Last Tuesday, oil dropped 16.4% in a single day — the biggest drop since 2020.

WTI hit $94.41.
The Dow jumped 1,325 points.

A ceasefire had been announced. The market exhaled.

Four days later, Vance said the Islamabad talks collapsed.

On Monday morning, Trump declared a full naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent closed at $99.36. The relief rally lasted less than a week.

Iran never reopened the strait.

It started charging tolls — over $1 million per vessel, assessed by the IRGC in Chinese yuan.

The U.S. called it a violation.
Vance cited Iran's refusal to commit on nukes.

Trump posted the blockade order on Truth Social Sunday night.
CENTCOM says it targets all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports.

In the first 24 hours:
Six vessels turned back, and none made it through.

The U.S. has the Abraham Lincoln carrier group, eleven destroyers, and the Tripoli amphibious group in position.

Iran's IRGC called any approach a ceasefire violation.

The IEA's April report:
Global oil supply fell 10.1 million bpd in March.
The largest disruption in the history of the oil market.

Last week, 24 ships transited the strait.
Friday: two. Neither carried oil.

Global oil demand is now projected to shrink by 80,000 bpd this year.
Last month's forecast was growth of 640,000 bpd — a 720,000-barrel swing.

The IMF cut global growth to 3.1%.
Physical crude has traded near $150/barrel on the spot market, blowing past futures.

LPG and naphtha shortages are shutting petrochemical plants across Asia.

Fertilizer is spiking.
Airlines are canceling flights.
U.S. gas is at $4.12/gallon, headed for $4.30.
Diesel is on track for $5.80.

RSM's chief economist: fewer cars, fewer homes, fewer jobs.

If the strait remains closed past summer, recession odds rise above 50%.

Every model on the Street assumes a swift resolution.

The EIA's base case: conflict ends in April.
The IEA's: regular deliveries by mid-year.

Both agencies published downside scenarios they described as significantly worse. Both called their own assumptions potentially too optimistic.

The release of 400 million barrels from the strategic reserve is buying time.

Russia's crude exports rose 270,000 bpd in March, revenues at their highest since the Ukraine war.

And the one entity profiting from seven weeks of failed peace talks…
Isn't sitting at the negotiating table.

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How are NAR’s 2026 forecast now? — after it slashed the previous one. Spring homebuying season just posted its worst March since 2009.

Someone quietly dropped $2.69 billion into this big tech company — while retail investors were panic-selling it. Now the stock is up 18%.

What the ceasefire did for global stocks? How Nasdaq and oil were affected? — It was not minimal.

S&P 500 is raising eyebrows where it passes. The Banks are setting the tone this week — and Q1 earnings season just kicked off

Leopold Aschenbrenner enrolled at Columbia at 15, graduated valedictorian at 19, worked at FTX's philanthropy arm before it imploded.

Then joined OpenAI, got fired, and published a 165-page manifesto that went viral.

Two months later, he launched a hedge fund.

He's 24. It returned 47% in its first half — while the S&P did 6%.

Don't bet on which AI model wins.
Bet on what all of them need to run.

Situational Awareness LP is:

Short industries that get disrupted.

Aschenbrenner has nearly all of his own net worth in the fund.

The Collisons, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross seeded it.

When DeepSeek's R1 dropped and the market panicked, his fund bought the dip.

A major tech fund reportedly held off selling after an analyst said:
"Leopold says it's fine."

The Q4 2025 13F:
$5.5 billion across 29 holdings, up from $383 million a year earlier.

The thesis is showing up beyond his fund.

Spectral Capital (OTCQB: FCCN, $2.25) is one micro-cap example:

Acquiring telecom infrastructure and layering AI on top for routing and fraud prevention.

Over $200 million in unaudited revenue in the first two months of 2026.
More than 500 patents filed, NASDAQ uplisting planned.

It's early-stage, OTC, and carries all the risk that implies — but the playbook is the same: build what the model needs, not the model.

Aschenbrenner's bet is that AI infrastructure is a decade-long capital cycle, and the early innings look like every other infrastructure boom in history.

His 47% says the market is starting to agree.

The question is whether conviction survives the moment capex slows, timelines slip or…

…a fund this concentrated and this young hits its first real drawdown.

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Everyone is watching the oil price.
Almost nobody is watching what ships alongside it.

The Strait of Hormuz moves 20% of global LNG, nearly half of all seaborne sulfur, a third of global methanol, and close to a third of the world's helium.

Nine commodities tracked by the World Economic Forum are now disrupted.

The damage is already compounding — and most of it hasn't shown up in a single earnings call yet.

Fertilizer first. The Arabian Gulf accounts for at least 20% of all seaborne fertilizer exports and 46% of global urea trade.

Prolonged disruption means tighter supply, higher food production costs, and inflationary pressure that hits grocery prices with a 6-to-12-month lag.

Helium next. Qatar produces nearly a third of the world's supply.
There is no substitute.

Semiconductor fabs use it for ultra-low-temperature cooling.
MRI machines need liquid helium to run their superconducting magnets.

Chip manufacturing and hospital imaging are both exposed, and neither has a workaround.

Then aluminum. The Gulf produces about 9% of global primary aluminum outside China.

Over 150,000 tonnes have already been pulled from London Metal Exchange warehouses.

Sulfur is feedstock for both EV battery refining and phosphate fertilizers — is at a near-standstill.

Indonesia's industrial hubs and Africa's copper belt are already slowing down.

Methanol feeds into resins, coatings, and plastics.

China, the largest buyer, is watching port inventories drop toward warning thresholds.

Petroleum coke — a refining byproduct — is the primary feedstock for synthetic graphite in EV battery anodes.

With refineries focused on higher-value outputs while prices rally, graphite supply tightens at exactly the wrong moment.

Iron ore pellet procurement across Asia has paused as freight uncertainty makes it too expensive to book vessels.

Oil gets the headline.

The commodity disruptions underneath it — already listed and explained — are the ones that show up in earnings calls and grocery prices six months from now.

Domestic LNG producers are already filling the gap.

North American fertilizer supply chains are already benefiting.
Any semiconductor fab that hasn't stockpiled helium is already in trouble.

The strait moved nine commodities that sit at the start of dozens of manufacturing supply chains.

It's been effectively closed for seven weeks.

The second row is where the real damage is — and it's just getting started.

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(by feargreedmeter)

The March FOMC minutes dropped on April 8 with a phrase the Fed hasn't used in a while: officials discussed their "willingness to consider interest rate increases."

Not cuts. Increases. The market barely moved.

Rates held at 3.5–3.75%.

The dot plot shows one cut left for 2026 — down from three the market was pricing a year ago.

But the committee is split down the middle: seven officials see one cut, seven see zero. Options markets now assign a 30% probability of hikes by early 2027.

The "vast majority" of officials said inflation could be slower to come down than expected.

Some pushed for describing future rate decisions as "two-sided" — cuts and hikes both live.

The Fed explicitly cited the Middle East as an inflationary risk.

The one-year inflation swap rate rose nearly 50 basis points.
PCE forecasts got revised up to 2.7%.
Polymarket has 91% odds inflation cracks 3.5% this year.

The S&P is sitting near 6,886.

That price assumes the soft landing holds.
At least half the committee isn't confident in that story anymore.

A 25-basis-point hike pushes mortgage rates higher from an already painful 6.41%.

Variable-rate debt reprices immediately.

Tech companies valued on future cash flows get discounted harder.

Any business that borrowed at low rates faces refinancing risk it hasn't modeled.

The market spent a year pricing in cuts.
It hasn't priced in hikes.

That disconnect is sitting in plain sight.

The next FOMC meeting is April 28–29.

Kevin Warsh — Powell's likely successor — inherits a committee that can't agree on direction, an oil shock the Fed can't control, and an inflation print drifting the wrong way.

The Fed didn't say they're going to hike. They said they talked about it.

In Fed language, that's how it starts.

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Source: Stock Analysis