — you might be wondering: what if it actually gets resolved? Trump has been threatening to force it open, extending deadlines one after another (the latest, as of writing, pushes to April 6). He’s deployed thousands of troops to the region just in the past week. He’s been talking tough about reopening the strait by force.

Here’s what you need to understand about the context in which all of this is actually playing out.

Start with Iran’s side of the table. Iran has absorbed the assassination of its Supreme Leader and weeks of sustained strikes on its military and energy infrastructure. Washington’s original demand — full nuclear dismantlement, halt to ballistic missiles — was never a negotiating opener. Tehran read it as an attempt at regime change. Accepting those terms doesn’t just mean political embarrassment for the ruling establishment. It means the end of the establishment. These are people who have already paid an enormous price. They have nothing left to concede that they’re willing to concede.

Then there’s Trump’s problem. This war never had popular support — polls have consistently shown roughly two in three Americans opposed to it. He gets zero credit for starting it. But he’d take all the blame for losing it. And “we backed down” is not a message you bring into midterm elections. Whatever else Trump does, he needs to come out of this looking like he won something. That’s not a small constraint.

Neither side can afford to look like they lost.

You also have to wonder about the sunk cost dynamics at play here. Both sides have already spent enormous amounts of blood, money, and political capital. When that happens — at any scale, let alone this one — the rational response of cutting losses and walking away gets replaced by the need to keep going until there’s something to show for what’s already been spent. The sunk cost fallacy is powerful enough in everyday life. In geopolitics, it’s basically unavoidable.

At least on the American side, the bill is staggering. Tomahawk expenditures alone hit $3 billion in the opening weeks. Total war spending crossed $26 billion in just sixteen days. Congress is now getting hit up for another $200 billion in supplemental war funding. The White House has proposed an FY2027 defense budget that would jump from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion — the single largest year-over-year defense spending increase in American history.

You don’t ask for that kind of money if you’re winding things down.

Note: Even as the U.S. prosecutes this war, the Trump administration quietly lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude sitting on tankers at sea — clearing the way for Iran to collect up to $14 billion in oil revenue. The stated rationale: ease oil prices. Critics from Trump’s own Senate called it “shamefully stupid.” Secretary Bessent argued Iran would struggle to access the funds; the general license contained no escrow mechanism and no payment restrictions. At least one side in this conflict knows where its next paycheck is coming from.

Then there’s the physical obstacle that almost nobody is talking about: the mines.

Iran hasn’t just threatened to mine the Strait of Hormuz — it’s done it. At least a dozen naval mines have been deployed, including the Maham-3 and Maham-7 models: modern, sensor-equipped weapons designed to target commercial vessels. Iran knows exactly where every one of them is. That matters, because even if a ceasefire were signed tomorrow, mine clearance is not a weekend project. It requires specialized vessels, months of painstaking operations, and — critically — cooperation from the side that laid them. U.S. military officials have already said it’s “too early to begin escort operations” because Iran’s capacity to lay more mines hasn’t been neutralized. The mines are leverage, and Iran will use them as such.

This complicates things quite a bit. Even U.S. officials are privately admitting they may not be able to open the strait at all. A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment put the potential closure at one to six months. Iranian sources have suggested it may not return to pre-war status even if the conflict formally ends. And tellingly — as of yesterday — the White House press secretary said reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not a “core objective” of the Iran campaign. Think about that for a second.

But here’s what you really need to keep in mind — and this applies directly to your positions. Even if the war ended tomorrow, even if a ceasefire were signed tonight, the damage is already done. This doesn’t snap back. The supply chains disrupted by this conflict don’t just resume the moment the shooting stops.

Think about what’s already broken. Qatar’s Ras Laffan — one of the world’s largest LNG processing facilities — was struck during the conflict and is estimated to need five years of repairs. Five years. Iraq has shut down its largest oil fields. Qatar has declared force majeure on LNG contracts it’s been honoring for decades. Shipping companies haven’t just paused voyages through the region — many have fundamentally restructured their route networks around Hormuz being closed. Insurance markets don’t just flip back on; underwriters who pulled coverage will take months to reassess, and premiums won’t return to pre-war levels for years. The CEO of QatarEnergy has been blunt: “Even if everything were miraculously to stop now, the ramifications will absolutely take years to replace.”

The war might end. The damage is baked in. And the economic ripple effects haven’t even fully arrived yet — the supply chain dislocations, the food and energy inflation now spreading through import-dependent economies from Asia to Africa, the currency and sovereign debt pressure building across the developing world — that’s a 2026 and 2027 story that’s still being written.

Both of our positions are built on this reality. Below we walk through the arithmetic, and then the case for each.