Oil’s whiplash is back, and it is steering the whole market. After Wednesday’s relief rally on hopes that the US-Iran ceasefire would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, crude jumped again Thursday as Abu Dhabi’s oil chief said the waterway was still “not open” and traders questioned whether tanker traffic would really normalize. Brent rose back above $99 a barrel, while US crude briefly pushed above $102, a sharp reversal that kept equities on edge even as Wall Street managed to claw back some ground.
The gulf, literally and financially, is the choke point. The Guardian reported that Adnoc chief Sultan Al Jaber said passage through Hormuz depends on “permission, conditions and political leverage” from Iran, while Reuters said the fragile truce left markets bracing for another energy-price shock. That matters because Hormuz carries about a fifth of global oil and gas flows, and a backlog of tankers is still sitting in the region. If ships keep waiting, the pressure does not stop at the pump; it rolls into freight, gas, inflation and central-bank policy.
Investors were trying to trade two realities at once. CNN said Wednesday’s ceasefire unleashed the biggest one-day drop in Brent since 2020 and helped lift the Dow to its best day in a year, but by Thursday those gains were already fading as the Strait remained unsettled. Reuters added that US jobless claims still point to a steady labor market, which gives the Federal Reserve room to wait, yet higher energy costs are now feeding expectations for a hotter March inflation print. That leaves policymakers with an awkward mix: stable hiring, firmer prices and a geopolitical risk that can reprice both in a day.
President Donald Trump did little to calm things, warning on social media that Iran “better stop” charging fees on tankers. CBS News separately reported that White House staff were warned not to use nonpublic information in prediction markets, a reminder that in this kind of tape, even the appearance of trading on inside information can become a story of its own. For now, the market is still hostage to a single question: does Hormuz reopen cleanly, or does every tanker become a bargaining chip?
