Oil prices spiked Thursday morning because the United States bombed Iran. Then they went back down. The entire round trip took less time than your average retail trader needs to panic-sell his USO calls.
Traders saw the headline about fresh strikes. Bought crude futures. Screamed about supply disruptions. Then checked the actual chart. Realized oil has been trading in the same godforsaken range since February. Sold everything. Went back to losing money on Tesla options.
The Middle East has been on fire for seventy-five years. Oil prices care about this exactly as much as they care about your technical indicators. Which is to say they pretend to care for four hours, then revert to the mean like a drunk driver overcorrecting on the highway.
Here's what happened. Someone bought oil at 6 AM because CNN said Iran. That person is now underwater. Someone else sold oil at 9 AM because the chart said resistance. That person made forty dollars before commissions. Both of them will tell you they had a system.
The supply disruption everyone panicked about did not disrupt any supply. Shocking development. Turns out the Strait of Hormuz is still open. Tankers are still moving. The Saudis are still pumping. But some guy in Wisconsin with a Robinhood account definitely needed to load up on energy ETFs at the absolute top because this time was different.
Oil closed lower than it opened. The strikes meant nothing. The headlines meant less. The only thing that mattered was the chart, which spent the entire day doing exactly what it was going to do anyway. But sure, keep reading the news. I'm sure the next geopolitical crisis will be the one that finally makes your technical system obsolete.
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