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Wall Street just closed at an all time high. On the same day, Iranian missiles hit Kuwait’s main airport and oil pushed toward $100. Both things are true. Only one of them is being priced honestly.

The S&P 500 finished above 7,600 for the first time ever, 7,609.78, a third straight record. Chips did the lifting: Marvell up 33%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise up 19%. The screen says nothing is wrong.

Then look at the other screen. Iran fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, damaged Kuwait International Airport, and the US struck Qeshm Island and disabled a tanker bound for Iran. Brent rose almost 3% toward $98.80, more than $7 above where it closed Friday.

Here is the divergence. Equities are pricing a world where the Iran war ends on schedule. Oil is pricing a world where it does not. A managing director at Vitol told an energy conference the market is underpricing the risk. The IEA warned global inventories could fall to critical levels before peak summer demand.

The mechanism is simple and old. Stocks run on sentiment and liquidity, and both are abundant. Oil runs on barrels that physically move through one strait, and that strait is effectively shut. Sentiment can stay detached from the tanker lane for a while. It cannot stay detached forever.

One of these two markets is wrong about the same war. The energy market is the one that can actually count the barrels.

Jun 3
at
4:12 PM
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