Trump wants to squeeze Iran with economic pressure. Iran wants to choke the Strait of Hormuz. The strait has been choked for five months. Nobody asked the strait how it feels about all this.
The Strait of Hormuz handles about 21 million barrels of oil per day. Retail traders heard "oil crisis" and immediately started googling "how to buy oil stocks on Robinhood." They learned nothing from 2020 when oil went negative and some guy in Texas ended up owing his broker the price of a Honda Civic.
Economic pressure is what you call sanctions when you want to sound like you're doing something thoughtful. Trump signals a shift to economic pressure the way your uncle signals a shift to sobriety by switching from whiskey to beer. The destination remains the same. The vehicle just smells different.
Iran hardens its stance. That's the phrase diplomats use when a country decides to keep doing exactly what it was already doing but with more press releases. Five months of this. The crisis escalates. The tally mounts. Two sides remain far from resolving anything.
Somewhere right now a day trader is pulling up a chart of crude oil futures. He's drawing lines on it. Triangles. Fibonacci retracements. He's convinced he can predict what happens when two nuclear-capable nations play chicken in the world's most important oil chokepoint. His stop-loss is set at a level he calculated using the same math skills that convinced him NFTs were a retirement plan.
The technical analysis on geopolitical brinksmanship is simple: nobody knows what happens next, the chart cannot tell you, and your position size suggests you think you're smarter than the Pentagon.
You're not.
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