Meeting with investors over the last 2 weeks, I've been pleasantly surprised to hear a bit of bearishness. This is especially true of the macro community (they are having their own 'Situational Awareness' moment, after all). The consistent message is that there is no chance of a market-acceptable resolution to the Iran conflict (all the consultants agree too). That means higher oil, higher inflation, an unfriendly Fed, etc. But it's so one-way I'm starting to smell a rat. One very sharp CIO, who intellectually agrees there's essentially zero chance of a deal, told a group something like: 'my head tells me no resolution, my gut says otherwise.' I love a good gut feeling, so of course I agree. We've even seen the typical 'escalate to de-escalate' rhetoric, and POTUS using the 8 Mile technique of preempting the other side's best line ('no deal before the midterms'). Hmm. A deal would obviously matter a lot to the market and imho would trigger an 'everything rally' (QQQ, you'll always have my heart, but I am weak and SPX vol is just too low). Yields kept marching higher this week even with oil down, but don't let that fool you into thinking anything other than the war has been driving rates of late. It's easy to 'bully' bonds lower when no one is willing to step in ahead of a geopolitical binary: 'deal or no deal!?' If war risk fades, yields can move a bit lower but, MOST IMPORTANTLY, rate vol will collapse. And lower rate vol has historically been a remarkable panacea. Add in the Fed's non-guidance guidance this week (lol) and we might have ourselves a little risk-on cocktail. God forbid ANT surprises to the upside at their analyst day in a few weeks…