Oil dropped below $70. Tankers moved through the Strait of Hormuz without incident. These two facts have nothing to do with each other but some genius at a news desk decided they belong in the same headline. Causation is dead. Correlation murdered it.
Trump yelled at oil companies to cut gas prices. This is like yelling at your microwave to cook faster. The microwave doesn't care. The oil companies don't care. But retail traders saw the headline and panic-sold their USO calls anyway because they think the President controls supply and demand with his thoughts.
The Strait of Hormuz handles about 21 million barrels a day. Tankers transit it constantly. It's what they do. It's their job. Reporting that tankers moved through the strait is like reporting that planes landed at airports or that traders lost money on momentum plays. It happens every single day.
But crude dipped below a round number so we needed a narrative. We needed a reason. We needed to explain price action that requires no explanation because markets move and sometimes they move down and that's the entire f*cking story.
Somewhere right now a technical analyst is looking at the $70 level on a chart. He's drawing support lines. He's checking RSI. He's calculating Fibonacci retracements. He's doing actual work that might tell him something useful about where price could go next.
Somewhere else a retail trader is reading this headline for the fourth time trying to figure out what tankers have to do with crude prices. He's Googling "Strait of Hormuz oil impact." He's opening a new position based on geopolitical analysis he learned from a screenshot. He will lose money and blame manipulation.
The chart said $70 wouldn't hold. It didn't. Everything else is just a story we tell ourselves so we don't have to admit we're just watching lines move.
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