A few drone strikes on tankers near the strait, a radio broadcast from the IRGC saying any ship that passes through will be set ablaze, and suddenly insurers pulled coverage and shipping companies just stopped sending vessels. Job done. No mines no naval blockade, just cheap drones and a threat on the VHF frequency that every ship in the area heard and suddenly you had over 150 tankers anchored outside waiting, and the world’s most important oil chokepoint was effectively shut.

The clever bit, and nobody really talks about this enough, is what Iran did in the weeks before. Between February 15th and 20th they tripled their export rate and Iran emptied out oil storage knowing full well what was coming. Saudi did something similar trying to front load shipments. So when the strikes actually hit on the 28th both sides had already moved a chunk of oil out the door which buys everyone a few weeks of breathing room.. but thats all it is. A few weeks.

The retaliation went way beyond Hormuz though. Iran launched missiles and drones at US bases across the Gulf hitting facilities in Qatar Kuwait Bahrain and the UAE. QatarEnergy shut down LNG production completely after Ras Laffan got hit and declared force majeure on natural gas contracts by March 4th. Thats massive because Qatar is one of the biggest LNG suppliers on the planet.. European gas futures went up 45 percent in a day on that news alone. Saudi had to shut units at Ras Tanura after drone debris caused a fire at their biggest domestic refinery.

Iran’s own exports of about 1.6 million barrels a day mostly go to China, and those are now stuck behind the same blockade they created. Kpler tracking showed the only ships still moving through were Iranian and Chinese flagged vessels basically everyone else has walked away. Iraq is having to curtail production in some of its biggest fields because theres physically nowhere to put the oil if you cant export it through Hormuz.

The really scary quote came from Qatars energy minister who warned if this carries on other Gulf producers will have to halt exports too, and that will bring down economies of the world. Not exactly subtle.

By Monday morning the Brent Oil price had gapped up 9 percent to nearly $80 and WTI wasnt far behind jumping about 8.5 percent to $73.

That was just the warm up though because by Friday Brent had smashed through $90 and briefly touched $94 which is the highest since late 2023. WTI cracked $90 for the first time in years too settling around $91. Thats a near 30 percent move in a week which is absolutely insane.

The Strait of Hormuz is the story really.. about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil goes through that narrow bit of water between Iran and Oman, and Irans Revolutionary Guard declared it closed on Monday. Tankers started piling up on either side unable to get insurance or just flat out refusing to risk it. Rystad Energy called it an effective halt of traffic which is not the kind of language you want to hear when you’re talking about 15 million barrels a day of crude oil.

Iran hit back hard too.. missiles and drones flying at US bases in Qatar Kuwait Bahrain and the UAE. QatarEnergy shut down LNG production after their facilities got hit which sent European natural gas futures rocketing 45 percent in a single session. Saudi Arabia had to close units at Ras Tanura their biggest refinery after drone debris caused a fire. The whole Gulf is basically a warzone right now and the insurance market is in tatters.

OPEC tried to calm things down by announcing a 206 thousand barrel per day production increase from April but honestly thats a drop in the ocean when you’re potentially losing 7 to 11 million barrels of flow through Hormuz. Morgan Stanley jacked their Brent forecast up to $80 from $62 and some analysts are saying $100 is on the table if this drags on. Trump himself said the strikes could last weeks which is not exactly reassuring.

The knock on effects are everywhere.. airlines tanking, shipping stocks in chaos, defence names like Lockheed and Northrop flying. Meanwhile Exxon and Chevron are laughing all the way to the bank.

At one point it was down nearly 7 percent on the week, people were rattled about whether 60k would hold again after it nearly cracked through that level back on February 5th. Bitcoin has lost about half its value since it touched 126 thousand in October which is grim reading for anyone who bought the top.

The macro stuff is doing most of the damage right now and thats the frustrating bit for bitcoin bulls who keep banging on about digital gold and inflation hedges.. turns out when equities wobble and the Fed looks less likely to cut rates bitcoin trades like a risk asset not a safe haven. You have gold is sitting pretty above 5 thousand an ounce meanwhile bitcoin is getting dragged around by every tariff headline and Treasury yield move going. CryptoQuant put out a report saying institutional demand has basically reversed.. the spot ETFs that were hoovering up 46 thousand coins this time last year are now net sellers which tells you everything about where the smart money thinks this is heading short term.

Then Wednesday happened and the whole thing flipped. Bitcoin ripped back above 68,500 in what looked like a proper short squeeze.. nearly 400 million in bearish bets got liquidated in 24 hours. The Fear and Greed index had been sat in extreme fear territory for most of February so the positioning was massively one sided.

Funding rates had gone negative multiple times which meant shorts were paying longs to stay in trades.. classic setup for a violent reversal and thats exactly what happened.

Altcoins went even harder on the bounce. Ether jumped 10 percent back through 2 thousand, Solana Doge and Cardano all popped double digits. Circle the stablecoin lot surged nearly 30 percent after smashing their earnings and Coinbase tagged along up 13 percent. Even the mining stocks caught a bid with MARA and Bitfarms up 6 or 7 percent.

The question now is whether this bounce has any legs or if its just a dead cat doing its thing before the next leg down. That 60k level is starting to look like the line in the sand.. analysts reckon if it breaks properly were looking at mid 50s territory and some are even whispering about 50 thousand. Time will tell but the volatility isnt going anywhere soon thats for sure.

Trump said the talks were going well Tehran called it a step forward, but then Washington had American ships on stand by through the Strait of Hormuz which is not exactly what you do when things are going swimmingly. The geopolitical premium came off a couple dollars then went straight back on again like some kind of revolving door. WTI settled mid $64s which tells you the same story from a different angle.

The IEA dropped their February report and basically said supply is going to outpace demand all year.. global inventories built by nearly 480 million barrels in 2025 which is absolutely mental and the surplus isnt going anywhere soon. OPEC keeping quotas through March didn’t help the bulls either and theres this weird situation with India supposedly agreeing to stop buying Russian crude oil as part of a trade deal with the US, except nobody in Delhi seems keen to actually confirm that. Meanwhile US stockpiles jumped by 13 million barrels last week which is the biggest build in over a year.

Natural gas. Henry Hub averaged nearly 8 dollars in Jan thanks to that polar vortex and storm Fern. Fast forward a couple weeks and its back around 3.15 which shows you how quickly sentiment flips when the weather warms up. The EIA reckon storage is going to end March about 8 percent lower than they thought which bumped their annual forecast to about 4.30 but right now spot is nowhere near that.

UK gas slipped below 75 pence a therm at one point.. lowest since early January. Milder forecasts and decent wind generation took the heat off but storage is only about 36 percent full which is thin going into the tail end of winter. Not exactly comfortable.

Miners had a real go of it with Rio up a couple percent and BP tagging along on some Middle East tension nobody wants to talk about properly yet. The big mover though was LSE Group flying nearly 8 percent after word got out that Elliott had built a stake.. activist money always gets people excited even when they dont know what the plan is.

Gold bugs had a decent session too, spot pushed through 5,060 and ended closer to 5,090 which is up over a percent on the day. Silver absolutely smashed it though, nearly 5 percent higher touching 85 dollars an ounce and honestly after that insane crash a couple weeks back, where it lost basically half its value in days, it’s still finding its feet. The gold silver ratio compressed down to about 60 which tells you silvers doing the catching up for now.. whether that holds is anyones guess but the physical market looks properly tight with London vault stocks still shrinking.

Over the pond Wall Street couldn’t make up its mind. Jobs data came in hot at 130 thousand against about 55 expected and everything rallied in the morning.. Dow was up 300 points at one stage looking all pleased with itself. Then the penny dropped that strong jobs means less chance of Fed cuts and the whole thing rolled over. Dow finished down about 65 points just under 50,200, S&P basically flat, Nasdaq off a fraction. Vertiv went absolutely bonkers up 24 percent on earnings which is the AI infrastructure trade still going strong, while the software lot continue getting battered on disruption fears. Zillow tanked 17 percent as well which is grim.

Barratt Redrow had a shocker back in London down 7 percent dragging housebuilders with it.. and the wealth management crowd like St James Place and AJ Bell took another kicking too. Fresnillo was one of the bright spots riding golds coat tails as youd expect.

The macro stuff is doing the heavy lifting though. December retail sales came in flat which was rubbish compared to what people expected and then ADP jobs were absolutely dire.. 22,000 in January when they were looking for way more than that. Job openings at the lowest since 2020 as well. So naturally the market has gone from pricing two Fed cuts this year to three and gold just laps that up doesnt it. Lower rates means less reason to hold cash and more reason to hold the shiny stuff. Dollar still looking weak too with the DXY hanging around the mid 96s so thats another tailwind.

Silver is the one thats still got me scratching my head a bit. Ended the week around $85 after a mad bounce on Wednesday where it ripped nearly 5% in a single session to about $84.70. But then you zoom out and remember this thing was above $100 two weeks ago before it got absolutely hammered.. still down roughly a third from the high. Scott Bessent reckons it was all Chinese speculators driving the blowoff which is convenient but probably not wrong. The volatility is mental though. London vault silver stocks dropped 0.3% in January according to the LBMA which doesnt sound like much but when youve got a structural supply deficit its another bit of tightness that adds up. Gold silver ratio sitting around 60 which suggests silver is playing catch up relative to gold but its hard to have much conviction when the thing moves 5% on a random Tuesday.

Both metals look supported for now. Gold above $5,000 feels solid and silver above $80 is where bulls want to hold the line. CPI data still to come this week so that could change everything.

The data wasn’t super clear either. Europe came in soft on manufacturing, U.S. numbers were all over the place, and you’d think with Treasury yields drifting lower all week gold would’ve had more of a lift. Normally that’s supportive, but the reaction was kind of flat, almost like people shrugged, like “yeah we saw that coming.” Some folks even said gold should’ve been stronger, but it wasn’t, and I don’t know, maybe that tells you more than the data does.

On supply, nothing crazy, no major shocks, but there’s been this talk about mines in Latin America slowing a bit. Silver traders notice that stuff quick, even if the actual premiums don’t show it yet.

But the more fun story is honestly silver, which is up even more in percentage terms and broke through $40 recently and might even flirt with $50 if this keeps going. There’s this huge undercurrent of demand building from industrial uses, solar panels especially, and everyone’s quietly panicking about the supply side not keeping up. Silver’s been in deficit for like four years straight now and even though mine output is ticking up, it’s nowhere near enough to close the gap. And a lot of silver comes as a byproduct from other metals, so it’s not like producers can just ramp it up instantly. So we’ve got this weird combo of investor excitement, real industrial demand, and tight supply. Some forecasts are now talking about silver pushing $60 or higher next year, which feels nuts but maybe not?

So yeah, both metals just stuck in that loop. Every uptick gets sold, every dip gets bought, and it’s like, here we are again. If inflation pops hotter maybe gold takes another swing, silver’s trickier, depends on industry vibes. Right now it feels cautious, kind of boring even, but like the weather before a storm that maybe never comes, you know?

There are a few things at play. The clearest piece seems to be sentiment. Traders have been feeling slightly better about the outlook for global manufacturing, especially with some easing in U.S.–China trade rhetoric. Nothing major has changed, but the absence of new escalations has helped. Copper tends to be quick to respond to these kinds of shifts.

On the supply side, disruptions haven’t gone away. Some major mining operations, especially in Africa, are still dealing with delays and production issues. That’s kept a bit of pressure under the market, especially since inventories haven’t bounced back much either.

Then there’s the political layer. The U.S. tariffs on copper imports haven’t fully settled, but there was some relief earlier this month when cathode copper got carved out of the latest round. That probably helped calm nerves in a few key sectors.

Bigger picture, copper still acts as a soft proxy for the economy. When it firms up like this, even modestly, it usually reflects a sense that industrial demand isn’t falling apart. Maybe it’s not charging ahead, but it’s not rolling over either.

Overall, the index had a quietly constructive week, adding roughly 1% in total as it digested economic signals and Fed expectations.

On the data front, July’s consumer inflation held steady at an annual 2.7%, matching expectations and offering some reassurance to markets. Still, producer prices (PPI) rose 3.3% the biggest jump in five months hinting at rising pressure in the wholesale pipeline. That mix of steady CPI and higher PPI gave markets some pause even as rate cut optimism held sway.

A few individual stocks also stood out. UnitedHealth Group surged about 12% on reports that Berkshire Hathaway had taken a roughly $1.6 billion stake in the company. Applied Materials gave investor confidence a good old knock after issuing a weaker forecast despite beating earnings, and Micron hovered near technical buy points before fading.

As everyone looks forward to the Jackson Hole event and Chair Powell’s remarks, Goldman Sachs has decided to add a cautious note warning of an trouble ahead. They stated high valuations, combined with geopolitical risk could make the next big move highly probable to be a downward one.

In pound terms the story looked much the same. Bitcoin price to the pound started the week just under £88,000 and climbed toward £95,000 at its peak before easing back to around £92,000. The move pretty much tracked the dollar chart with the pound’s own fluctuations adding only small shifts to the picture. Sterling’s was steady against the dollar and meant most of the action came from Bitcoin itself rather than currency swings, so UK traders were defintely riding the same wave as their U.S. cousins, just with different numbers on the screen.

Not everything was pure momentum though. A couple of technical analysts have been warning that the market is in a distribution phase, which is trader-speak for “there might be more sellers than it looks.” There’s also that looming futures gap on the CME charts, and history says gaps like that tend to get filled, which usually means a temporary pullback.

Macroeconomic noise didn’t help either. U.S. inflation data came in hotter than some hoped, and that can keep the Federal Reserve leaning cautious. A stronger dollar often means a little extra gravity on Bitcoin prices, especially if risk appetite cools.

So while the week was net positive, it wasn’t all straight up. There’s a real chance we see some chop before the next leg higher, and the next U.S. CPI report could be the thing that tips the balance. For now, it’s holding in that upper range, with traders watching for the next break.