> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://the-bare-economy.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Hormuz Is Choking Again — Here's Where I'm Moving Capital Right Now - URL: https://the-bare-economy.ghost.io/hormuz-is-choking-again-heres-where/ - Published: 2026-07-15T15:44:15.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-04T15:39:38.000Z - Description: The ceasefire is dead. The fertilizer market knows it before you do. - Author: Brook Vance - Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1785857905698, #Import 2026-08-04 15:39 🗺️ **Current Dispatch:** Stationary — RV basecamp, rest area off I-20 west of Odessa, TX ⛽ **Local Diesel:** $4.89/gal ☕ **RV-Stove Coffee: 6/10 —** HEB dark roast, paper filter, tastes like resolve ⏳ **Days in trip:** 9 I’m parked between two dead pump jacks and a functioning Loves Travel Stop, watching tanker trucks queue up on the service road like ants heading toward something that isn’t there yet. The price of diesel fuel is highly volatile; the price from yesterday isn’t guaranteed to be the same tomorrow. Nobody changed the crude output at the wellhead down the road. What changed was ten thousand miles away — in a narrow strip of water between Iran and Oman where ship captains started turning off their transponders so they wouldn’t get hit by missiles. The ceasefire is dead. The Fed says don’t worry. And I’m sitting here watching the price of everything climb in real time on a truck stop LED board in West Texas. Let me tell you what’s actually happening. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup) --- ## The Driver’s Scene & The Macro Extraction: When the Strait Goes Dark, the Permian Lights Up Yesterday morning I walked across the gravel lot to the Loves and stood behind a fleet driver named Daryl who was fueling a Kenworth hauling frac sand. I asked him if he’d been busy. He laughed — not a happy laugh. “Busiest I’ve been since before the tariff mess. Every rig operator west of Midland is calling.” That’s the ground truth. While New York Fed President John Williams was telling a conference audience on July 10th that “energy prices are likely to be around their peak and then to come down over time,” the physical world was screaming the opposite. Brent crude had already surged 6% toward $80 a barrel after President Trump declared the Iran ceasefire “over.” Iran had struck US military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The US hit back with strikes on over 90 Iranian military targets — air defense systems, coastal surveillance, missile storage, naval infrastructure. The IRGC warned that no US base in the region was safe from “heavy fire.” And here’s the number that should make every Bob and Carol reading this sit up straight: **traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to 21 commodity carriers in a single day.** That’s down from a peak of 59 on June 24th. Kpler, the ship-tracking service, called it one of the thinnest flows since the interim peace deal. Bloomberg reported the US-supported Omani corridor was **empty of observable traffic.** Six thousand seafarers remain trapped in the waterway. The Fed sees “fundamentals.” I see a chokepoint that handles 35% of global seaborne crude and 20% of LNG trade effectively shut down — again. But here’s what the mainstream isn’t connecting: this isn’t just about oil. Bloomberg reported on July 14th that the Hormuz disruption is hammering fertilizer supplies — urea prices at the New Orleans benchmark jumped 6.2% in a single week, the biggest spike in three months. The Gulf region produces roughly a quarter of global urea exports. Sulfur supplies are getting squeezed. Aluminum billet premiums are elevated. Even the helium market — not exchange-traded, impossible to hedge cleanly — has seen spot prices **double** since March, according to industry consultant Phil Kornbluth. The World Bank’s April 2026 Commodity Markets Outlook didn’t mince words: they project a **16% rise in average commodity prices this year** — the first annual increase since 2022\. Energy prices specifically? Up **24%**. Brent forecast to average $86/barrel in 2026, revised up $26 from January. Under a severe scenario — Strait closed through Q2 with infrastructure damage — Brent could average between **$95 and $115 per barrel.** And fertilizer prices? The World Bank’s index is projected to rise **31%**, led by a **60% surge in urea.** The UN World Food Programme estimates up to **45 million additional people** at risk of acute food insecurity. That’s not a blip. That’s structural. And it starts at a narrow waterway and ends at your grocery store. --- ### The Macro Extraction Continued: “The World Has Adapted” — But Has It? There's a line making the rounds on trading desks that I keep hearing echoed in analyst notes. Dan Alamariu of Alpine Macro wrote it on July 9th: "The world has adapted." He's not entirely wrong. Export routes have been rerouted. China has cut demand faster than expected. US equity markets looked past the missiles to post gains on AI hype. The muted market reaction to what is objectively the largest oil supply disruption in recorded history — the World Bank's words, not mine, surpassing the Iranian Revolution, the Arab oil embargo, and the invasion of Kuwait — is genuinely remarkable. But "adapted" and "insulated" are different words. Tobin Marcus at Wolfe Research cautioned that fears of an oil glut may give way to "renewed worries about global oil inventory levels." Reuters' Ron Bousso wrote perhaps the sharpest analysis I've read this cycle: "The era of uninterrupted Gulf energy flows has come to an end — and markets need to catch up." He's right. Gulf producers are trying to restart around \*\*11 million barrels per day\*\* of production shut in during the blockade. Asian buyers — 80% of Gulf oil and gas exports pre-war — are actively diversifying toward US, Brazilian, and West African crude, even at higher transport costs. For them, paying more beats not receiving cargo at all. The geopolitical risk premium math is brutal. Discovery Alert laid it out cleanly: during periods of surging geopolitical risk, a \*\*1% reduction in oil production generates a peak price increase of more than 11%\*\* — nearly twice the response of a normal supply shock. That's the World Bank's own finding. Markets aren't pricing this in yet. They will. So what do I do with this information? I don't panic. I don't scream that the sky is falling. --- ### Big Oil Just Bet Big on Lithium Eni, Italy’s largest oil producer, just signed a strategic agreement to invest into [**EnergyX’s**](https://clkgrid.com/6a511829aca3e68ab23061da?email=mail3@live.com&domain=327TBES&type=SA&product=PAPEX1%5FSA&ref=the-bare-economy.ghost.io) lithium project in Chile, a stake that could reach $225M. The project is expected to generate $1.3B in annual revenue at forecasted market prices. It’s just one piece of EnergyX’s portfolio holding up to 15M+ tons of untapped lithium, and it’s the latest proof of EnergyX’s progress. Until July 16, you can invest as an early-stage shareholder and share in that growth. Natural resources weren’t the only draw. EnergyX’s patented tech recovers up to 3X more lithium than traditional methods at 500X the speed, paving the way to commercial-scale production. Lithium demand is projected to grow 5X by 2040, so the timing couldn’t be better. General Motors and POSCO are already EnergyX shareholders. [**Now it’s your turn. Become an early-stage EnergyX shareholder before the July 16 deadline.**](https://clkgrid.com/6a511829aca3e68ab23061da?email=mail3@live.com&domain=327TBES&type=SA&product=PAPEX1%5FSA&ref=the-bare-economy.ghost.io) **Disclaimer:** Energy Exploration Technologies, Inc. (“EnergyX”) has engaged Dynamic Industries to publish this communication in connection with EnergyX’s ongoing Regulation A offering. Dynamic Industries has been paid in cash and may receive additional compensation. Dynamic Industries and/or its affiliates do not currently hold securities of EnergyX. This compensation and any current or future ownership interest could create a conflict of interest. Please consider this disclosure alongside EnergyX’s offering materials. EnergyX’s Regulation A offering has been qualified by the SEC. Offers and sales may be made only by means of the qualified offering circular. Before investing, carefully review the offering circular, including the risk factors. The offering circular is available at [**invest.energyx.com**](https://clkgrid.com/6a511829aca3e68ab23061da?email=mail3@live.com&domain=327TBES&type=SA&product=PAPEX1%5FSA&ref=the-bare-economy.ghost.io). Comparisons to other companies are for informational purposes only and should not imply similar results. (ad) --- ### ## The Laptop Execution & The Roadside Detour **The Portfolio Position:** Gold is the cleanest expression of everything I just described. Gold futures traded at **$5,391.60** on July 11th — up 2.74% in a session, well above the 50-day average of $4,883.25, approaching the 52-week high of $5,626.80\. The World Bank projects gold to average **$4,700/oz in 2026**, a **42% annual increase** and a new all-time annual high. That's their \*baseline\*, not their upside case. **SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)** closed at $483.75, up 1.31%. **iShares Gold Trust (IAU)** hit $99.07, same gain. Both remain core holdings in the Wi-Fi Swing Portfolio — slow, low-maintenance positions that don't require me to stare at a screen all day. I'm holding both with **trail stops set 8% below current levels.** If Hormuz stays choked and the ceasefire stays dead, these have room to run toward the 52-week high. If a diplomatic miracle materializes, the stops protect the gain. That's the play. Calm. Mechanical. No heroics. On the energy side, I'm watching **WTI (CL=F)** closely — it jumped this week but retreated below its 200-day moving average, which tells me the market hasn't fully committed to pricing in chronic disruption. That's a setup. If WTI reclaims and holds above that 200-day line on volume, I'll add exposure through \*\* **United States Oil Fund (USO)** with a tight leash. Not yet. Patience. For the broader defensive posture — the analysts in India and elsewhere are right that **defense, utilities, pharma, and domestic essentials** outperform during sustained geopolitical stress. The BSE500 data showed three out of five stocks delivered negative returns during the March-to-June hostility period, while healthcare and EV names surged. The principle translates: in the US, **infrastructure utilities and defense contractors** with domestic revenue streams are your shelter. I'm keeping positions in that quadrant but the specific tickers are for next week's dispatch when I've got better signal and fresher earnings data. **The Roadside Detour:** One last thing before I close the laptop and go watch the sunset turn the Permian Basin orange. Three miles east of this rest area, there's a historical marker for the "Great Odessa Meteor Crater" — a 550-foot-wide hole punched into the limestone about 62,000 years ago by something nobody saw coming. The crater is so eroded now you can barely tell it's there. Just a shallow depression in the scrubland that most people drive past at 80 mph without noticing. That's what chronic geopolitical supply disruption looks like in its early phase. A shallow depression. Barely visible. Easy to drive past. The Fed drives past it. The equity markets drive past it. Alpine Macro says we've "adapted." But the hole is there. And it's getting deeper. I'll be rolling northeast toward the Midland rail yards tomorrow. Daryl the frac sand hauler says the traffic is "biblical." I want to see it for myself. Stay free. Stay liquid. Keep the trail stops tight. — Brook ***The Bare Economy. From the road. For the road.*** --- ### The institutional “Paper Trail” is public While headlines focus on China and Iran… the smart money is moving. Recent 13F filings show that institutional giants like BlackRock and Morgan Stanley have already started accumulating shares. They are moving into one small company tied to a newly confirmed U.S. resource discovery. This isn't speculation—it is a matter of public record. After 20 years of mapping, the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Task Force just confirmed access to massive undersea minerals. These are the same metals—Nickel, Cobalt, and Manganese—that China currently controls. Most retail investors haven't looked at the federal filings yet. That's why this asset is still significantly mispriced. Get the ticker before the institutional "accumulation phase" ends. [**See the filings and the ticker symbol here >>**](https://clkgrid.com/694e6112757ce6459037744b?email=mail3@live.com&domain=327TBES&type=SA&product=BTHA22%5FSA&ref=the-bare-economy.ghost.io) (In partnership with Behind the Markets) --- [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)