Strait of Hormuz Is Breaking Everything: Oil at $115, Recession Odds at 40%, and Your Portfolio Feels It
From a historic SpaceX IPO filing to Goldman's oil price war, this week had more plot twists than a Netflix drama — here's what actually mattered
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NKE NIKE, Inc. | sell | $44.77 | — | — | — |
| RH RH | sell | $109.38 | — | — | — |
| XOM EXXON MOBIL CORP | buy | $161.99 | — | — | — |
| CVX CHEVRON CORP | buy | $197.62 | — | — | — |
| AAPL Apple Inc. | hold | $254.60 | — | — | — |
| TSLA Tesla, Inc. | sell | $378.90 | — | — | — |
| AA Alcoa Corp | buy | $71.31 | — | — | — |
| SYY SYSCO CORP | hold | $71.88 | — | — | — |
| EXPE Expedia Group, Inc. | buy | $227.12 | — | — | — |
| CART Maplebear Inc. | buy | $38.41 | — | — | — |
| CEG Constellation Energy Corp | hold | $281.28 | — | — | — |
| ARKK | hold | $68.35 | — | — | — |
| TMUS T-Mobile US, Inc. | buy | $204.41 | — | — | — |
| VZ VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | buy | $49.47 | — | — | — |
| GS GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC | hold | $858.75 | — | — | — |
| AMZN AMAZON COM INC | buy | $210.27 | — | — | — |
| DAL DELTA AIR LINES, INC. | hold | $67.41 | — | — | — |
Let's start with the elephant in every room, every portfolio, and every gas station receipt: the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic through the strait has collapsed ~97% — from 151 vessels per day down to 4 or 5 — sending Brent crude from ~$60 to $115/barrel in weeks. Bloomberg's Javier Blas went on Odd Lots and said prices could go much, much higher, with one analyst flagging $177/barrel as a realistic ceiling if the strait stays shut. Morgan Stanley's Ellen Zentner put recession probability at 40% — well above consensus — and Mohamed El-Erian warned we're sliding from a pure price shock into a full price-and-demand shock. Cool, cool, totally fine.
Meanwhile, $NKE dropped 11% pre-market (already down 17% YTD) blaming the Iran war for weak EMEA sell-through and elevated inventory, while $RH cratered 22% after a $30M tariff hit and a Q1 revenue outlook of -2% to -4%. On the brighter side, $XOM and $CVX are up roughly 40% YTD — because someone always wins. The S&P 500 forward P/E compressed from 23.1 to 19.6, which Charles Schwab's Liz Ann Sonders correctly notes is pure multiple contraction with earnings estimates still rising — the real test lands at earnings season.
Oh, and SpaceX quietly filed confidentially with the SEC targeting a June IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation — potentially the largest in history — with 21 banks in the syndicate including Morgan Stanley, Goldman, and JPMorgan. OpenAI closed a $122 billion round at an $852 billion valuation with Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank anchoring. The AI arms race doesn't care about your oil shock.