Markets: The price of the war
Signal of the Twelve-Day War, June 2025
The war was a sharp but short-lived commodity shock. Brent spiked about 7% on 13 June and peaked near $80, then violently reversed: when Iran's 23 June retaliation hit an evacuated Qatari air base and spared the Strait of Hormuz and oil infrastructure, traders priced out a supply cut and crude fell hard, settling below its pre-war level by the 24 June ceasefire. The tell was the divergence: US and Israeli defense stocks and the Tel Aviv exchange rose to records, while Iran's rial slid and its stock exchange was suspended.
Why sparing the strait moved oil so sharply comes down to the passage itself: Portolan, a world-trade atlas we also run, keeps a profile of the Strait of Hormuz with its share of global oil flow, the trade value it carries and its current transit status.
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- The question
- What did the money do, and why did oil fall even as the US bombed Iran?
- Brent: $70.84 before, $80.37 peak, $69.13 after
- Brent closed at $70.84 on 12 June, spiked to about $76 as Israel struck on 13 June, peaked at $80.37 on 19 June, then settled at $69.13 by the 24 June ceasefire, below where it started.
- Oil crashed on the day Iran retaliated
- WTI fell about 7.2% on 23 June, its biggest one-day drop since April, precisely as Iran struck Al Udeid, because the strike was telegraphed, caused no casualties, and left the Strait and oil facilities untouched.
- European gas spiked 18%, then unwound
- European TTF gas rose about 18% to its highest since February by 19 June and Asian LNG hit a four-month high, then both fell roughly 20% back toward pre-crisis levels after the ceasefire.
- Defense stocks jumped
- On 13 June Northrop Grumman rose about 4%, Lockheed Martin 3.6% and RTX 3.3% while the S&P 500 fell; Israel's Elbit Systems later ran to record highs on war demand.
- Tel Aviv rose during its own war
- The Tel Aviv TA-35 and TA-125 gained about 3.2% over the war week and kept climbing, closing 2025 up roughly 52% at record highs, outpacing global markets.
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