Donald Trump Just Skyrocketed Oil Prices

Iran war is getting worse each day

US forces just completed a five-hour strike mission across Iran.

The war is escalating fast.

Here’s everything happening right now, all at once.

The military situation

US Central Command says forces hit military targets across six locations. No confirmation on whether Pickax Mountain — a site Trump had specifically floated as a target — was struck.

Iran’s IRGC responded with drone and missile strikes on US military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan.

A Dutch shipping firm reported one of its vessels was struck off the coast of Oman.

All of this happened hours after Trump announced the US was taking control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Over 50,000 US troops remain deployed in the region according to the Pentagon.

Oil is moving fast

US crude jumped above $80 as the ceasefire fractured. Brent crude around $87 at time of checking.

Highly volatile. Trump can post something and the price reacts within minutes.

By the time anyone watches this it’s likely moved further.

IBM just got hit hard

Shares down roughly 23% after second quarter earnings fell short.

CEO Arvind Krishna blamed the shortfall directly on AI infrastructure costs. Clients shifted spending toward hardware — memory chips, servers, storage — trying to secure supply ahead of expected price increases.

Buy now because prices are going up, which pushes prices up further because everyone is buying now.

Krishna’s own words — “These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly and this quarter we faltered.” Numerous large deals failed to close on expected timelines, driving the majority of the shortfall.

This is a direct symptom of the AI infrastructure spending spree distorting corporate technology budgets across unrelated industries.

A second front just opened — Yemen and Saudi Arabia

Houthi forces struck Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport with missiles and drones.

This broke a four-year truce between the Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government, which had bombed Sanaa International Airport that same morning.

Houthi supporters are now openly threatening further strikes, framing it as retaliation.

The regional destabilization is no longer contained to Iran and the strait. It’s spreading to a separate active conflict that had been dormant for years.

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The Hormuz toll controversy

Trump’s plan to charge a 20% toll for passage through the Strait of Hormuz is drawing direct pushback from the shipping industry.

Hapag-Lloyd, a major shipping company, called it “fundamentally wrong” — arguing that tolls for infrastructure like the Suez or Panama Canal reflect actual infrastructure investment. The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. Nobody built it. Nobody maintains it as infrastructure.

Meanwhile Trump has also been publicly focused on unrelated matters — specifically his White House reflecting pool renovation, which he discussed at length around the same time as these military escalations.

There are already casualties, and it’s pulling in more countries

An Indian national was killed in the escalating conflict. India’s government confirmed summoning Iran’s deputy chief of mission to formally protest, calling it their “strongest protest” over the loss.

148 Indian seafarers are currently aboard seven Indian-flagged vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf, waiting to transit through the strait, caught directly in the crossfire of an escalating US-Iran conflict that has nothing to do with them.

India’s Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways held emergency meetings to figure out how to move these vessels to safer waters.

This is what regional escalation actually looks like on the ground — ordinary workers from a country not party to the conflict, trapped in a strait that’s become a war zone.

The market is doing something completely disconnected from all of this

Samsung is reportedly in early discussions about a potential US listing.

Everyone is watching what SpaceX’s IPO did and wondering if OpenAI or Anthropic go next. Samsung already trades in Korea — a US ADR listing would be relatively simple.

DeepSeek — the Chinese AI company — is reportedly raising more money weeks after a $7 billion round, even though they weren’t planning a US listing.

Wall Street banks are profiting enormously from all this activity. Goldman Sachs posted record stock trading revenue. JPMorgan posted record profit. Bank of America profit soared on trading and dealmaking activity.

The same firms that threw elaborate launch parties for the SpaceX IPO — complete with rocket-shaped cakes and merchandise — are collecting massive underwriting fees while regional wars escalate and IBM warns about AI infrastructure costs distorting corporate spending.

Korea is a cautionary tale of what happens when retail leverage meets a falling market

The Korean stock market has been behaving like a crypto market — massive retail participation, heavy leverage, concentrated bets on a handful of chip stocks like SK Hynix.

As the market corrects, the human cost is becoming visible. Real comments from Korean social media and news outlets — people who lost the equivalent of tens of thousands or millions of dollars, now carrying substantial debt. One person described losing nearly 100 million won with 38 million won in remaining debt, saying daily life has become impossible and a planned marriage may no longer happen.

Another lost roughly 42% of a position, translating to a couple million dollars, all concentrated in SK Hynix.

The comments underneath are blunt — with stocks, you don’t just lose money, you lose your time and your peace of mind. Taking out loans to invest isn’t investing.

Where this leaves things

Neither side — Iran or the US — currently appears interested in returning to pre-war conditions.

The strait remains contested. The region is destabilizing on multiple fronts simultaneously — Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia. Oil prices are climbing. Corporate earnings are already showing strain from AI infrastructure costs colliding with wartime energy volatility. And retail investors in markets thousands of miles from the actual conflict are absorbing real financial damage from a bubble that has very little to do with any of it.

Everything is connected right now. None of it is settling down.

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