Becoming a major in the US Marine Corps takes some getting used to.
After being a captain for 30 years I keep wondering why all these people are saluting me and addressing me as “Sir”. My pat response is, “I haven’t got my knighthood yet but give it time.”
With my military service for the year done, I can tell you what I learned at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium was amazing, at least the declassified part. Better yet, the consequences for your retirement portfolio are enormous.
I am a pretty popular guy myself in Brussels these days. On the first day of the Russian invasion when the outlook for Ukraine looked utterly hopeless, I pounded the table with the Joint Chiefs that Ukraine could win this thing if the US moved fast and big to support them.
I have long argued that the Russian Army was a paper tiger, that 95% of their nuclear weapons didn’t work, that it was untrained, ill-disciplined, and vastly overrated. This I learned while spending a week at a Russian air base in the 1990s flying MiG-29’s.
Much to my amazement, they took my advice, and the rest of the world followed suit. The defeatists, Cassandras, and the doomsayers were all dismissed and ignored.
The world political dynamic turned upside down in weeks.
Suddenly, the United States has gone from begrudging ally to best friend. And it’s not just in Europe. It turns out that ALL countries want allies that fulfill promises, have teeth to their commitment, and will step in at the worst of times with $50 billion worth of military aid.
The world is no longer the same.
Ukraine is winning a victory for the ages, although the media has lagged badly in reporting the facts on the ground, focusing instead on the humanitarian story. Over the last three weeks, Ukraine has destroyed every Russian ammunition depot in the Donbas.
Satellite photos confirm that 20 of these enormous facilities that were there yesterday are gone today. Casualties have been enormous, and it could take a year for the Russians to restore the lost munitions.
This is because the US gave Ukraine just eight HIMARS rocket launchers with super smart missiles (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) which have the ability to hit a target 50 miles away with an accuracy of one meter.
They never miss.
Another four launchers are on the way. More advanced munitions have a 500-mile distance, which puts all of Crimea in range.
Having destroyed all Russian ammunition sources, Ukraine is now focusing on command and control. This week, the entire leadership of the Russian 10th armored division was wiped out by a single missile.
Oops, there goes another general.
Next on the menu is every Russian refinery within 100 miles of the Ukrainian border. Just as you can’t fire artillery without ammo, you can’t drive tanks without diesel fuel.
And by the way, the T-72 main Russian battle tank suffers from a disastrous design flaw that allows them to blow up and kill their crews with a single hit from an America Javelin missile. They have lost 1,300 out of a total of 2,800 so far.
The onslaught sets up a Ukrainian counter-offensive in weeks which could take back all of the territory lost this year. The longer-range missiles now make Ukraine’s recovery of Crimea a possibility, which was lost in 2014.
Ukrainians are nothing if not opportunistic.
Usually, when you give an ally a weapon, it goes into storage for 30 years and the batteries die. Give a weapon to Ukraine and they use it the next day! If the batteries are dead because what we gave them was in storage for 30 years, the jury rig it with a motorcycle battery until it works.
The French gave Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, and they used them to sink a Russian ship in the Black Sea the next day.
Give the weapons to those who will use them.
That has been my argument with the Joint Chiefs all along. We might as well give them ALL 17,000 of our Javelin anti-tank missiles, as Germany already has, since nobody is launching a tank invasion of the continental US anytime soon. We are already refilling our stocks with new production in Florida and Arizona.
Every modern weapons system in the world is now being donated to Ukraine and the Ukrainians are pulling the triggers. While Ukraine is gaining more advanced weapons systems by the day, the Russians are expending what few they have.
The consequence of all of this for you is that Ukraine will eventually win its war with Russia, the price of oil and other commodities will collapse, the Russian economy will implode, and the stock market will be off to the races once again. If you have been reading my letter, you already know which stocks to buy.
The other amazing thing about all of this is that the US military has outsourced its strategy to the metaverse. It has algorithms endlessly searching the Internet for solutions to its challenges and occasionally they come up with someone like me.
We here at Mad Hedge Fund Trader generate immense amounts of searchable research and not all of it directly applies to a trade alert. We win wars too! That’s how you get 70-year-old majors flying C5A’s halfway around the world to meet with top military leadership.
I just thought you’d like to know.
Major John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Meet HIMARS
Former Russian Ammunition Depot
