Iran fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and escorted two of them into Iranian waters, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The incidents came a day after US President Donald Trump extended a ceasefire while maintaining an American blockade of Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
Iranian media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was taking the two ships to Iran. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the seizures did not breach the ceasefire terms.<\/p>\n
West Texas Intermediate crude was up 0.35% on the day at $92.25 at the time of writing.<\/p>\n
We remember well the tensions from last year when Iran seized those ships in the Strait of Hormuz. That event in 2025 pushed WTI crude to over $92, creating significant market jitters that are still fresh in our minds. Today, the market’s memory of that volatility is shaping current trading strategies.<\/p>\n
Currently, oil transit through the strait has stabilized, with recent data from the Energy Information Administration showing flows at nearly 21 million barrels per day, close to pre-crisis levels. However, diplomatic channels remain fragile, and any perceived breakdown could instantly reintroduce a risk premium into the market. This creates a deceptive calm for those watching energy prices, which are holding steady around $85 per barrel today.<\/p>\n
Given this backdrop, we see implied volatility in oil options as unusually low, with the CBOE Crude Oil Volatility Index (OVX) hovering near 32, a sharp contrast to the peaks above 50 seen in 2025. This suggests that buying options, such as long straddles on WTI futures, could be a cost-effective way to position for a potential shock in the coming weeks. We learned from the supply disruptions of the past that the market can reprice geopolitical risk almost overnight.<\/p>\n
Another approach is to focus on the spread between Brent and WTI crude, which is currently tight at just over $3.50 per barrel. Historically, any flare-up in the Strait of Hormuz disproportionately affects Brent, causing this spread to widen significantly, as it did in 2019 when it blew out past $7.00. We believe establishing long positions in the Brent-WTI spread offers a targeted way to trade on renewed Middle East tension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran fired on three ships in Hormuz, escorting two into Iran; US says ceasefire unbroken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"josephine","author_link":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/author\/josephine\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarketsglobal.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}