Three Iranian tankers slipped past a U.S. Navy blockade carrying five million barrels of crude. Shipowners watched from shore in what sources describe as "wary disbelief." That's the emotion you feel when something happens that might affect oil prices but you're not sure if it will or when or by how much. It's called being honest about not knowing anything.
The tankers sat there for months. Blocked. Then they weren't blocked. The U.S. Navy let them through. Why? Doesn't matter. What matters is that retail traders are now frantically Googling "Strait of Hormuz" and discovering it's not a cryptocurrency.
Five million barrels sounds like a lot until you remember global oil consumption runs about 100 million barrels per day. So this is roughly one hour and twelve minutes of planetary thirst. The market will pretend to care for ninety seconds, spike, dump, then go back to pricing in the same nothingness it priced in yesterday.
Shipowners eyeing the Strait of Hormuz in wary disbelief is the funniest part. These are professionals who move petroleum for a living. Their job is to understand shipping routes and geopolitical risk. And their reaction to tankers moving through a waterway is disbelief. Wary disbelief. They can't believe ships are shipping.
Some guy in Michigan just panic-bought USO calls because he saw the word "blockade" and assumed it meant oil was going to triple. He will lose that money by Friday. The tankers will deliver their crude. The chart will look identical to last week. And he'll tell his wife it was a hedge.
The Iranian tankers are now free to sell oil on the open market, which means absolutely nothing for your portfolio but everything for the guy who just risked his rent on a hunch he developed from reading a three-sentence headline while sitting on the toilet.
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