How do we take advantage of the EU blunders and coming crisis.

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How can we take advantage and make money on this?

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Good topic. I've been thinking about this. This crisis has two outcomes.

1. EU bows down to Russia. Accepts defeat, and things go back to normal.

2. They print their way out of this and Europe inflates to the moon.


The money printer is always their answer, so I don't expect anything to be different now.

So what happens when EU starts printing to the moon?

More dollar milkshake.... a crazy strong dollar gets even stronger.

A lot of the 3rd world countries are reaching a tipping point here. They have debt in dollars and they can't pay it back with their currency weakening. Some of them will default.


I know this does not answer you question, I'm just adding to what will probably happen and as a group figure out the financial moves to make now to profit from it.

I've been looking at the FXE, but it looks like catching a falling knife TBH. Perhaps shorting the Euro, but I wouldn't know how to do that.

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Good topic. I've been thinking about this. This crisis has two outcomes.

1. EU bows down to Russia. Accepts defeat, and things go back to normal.

2. They print their way out of this and Europe inflates to the moon.

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There's a 3rd option: war. While it's a longshot, it's not unheard of for countries to war over natural resources. It would give Europeans a focus for their rage (which may well be the only thing keeping them warm this winter) other than the failed energy policies their inept politicians have enacted.

There isn’t a country in Western Europe that is even remotely capable of waging war.

I moved all my money out of international funds. I won't personally support their poor political policies

I figured that maybe the case but with the additional measures that the governments are taking it may open up some plays. They are talking 20% plus inflation in most of Europe.

European default swaps?

looks like may be late.

The EU's new policy of price caps as a solution to supply problems combined with their plan to subsidize consumer costs to address excess demand is so mind-bogglingly contrary to how free markets work that the only idea I can come up with is to look for a way to go long communism.

XOM and TELL among others should be good investments as they as offer the actual solutions, but it seems like we are approaching terra incognito.

Here's one off the wall scenario: What if Germany demands below market pricing to XOM out of concern for their freezing citizens??

Could U.S. based oil companies shut off the taps to Europe over price disputes and feel confident about not having home-based government repercussions?
... As easily as Gazprom has?

I'm not trying to be facetious, I appreciate this board's pragmatic agenda, and this thread's spirit of profiting from reality based decision-making.
Hopefully someone will point out where I am overthinking the potential reach of the Euro delusion.

Politico article on Germany's energy security plan

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There isn’t a country in Western Europe that is even remotely capable of waging war.

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That's irrelevant when political leaders find themselves faced with the only choices being: focusing the ire of their populace on someone else or allowing that ire to be focused on them in the form of angry mobs storming their offices.

Hunger is a powerful motivator, but so is the prospect of freezing to death.

It's also irrelevant if it's set up as Russia attacking an EU or NATO country (Lithuania, for example) due to the mutual defense agreements among those countries (ie: it wouldn't be a single country in Western Europe, it would be at least most of them).

People freezing to death due to Russia shutting off Europe's natural gas supply could possibly cause such an event (granted, it would have to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaths in multiple countries).

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You’re talking about potential thermonuclear war. I just don’t see it. Even with tens of thousands of deaths.

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I don't think it gets to that point. Everyone knows that's a genie you can't put back in the bottle once it's unleashed. Putin wouldn't drop a nuke unless there was no other option and, considering the state of the hardware they've thrown at Ukraine, I have to wonder how much of their nuclear arsenal is even functional.

The first side to launch a nuke against another in such a scenario would signal a complete end to any sort of battlefield civility and likely turn most other countries completely against them.