The last 24 hours were chaotic in the oil futures and equity markets. From the perspective of an East Coast North American time zone, oil futures (both West Texas Intermediate and Brent) had record intraday upward movements, and equity indices tanked Sunday night. The carnage slowed down until a press release on 3:30 PM Monday that suggested the war was over, which caused a reversal in North American equities and oil futures markets to around Friday’s levels. President Trump gave an erratic press conference after the North American market close which both had claims of victory and statements that the war would be continued.
This volatility shows that markets in crisis mode — shifting dramatically based on headline chatter.
For world markets and economies, the primary concern is the flow of shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. If the flows do not resume quickly, pain will be felt very quickly in oil, natural gas, and fertilizer markets globally, and the stoppage of imports in the gulf will cause difficulties there. Without insurance coverage, the ships will not traverse the passage, regardless of Trump’s social media posts. A tacit cease fire might be enough to stop the missiles and planes from flying — but may not be enough to convince insurers. The lack of credibility of the Trump administration is not going to help matters.
A rapid ceasefire could easily be painted as a victory by all sides. However, it is unclear to what extent Iran and Israel will play along with an American strategy of “declare victory and go home.” The manic statements emanating from the White House means that one cannot use their statements to judge progress, we will need to watch signals from Iran, Israel, and third party negotiators (who want ship traffic to flow again). The key indicator to watch will be traffic flow.
My Poor Manuscript
My manuscript has been in limbo for some years (I even started draft sections for a book on banking). The text concerned me, as the general tone was based on the historical record from 1990-2020, where inflation in developed countries was low and stable. Although I was not explicitly making long-term forecasts, I spend a good deal of time mocking the detached-from-reality claims of inflation nutters in that period.
The risk to that writing stance is straightforward: I publish the book at the beginning of a secular rise in inflation (when the inflation nutters are finally vindicated). First we had the COVID/Ukraine invasion shocks, a lengthy “transitory” period, then tariffs. Just as I felt the book was in decent shape, this war happens. Although it is theoretically possible to update the book if things changed radically, doing so presents a marketing problem. A revised edition is a new book — and things like book sales and reviews start over from scratch. Although my books have a long tail of sales, about half are on release. A re-launch is probably going to have low sales (since my blog readers might already have a copy), and so it will have nothing to separate it from AI-generated chaff on online bookstores. It is easy to generate an AI book, it is harder to generate any sales without some form of marketing platform. As such, those sales help differentiate real books from AI ones.
Since I feel that we will have a much better feel of the situation in a matter of a few weeks, I do not think that this situation will require too much re-writing: I will be able to state whether the $200/barrel oil spike happened, and throw my hands in air about the long-term effects. Assuming the global situation does not deteriorate further — a big assumption with this Administration — we would be facing another “transitory inflation” period at the minimum.
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(c) Brian Romanchuk 2026
