July 2026 brought a sharp reversal of June’s “reopening trade” on crude markets. Brent and WTI began the month near pre-war levels as U.S.-Iran diplomacy, improving tanker flows and another OPEC+ target increase encouraged traders to remove Gulf-war risk premium. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY July 2026 brought a sharp reversal of June’s “reopening trade” on crude markets. Brent and WTI began the month near pre-war levels as U.S.-Iran diplomacy, improving tanker flows and another OPEC+ ta

June 2026 became the month when crude markets finally stopped trading the Gulf war as a persistent shortage shock and began pricing a fragile, uneven but increasingly credible reopening of the Middle Eastern supply system. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY June 2026 became the month when crude markets finally stopped trading the Gulf war as a persistent shortage shock and began pricing a fragile, uneven but increasingly credible reopening of the Middle Eastern supply system. Brent and WTI bo

May 2026 became the first month since the Gulf war began in which crude futures stopped behaving like a one-way supply-panic trade and started trading a more complicated “peace hope versus physical shortage” regime. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY May 2026 became the first month since the Gulf war began in which crude futures stopped behaving like a one-way supply-panic trade and started trading a more complicated “peace hope versus physical shortage” regime. Brent and WTI both fell sharpl

April 2026 on the crude market became a month of a transition from outright war-related panic to a regime of partial normalization. Both Brent and WTI began the month still trading the extreme March supply shock, rallied sharply when U.S. rhetoric suggested a longer campaign against Iran, collapsed after the April 8 ceasefire announcement, and then rebuilt a substantial premium as physical flows through the Gulf failed to normalize cleanly. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY April 2026 on the

March 2026 was not a conventional bullish month for crude oil so much as a succession of repricing around one dominant question: how much of the Gulf export system could continue to function once the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 and the Strait of Hormuz shifted from a theoretical chokepoint to a live supply constraint. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY March 2026 was not a conventional bullish month for crude oil so much as a succession of repricing around one dominant quest

February 2026 on the oil market has looked less like a clean extension of January’s rally and more like a high-beta consolidation in which the front month crude futures repeatedly repriced the probability of a U.S.–Iran supply shock. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY February 2026 on the oil market has looked less like a clean extension of January’s rally and more like a high-beta consolidation in which the front month crude futures repeatedly repriced the probability of a U.S.–Iran supply s

January 2026 crude market performance was defined by a tug-of-war between a structurally comfortable supply narrative, supported by surplus talk tied to Venezuela normalization and broader 2026 balance expectations, and repeated, albeit different “shock absorbers” that kept risk premia alive, such as Iran escalation headlines, Kazakhstan outages, and late-month US winter storm disruptions. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY January 2026 crude market performance was defined by a tug-of-war bet