Oil at $160, the Strait is Mined, and the S&P Is Somehow Up — Social Sentiment Is Losing Its Mind
The Strait of Hormuz blockade, a potential new Fed Chair, and a self-custody gold rush are dominating YouTube, Reddit, and X — here's what the crowd is actually buying
Ticker Ratings
Let's set the scene: the Strait of Hormuz is mined, 80% of Asian oil supply is disrupted, energy expert Daniel Yergin is calling it 'the biggest energy disruption we've ever seen,' and Brent crude is sitting somewhere between $105 and $160/barrel depending on which Bloomberg podcast you caught this week. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 just logged its longest weekly winning streak since 2024. The market is vibing. The world is on fire. Classic.
On YouTube, the self-custody crowd is having a moment. Andrei Jikh is preaching physical $BTC and gold over ETFs, Jeremiah Babe is posting horror stories about frozen bank accounts, and between the two of them they've sent Reddit's r/Bitcoin and r/Gold communities into full bunker mode. The DOJ quietly dropping its probe into Jerome Powell — clearing the runway for Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair — barely registered on X, which was too busy arguing about $INTC's 20% surge and whether Elon Musk will actually remove Sam Altman from OpenAI.
The sentiment divergence right now is genuinely wild: institutional money is buying the dip, retail is buying gold coins and hardware wallets, and somewhere in the middle, $XOM is just sitting there printing money while everyone argues about CBDCs.