In Do Geopolitical Oil Shocks Cause Equity Bear Markets? we argued that oil shocks alone do not cause bear markets — the outcome depends on the macro backdrop when the shock arrives. The question that naturally follows: now that US earnings season is largely complete, has the Hormuz crisis left any mark on corporate earnings? The short answer, noted in US Corporate Earnings Surge Drives Markets, is that US earnings are surging despite the crisis. But to understand why the oil

Why Australia's biggest energy bet may already be redundant. Australia's electricity mix has changed dramatically over the past decade. The chart below tells the story of coal in steady retreat and rooftop solar surging from a rounding error before 2015 to 14 percent of National Electricity Market (NEM) generation by 2025. Source: OpenElectricity That transformation created a new problem. A grid that generates enormous solar surpluses during the day and loses that generatio

How passive investing has permanently changed market structure — and why sophisticated tools are now the price of survival Stock volatility is at unprecedented levels. Whether it is Cochlear’s April trading update, the 2026 Hormuz crisis, Liberation Day in 2025, or a company reporting season, the swings are sharper and less anchored to fundamentals than at any previous point in market history. The market structure has permanently changed in how equity prices are set, and th

In The Biggest Oil Shock in History. Why Isn't the Price Higher? we established that geopolitical oil shocks follow two distinct patterns. Before 1986, oil prices were administered by OPEC — when a shock struck, the cartel used it to permanently reprice oil upward, and the price never came back down. After 1986, when Saudi Arabia abandoned its role as swing price-setter and oil became freely traded, a different pattern emerged: the crude price spikes on fear, peaks within mo

When the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in late February 2026, it shut off approximately 15 million barrels per day of crude oil. The IEA described it immediately as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. On a gross basis, that assessment is correct. Yet the oil price tells a more nuanced story. Despite the scale of the disruption, the price response has been more contained than the 1990 Kuwait invasion and far smaller than the 1973 Arab e

The 2026 Hormuz crisis is not solely a story of physical supply disruption. It is a story of deliberate policy choices by major powers, beginning with a US financial manoeuvre in Venezuela that stripped China of its energy insurance policy, followed by Washington's strikes on Iran that closed the Strait, compounded by Beijing's defensive response, and briefly extended by Washington's own contemplation of an export ban. The pattern is not accidental: the powers that control oi

For the past two years, gold miners have lived in a macroeconomic utopia. As highlighted in a previous article, Implications of the Gold to Oil Price Ratio , it was a period defined by a rare decoupling: as the price of gold ascended to historic heights, the cost of extracting it remained remarkably subdued. This divergence — the gold–oil spread — pushed sector margins to all-time highs and transformed gold equities from speculative plays into free cash flow machines. At the

The Strait of Hormuz has been described as the world's most critical energy artery, but in February 2026, that artery was effectively severed. As conflict between the US and Iran escalated, the closure of this passage didn't simply spike the price of oil — it broke the global supply chain for refined products in ways that have no modern parallel, not even the 2022 Ukraine crisis. 2022 vs 2026 The 2022 Ukraine energy crisis was severe, but its oil impact was one of trade redir

Precious metals like gold and silver are often viewed primarily as monetary assets, leading many investors to monitor the gold-to-silver ratio to gauge relative value. While silver is historically more volatile than gold, it is prone to aggressive rallies where it overshoots, as seen in 1998, 2011, and the recent surge over the last few months. Source: FactSet However, unlike gold, silver’s trajectory is also dictated by its heavy industrial footprint. In 2025, industrial use

The gold-to-oil price ratio is often viewed as a unique indicator of global economic conditions and market sentiment. It captures the ongoing ‘tug-of-war’ between gold as a safe-haven monetary asset and oil as a key industrial commodity. Historically, elevated gold–oil ratios have coincided with periods of economic stress, heightened uncertainty, and defensive investor positioning. Conversely, a low ratio tends to occur during periods of strong economic expansion, when energy