The David Lin Report

$150 Oil By Q3? This Could Break Markets Warns Economist | Bob Ryan

44 min
Apr 29, 2026about 1 month ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Bob Ryan, veteran oil analyst, discusses the escalating U.S.-Iran conflict's impact on oil markets, predicting potential $150/barrel prices by Q3 if the standoff persists. The episode covers geopolitical risks in the Strait of Hormuz, the UAE's departure from OPEC, and cascading effects on global supply chains, inflation, and financial markets.

Insights
  • The Strait of Hormuz blockade is creating unprecedented backwardation in oil futures, with refiners absorbing extraordinary hedging costs that may eventually force government intervention to prevent demand destruction
  • Iran's 'Mosaic strategy' decentralizes command and control to enable autonomous operations, making traditional military deterrence ineffective and prolonging market uncertainty beyond typical conflict timelines
  • UAE's OPEC exit signals structural breakdown in production discipline, potentially adding 1-2 million barrels of unconstrained supply once geopolitical tensions ease, complicating price forecasts
  • Oil price shocks now transmit to bond markets through CPI expectations and TIPS pricing, creating a feedback loop where crude volatility directly drives 10-year Treasury yields higher
  • U.S. oil export capacity expansion (500k bbl/day via Platts rule changes) partially offsets Middle East supply loss but cannot fully replace 10 million bbl/day production gap from conflict disruptions
Trends
Geopolitical risk premium in commodities becoming structural rather than cyclical, with narrow chokepoints (Hormuz, Taiwan Strait) driving permanent supply chain redundancy investmentsBackwardation in physical oil markets exceeding futures by $15-20/barrel, indicating refiners' panic buying and potential for demand destruction if prices sustain above $130-150Central banks deploying swap lines and potential yield curve control (YCC) to manage dollar liquidity crises triggered by commodity shocks, mirroring post-2008 and pandemic-era interventionsTech sector emerging as relative safe haven during oil shocks due to inelastic capex spending, contrasting with traditional defensive plays in energy-constrained scenariosAgricultural and fertilizer markets facing secondary inflation shock via natural gas linkage, with trading firms caught unprepared by rapid geopolitical escalationU.S. fiscal spending expansion coinciding with potential oil-driven inflation, creating policy dilemma between QE (to suppress rates) and inflation controlLiquidity in oil derivatives markets contracting to 6-month forward horizon, reducing hedging capacity for long-term supply contracts and increasing basis riskIran-U.S. ceasefire probability at 50-50 with 2+ year market disruption expected even if agreement reached, extending commodity volatility into 2026-2027
Companies
S&P Global Platts
Announced May 1 rule changes expanding WTI Midland loading terminals from 1 to 10-13, enabling 500k bbl/day additiona...
BCA Research
Bob Ryan's former employer where he served as chief commodity strategist before founding Ryan Commodity Insights
Goldman Sachs
Referenced as employer of Jeff Curry, who analyzed GDP intensity of oil consumption and 2008 oil price spike to $150
Amazon
Used as example of economic activity dependent on oil consumption for logistics and transportation
Reuters
Cited as source for data on U.S. seaborne oil exports reaching record 9.6 million bbl/day in April with Asia flows do...
People
Bob Ryan
Veteran oil analyst with decades in sector, former BCA Research chief commodity strategist, discusses Iran conflict i...
David Lin
Podcast host conducting interview and asking analytical questions about oil markets, Fed policy, and geopolitical risks
James Hamilton
Conducted benchmark study on U.S. recessions preceded by oil price spikes; research cited to assess recession risk fr...
Jeff Curry
Referenced for analysis of GDP supported by oil consumption and 2008 oil spike to $150 preceding financial crisis
Janet Yellen
Cited for debt issuance management strategy on short end of yield curve to avoid long-term rate pressure
Jerome Powell
Referenced as current Fed chair managing debt issuance strategy similar to Yellen's approach
Scott Bessent
Reported to have arranged swap lines with Asian and Gulf allies to maintain dollar funding market order during conflict
Jim Stavridis
Referenced as expert who should discuss Navy's evolution to maintain supremacy in narrow chokepoints like Strait of H...
Donald Trump
Referenced as administration leader with economic incentive to maintain higher oil exports and potential interest in ...
Quotes
"You've got an extraordinary backward age in the market right now. It's absolutely extraordinary."
Bob Ryan~15:00
"They only have to land a drone or a couple of drones or a missile or a couple of missiles and everybody will stop again."
Bob Ryan~25:00
"We're losing 10 million barrels a day of production, and this is another 500,000 that, once it's fully up and running, is going to be able to offset that."
Bob Ryan~50:00
"The amount of economic activity that is being supported by lesser and lesser oil consumption is the thing to look at."
Bob Ryan~75:00
"I think the available liquidity in the market, particularly oil, is pretty much constrained to about six months forward now."
Bob Ryan~95:00
Full Transcript
When you see stats like this, do you ever think to yourself, gee, maybe the administration has an economic incentive to keep this going for a little bit longer? Yeah, there might be. I could see the case for it. You've got an extraordinary backward age in the market right now. It's absolutely extraordinary. You know, we do see this standoff between Iran and the U.S. persist into the second half of the year and prices really start moving higher to destroy demand. It's Tuesday, April 28th. The S&P 500 is down 1% on the back of stronger oil. It's one day ahead of the FOMC meeting and the markets are not pricing in any chance of a Fed rate cut. So WTI is still near $100 a barrel. There is no ceasefire in sight between the U.S. and Iran. And just today on Tuesday, the UAE announced that it would be leaving OPEC nations. What does this mean for oil and the economy going forward? Bob Ryan joins us today. He is a veteran oil analyst, having worked in the sector for decades. He is a founder of Ryan Commodity Insects and the former chief commodity strategist at BCA Research. Bob is also a former U.S. Navy veteran. So he's well positioned to be commenting on the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Welcome back to the show, Bob. Good to see you again. Good to see you, David. Thank you. Let's start with the biggest piece of news today, which is that the UAE is leaving OPEC. The UAE is reported to be producing 12% of OPEC's total output. So what does the UAE leaving OPEC mean for oil production globally going forward? I think the signal is negative for the OPEC plus coalition, and it's particularly negative for the OPEC producers in the Gulf and elsewhere. This is a long simmering problem that the UAE has had with OPEC and particularly with the Saudis. they've been almost in every round of meetings pushing for higher production quotas and saying that they were going to continue to invest in their production to bring more oil to the market. So it's really not a surprise, but happening as it's happening now, when no oil is flowing out of the Gulf to speak up, is setting the stage for possibly another break for once the market settles down. And I don't expect the market to settle down for at least another two years, even if we get an agreement next week on ceasefire. How did the UAE and the Saudis differ on oil production in the past? And how do you expect the UAE to continue with their own production agenda agenda now that they will no longer be a part of OPEC? Basically, the Saudis were very persuasive and very effective in convincing everybody to maintain production discipline and keep their production at levels that had been agreed from previous meetings. So that set the stage for disagreement between the UAE and the Saudis almost at every meeting that I can recall with the UAE seeking higher output quotas. So I think that's been a long-term dialogue these guys are having, sometimes not always friendly. But the resolution of it is now where Saudi is going to be still running the show within OPEC and OPEC Plus. But UAE is not going to be bound by any agreement to restrain production. Do you expect then production overall from the OPEC countries and, I guess, non-OPEC countries now to increase or decrease throughout 2026 following what happened with Iran? Well, given my view on a ceasefire is that we're not going to get something or the odds of us getting something signed this year is about 50-50. So it's a coin toss. so I don't see the even if we get it tomorrow some sort of agreement on the C-SPIRE it's going to take at least the rest of the year to clear the cargoes that are already stranded inside the Gulf and get them moving and doing their round trips so they can fill their vessels and relieve some of the storage problems that they're having in the Gulf So it's going to be a problem there. I think the likelihood of damage to production is increasing every day because every day you don't resolve this transit crisis, transportation crisis. You're putting forth and more oil into storage, which means that you reach a point where you can't put any more and you have to start cutting. And that risks damaging the wells that are responsible for all this production. And that's a long-term process to restart. And sometimes it won't be restarted because the damage has just been too extensive to the casings and the well itself. as a navy veteran maybe you can comment on why the u.s navy cannot open the straight up and we'll keep it open we'll escort ships commercial ships in and out of the strait for those of us who may not be military experts sure um so i've been through that straight a few times and uh you know there's uh one point where it's very narrow and um it's um you know it's worked very well up to this point but at the most narrow point of the stage or of the the strait you know where it bends you know if you're looking down on the map it bends around you know it's very easy for the Iranian navies the IRGC and the Basij who are the paramilitaries that operate in Iran. So it's easy for them to pull missiles out of bunkers in the side of the strait, their side of the strait, or to zero in on traffic in the mountains. The Zargos Mountains are up there as well. So they only have to do that once or twice to shut down the strait should it reopen. They only have to land a drone or a couple of drones or a missile or a couple of missiles and everybody will stop again. So, you know, the U.S. has demonstrated that it can do damage on a massive scale. But what they're encountering now is, you know, Iran has activated what it calls its Mosaic strategy. and that's meant to withstand the loss of the supreme leader and the loss of the structural hierarchy. And command and control is pushed down to the lowest possible level it can be. And these guys are operating somewhat autonomously, learning operations and then fading back into the background. So the U.S. Navy is aware of all this, And it might be a reason why, you know, they're reticent to provoke another naval engagement at this point. The Mosaic strategy itself was developed after studying the U.S. experience in Vietnam, in Afghanistan and in Iraq and applying the lessons to Iran. So, you know, they're prepared to absorb a lot of pain. I mean, that's what this is designed for. and then go to ground, so to speak, go back into their bunkers where they store their munitions and wait it out, launch another attack, just keep the market completely on edge and making it uninsurable, which makes it impossible to reopen the strait. Before we continue with the video, let's talk about a topic that's been on a lot of precious metals investors' minds, how to generate income with your gold holdings. Most assets either generate income or rely on price appreciation. Gold has traditionally fallen into the second category. Our sponsor today, Monetary Metals, has found a way that lets gold do both. Instead of just holding gold and waiting for price moves, investors can now earn a yield on it paid in physical gold. Through the leasing platform, investors can earn up to 4% annually with yield paid monthly in ounces. That means your holding is increasing gold over time. The metal remains in your asset base and can be redeemed at any time. Thousands of investors are already earning monthly interest in gold through Monetary Metals. So visit monetary-metals.com slash Lynn in the link down below or scan the QR code here on the screen and make the most out of your gold today. What have you learned about the Navy's capabilities of deterring missile and drone strikes from a narrow choke point like the state of Hormuz from this conflict? You know, the fourth is generally in the U.S. and, excuse me, among the Arab allies of the U.S. and the Gulf have been truly impressive. I mean, taking down most of the, you know, drones and missiles that have, you know, been fired at them, but they're not getting all of them. I mean, it was interesting, you know, in looking for those two or the one down pilot after, you know, one of the U.S. fighter jets had to eject after being hit by a surface to air missile. so um you know the iranians have found a way to you know bring up you know you know armaments that have been stowed away for a while use them retreat back into the you know the terrain so the u.s took a lot of uh damage in there i think something like seven uh u.s aircraft were damaged in that whole engagement looking for that downed pilot so um you know they they've been severely set back. I mean, you know, this is destruction on a biblical scale that's been unleashed there. But you know these guys have been preparing for biblical scale warfare since 1979 the revolution began How do you think the Navy needs to evolve from here on out to ensure that if a future conflict of this were to break out the Navy would be able to maintain supremacy in a narrow choke point close to the coast? Well, that's way above my pay grade, man. I think you need Admiral Stavridis, Jim Stavridis, to appear on your show to go through that. All right. Let's go back to the oil market. So you said that a U.S.-Nuclear, a U.S.-Iran ceasefire is probably generating a 50-50 chance that it could happen. I mean, traders on prediction markets are more or less agreeing with you, by the way. This is a cow sheet. A U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, traders are placing a 53% chance that a deal will be reached before 2027. What do you think are the most likely terms that the two sides can come to agreement on if a deal were to be reached before next year? So from the U.S. side, Trump and the administration is going to want the free passage of shipping through the Gulf as their red line. I mean, that has to be agreed. I think from the Iranian point of view, you know, they are. I don't think they're going to give up on nuclear enrichment. I think they're going to continue to insist on reparations and. They are going to want to be recognized as the authority controlling passage through the Gulf. those are probably their three must-haves that you know they had that 10 point uh set of demands that they in in the first uh islamabad meeting and um you know i think they were you know pretty clear but i think those are the um i think those are the the must-haves for these guys. There is a belief now that should the U.S. accept an Iranian toll on passing ships as a term of agreement going forward, that the Strait of Hormuz would permanently see a toll on oil tankers. If that were to happen, Iran would break in billions of dollars every year in additional oil revenue, which in theory they could fund to repair infrastructure and perhaps even rebuild the military. And so the question is, what was all this for, if that could happen? Yeah, that's a good question. I do not have an answer. You know, there was, you know, a lot of ink spilt on why the US launched this second war after supposedly having obliterated, you know, all of Iran's military capability and the nuclear enrichment capability. and here we are back again looking to obliterate it again and it seems like they're not aware in the US Defense Department you can only obliterate something once and here we are again so I think I don't know what the logic is I don't know what the logic is that's driving this decision making right now I think I'm in line with everybody else You know, this is reality TV diplomacy, you know, like waiting for the next big surprise. And, you know, the big surprise is always something new today from yesterday and from the week before and from the month before. About 44% of the S&P 500 companies are expected to report earnings this week and next. Do you think we'll have an oil shock surprise in the bottom lines of a lot of these reports? um yeah some of these guys are already flagging i can't remember who i was reading some uh earnings this morning um it was just a blur but some of them are already warning they're raising the red flag that uh you know they're they're expecting some damage i don't know if uh you know um you know the u.s and israel went in on february 28th uh so that only you know in the reports that will be coming out next week, you know, early May, you're looking at 1Q. So, you know, the market still hadn't gone, you know, spiked and stayed at $115 or $120 per barrel for Brent. But, you know, we should start seeing that, I think, more fully in the second quarter and second half reporting, presuming, as I think we're going to be, we're still in this standoff. So this is an interesting side effect from this conflict. The U.S. has ramped up exports on oil. And so if OPEC is hit and the Strait of Hormuz traffic is down significantly, what's going to happen now to U.S. petroleum exporters and producers? How do you think that equation changes? It should increase. Just recently, effective May 1, Platts, which is owned by S&P, has announced some changes in the way the price of Brent crude is determined and the types of Brent crude cargos that are available to be placed into the Brent pool, which is the North Sea Trading Hub. It's also the global benchmark. and what Platts is going to be doing May 1 is banding the number of terminals from which cargoes of WTI Midland can be loaded on ships and put up into the Brent Pool up in the North Sea so you're going from one approved terminal for this procedure to 10 or 13 loading ports that are still going to be kind of slow because you've got to do ship-to-ship transfers once you get down to Louisiana. That should increase exports from the U.S. on the order of up to 500,000 barrels a day. It's a big increase opening up the number of facilities that can load vessels. 500,000 barrels a day added to U.S. exports now and, you know, bought me out. It's been a week or more since I've read the export data, but I think the U.S. was exporting somewhere between 5.5 million to 6 million barrels a day. So maybe we get up to, you know, a steady 6 or a steady 6.5 million barrels a day of crude export. And, you know, we'll probably be seeing more product export out of the U.S. as well. But also that's going to be delayed. The U.S. has a super abundance of light, light, sweet crude. So a lot of, you know, U.S. crude production is condensated. It's very, very light. But it makes an ideal stock to blend with Venezuelan crudes or Mexican crudes. so you know you'll see more and more of that blending occurring and more and more of the you know the very light condensate type streams coming out of the U.S. blended with these very heavy sour crudes and and that'll be great that'll be great for North American supply and for exports because a lot of the refining capacity that was reliant on the Middle East Gulf exports are over in Asia, and they are geared to run heavier crude than WTI. So they'll have to blend it themselves, or the producers can blend it to get it on the water and over to them. But again, it's not going to save the day. I mean, we're losing 10 million barrels a day of production, and this is another 500,000 that, once it's fully up and running, is going to be able to offset that. But still at the same time, when you read a stat like this, this is from Reuters, and this chart is from Reuters. Seaborne U.S. oil exports are set to climb to a record 9.6 million barrels per day in April, which is what you alluded to earlier, with flows to Asia nearly doubling from pre-war levels to 2.5 million barrels per day. When you see stats like this, do you ever think to yourself, gee, maybe the administration has an economic incentive to keep this going for a little bit longer? That's a really good question. Yeah, there might be. I could see the case for it. They have to balance also the fact that if WTI and Brent stay higher, there could be demand destruction that could be felt in the economy. Although maybe you can help us address this. To what extent could $100 a barrel actually hurt the consumer? It could. The bigger problem is on the refiners themselves. so they're probably purchasing that crude based on brent dated which is you know cargos that will deliver you know within the next two weeks or at most within the next month which is typically the voyage time that that a lot of the stuff gets priced on so you you've got an extraordinary backward agent in the market right now. It's absolutely extraordinary. We had the June contracts for both WTI and Brent trading at $15 to $20 a barrel. That differential, that's normally like a $3 differential. So it's the refiner that's absorbing that. The refiners are the ones that are bidding through the offer to get more of that crude into the Brent pool. It makes it very difficult for them to hedge, right? And it makes it difficult for them to run that super expensive crude through their refineries and sell it to firms and even households that use it for heating And they using futures markets to hedge as well And their prices are indexed to futures markets. So the futures are not reflecting that profound physical market backwardation. But these refiners are wearing that. So they're making more money. Their reports are going to show that they're making more money. but it becomes way more difficult to do that and um you know if it starts going ballistic you know you no pun intended but you run the risk of um you know government stepping in and not allowing these costs pass through as we saw that in europe you know during the um russian invasion of ukraine and all that so um you know there's a chance for government intervention where the refiners don't get to recover their full costs so in that way it would be bad for them. It would just disincentivize production. When the futures market is in backwardation to this extent, do you think the futures market is signaling that, well, at least the markets believe the war is going to come to an end soon? Is that what's going on? No. I think what it's signaling is that refiners, right now, refiners in Asia are in panic mode. They're just moving up as much fruit as they can to keep their refineries up and running. That's going to go to Europe. Europe is going to end up coming into the market and bidding away those, trying to bid away those Brent indexed barrels that are pricing maybe to dated Brent. So they're pricing into spot markets, not futures markets. so you know they're they're looking at 130 dollar uh per barrel probably by may and you know the end of may um and you know probably by the um by the second half of this year early into the second half of this year um you're probably looking at 150 bucks a barrel that's what this appropriation is showing it. These guys are desperate to get crude in, and they'll pay whatever it takes. They'll pay through the offer if that's what it takes. This is another interesting development. Scott Besson has reported that several Asian and Gulf country allies have requested swap lines. He's not naming which countries, but he said that swap lines, whether it's from the Federal Reserve or the Treasury, are to maintain order in the dollar funding markets to prevent the sale of the U.S. assets in a disorderly way. So the swap line would benefit both the UAE and the US. And as I said, numerous other countries, including some of our Asian allies, have also requested them. If other countries are requesting dollar backstops, do you think there's some sort of bond turmoil going on in the background that maybe the markets aren't pricing in fully? I think that's very likely. You know, there's some EM currencies that are trading stronger. you know, right now on a relative basis, and they typically trade against the dollar. And, you know, one of the reasons that they're starting to price a lot of this risk in is obviously markets are expecting, you know, US debt markets to, you know, price in higher interest rates and um that is not going to be a constraint on some of these other markets that are running very prudent fiscal policies right now uh as as far as the swap lines go i think the u.s was you know forced into that sort of behavior during the global financial crisis um and um you know in order to keep bond markets orderly and to provide liquidity to these other central banks you know something like 80 or 90 percent of global trade is index or not index is invoiced in dollars and paid in dollars so just having access to dollars being able to borrow dollars you know when you need to to purchase stuff that you need to bring into your country you know having those lines available is is critically important and you know it's not my specialty, David, but I'm pretty certain they're trying to maintain order by maintaining liquidity and availability of dollars should it be required. Well, can you comment on how the oil markets have historically impacted both the bond markets and recessions? If you look at, and I can pull up this chart in just a bit, Bob, but if you look at how the oil markets have behaved in the past, in a few instances, a spike in oil preceded a recession by just a few months. Do you think this is going to happen again this year? There's a chance. James Hamilton, an economist at UC San Diego, did the benchmark study on most U.S. three sections are preceded by a spike in oil prices. And I think, you know, he's, he's kept that updated, and he's been refining his theory. But, you know, once again, you know, the world gets to find out just how important crude oil markets are, because it's where you get your diesel fuel to ship goods globally to transport people and goods globally. And it feeds directly into your inflation so you know we're going to be seeing more of that for sure um into the second half as you know the um you know the the oil price shock uh makes its way through um you know trump's resisting um you know returning the tariff money that u.s firms were forced to collect from their their consumers when he imposed tariffs, but he might want that tariff refund to go into the economy to offset these likely higher prices that would depress industrial activity, household, you know, spending would go down, people would have to start prioritizing, you know, their transportation-based spending. You know, it's very inelastic demand. People don't stop driving their cars to work just because prices go to 130 bucks that's right uh you know they so um yeah i mean this is this is going to be you know it's going to be a lot of noise coming at people you know over a you know a very short amount of time so maybe uh you know scott bestin you know advises people to file for their tariff uh refunds because you know tariffs are at the end of the tax increases so that the consumers mostly are paying. So it's kind of like getting a tax refund, an unexpected consumer windfall. But Bob, is it true that today, in today's economy, the oil price shock is not as huge of a factor on the economy as maybe it was in the 70s, meaning people's lives aren't as dependent on the price of oil as 40 years ago? Yeah, I've heard that argument. And I typically also observe something that Jeff Curry said when we were both at Goldman. And somebody made a similar point when oil prices in 2008 were marching incredibly strongly up to 150. They rang the bell at 150, and then that's when the global financial crisis set in. But Jeff was saying that the amount of economic activity that is being supported by lesser and lesser oil consumption is the thing to look at. So you don't want to look at the GDP intensity of oil consumption. What you want to do is look at the reciprocal of that, the amount of GDP that oil consumption is supporting. And, you know, the GDP has been growing, you know, very expansively. And we're probably going to see another burst of growth with the, you know, as AI makes its way into the system overall. But what you're going to get out of that is that that'll be even more economic activity, like more stuff that Amazon ships, more stuff that refiners have to provide fuel for to transport across the country or across the world. So, you know, it's a two-edged sword. So part of what you're saying is, right, we're less dependent on it from an overall perspective in terms of the percentage GDP. but part of it, you got to look at the inverse on that and recognize that there's an enormous amount of activity being supported by lower and lower oil consumption. Okay, I would like to show you the oil price. Try one more time. And this time I'm going to overlay this with the U.S. 10-year yield. Please help us understand the relationship between, actually this is the U.S. 10-year, so I'm going to overlay this with WTI. What is the relationship between the long end of the curve and crude oil. As you can see here, ever since 2020, the relationship has become a little bit more, I would say, close. Why is it that bond yields have, in the last couple of years at least, moved almost in lockstep with oil? Yeah. You know, I've done research on this over the past few years and I continue to do it. And I think the channel where this effect gets registered is through the forward CPI index market, because the CPI is used to settle up inflation protected, treasury inflation protected securities tips. So that's the critical benchmark there. and that is incredibly sensitive to the movement of oil price so you can look at oil for delivery three years from now you know we're just still a pretty good price you know good variable to use and regress treasury or regress inflation expectations So like five year, five year treasury rates on that. And then pump that into you know your regression on yield And that where you get that alignment occurring So you know as your chart showed you know very interestingly you know it a very volatile series And they do appear to go out of sync. But I think that's the channel. And we're seeing it now. We're going to continue to see it, you know, as we get second quarter reports, third quarter, you know, rest of the year. If we're not getting a ceasefire anytime soon, like you alluded to earlier, can we then expect oil markets to stay high? And then that will bring bond yields higher and we're going to see a sell-off in bonds. Is that basically the order of effect here? Yeah. Yes, that is the order of the progression. One caveat that I have, I remind myself of all the time is, you know, when Janet Yellen was at the Fed, she did a great job of managing debt issuance in the short end of the curve. And I think Bethan picked that up as well. So I think he tries to get more of the issuance done in the short term than over the long term, because I don't want to see that big demand for credit, you know, hitting the market and driving up the 30 year even more than it is right now. I mean, we're back. Last I checked, we're back to a normal yield curve. But if you were to start flooding the 20 and 30-year part of that with demand for credit from the U.S., rates would go up. Well, the CME FedWatch tool is 100% projecting a no change in the FedFunds rate at tomorrow's FOMC meeting. And actually, it isn't until January 2027 that you get any meaningful percentage in a cut. So if let's say the markets are right and the Fed doesn't cut this year, can you expect the Fed to implement other monetary policies around the Iran war? Can we expect more asset purchases, for example? Well, great question, David. You should have your own TV show, man. so um yeah i think it's good you know so it's it's kind of like quantitative easing right but it probably would be ill-advised uh with um fiscal spending ramping up the big new beautiful or big beautiful bill whatever it was called uh you know what they did with depreciation and all uh so you know the u.s debt is going to be growing at a fairly large rate. So what you'd end up doing would be creating credit by the Fed to buy these treasury securities and remove some supply from the market wherever they're directing it at, like in a QE, to restrain interest rates. And that may be the direction we go in, David. You know, Japan ran that. They managed the 10-year rate by making credit available to keep the 10-year Japanese bond rate within a desired range. So we may be forced to do that. I mean, this is not my market. But I treat it like a commodity supply-demand. But I got to think that life gets really complicated when you start having real inflation coming into the market through the commodities. And that shows up as a factor that the debt markets have to price in. And then on top of that, you're trying to do QE, right? So you're trying to keep rates low. So that allows you to – what you're essentially doing is encouraging borrowing when fiscal spending is going up. That's right. So the bottom line is then, Bob, what are you expecting oil to trade at throughout the rest of the year? Base case scenarios. Base case right now, I had – I haven't updated my probability. I'd have to redo my priors. I've been waiting for new data on oil supply. But right now we're at like 100 bucks a barrel for the rest of the year on average for frontline Brent. There is a pretty good likelihood that we do see this standoff between Iran and the U.S. persist into the second half of the year. and prices really start moving higher to destroy demand. So that is very difficult to call right now. But it's becoming a lot more likely given what we had this past weekend when the Iranians just walked away from the Islamabad talks. So we could see prices moving higher in the second half of the year. And we do have a scenario where it does go to like $200 and $200 thereabouts. What's that scenario, Bob? We continue to lose supply or we return supply slower than we're assuming in that run. and with the supply losses that are coming through the market and not being replaced, we're assuming that we get something in that base case model, that we're getting something to offset this loss production. If we don't see that, then you've got another feedback loop going on. As prices go higher, demand goes down, and that might restrain prices a little bit as well. What we're trying to sort And what we're trying to solve for is what's the price level at which enough demand is knocked off the grid to offset the loss of supply, which unless something is done, I keep restating this to get that oil flowing. You're looking at prices taking seriously higher. Serious. Okay, so final question. If we were to assume serious upside movement in the price of oil, or even just in your base case assumption where the oil price stays at around $100 a barrel, which sectors within the S&P do well besides the refiners and the producers of oil? um you know i've been reading recently uh about uh tech being a kind of safe haven uh because that spending is going to occur no matter what and you know going into these first quarter reports they're coming up right now people are starting to get a little skittish that you know the um the paper scalers are are doing so well that they're going to be taking even more money and increasing their capex expectations so um you know they are um they're not immune to what's going on here but they you know their shelter from the storm is is my impression of what what this article is saying i'd never thought of them that way but you know it kind of makes sense do you expect oil to lift up all the other commodities especially the base metals agricultural products as well yeah i think um you know we're running the um the risk of uh what we saw when russia invaded ukraine and um nat gas prices went up we've already got nat gas prices x us or x north america um you know trading much stronger um and you know that hits the fertilizer market most of natural gas is made from or most of fertilizers are made from natural gas at one point or another and um that gets into you know the food and then it gets into the processed food that we're all purchasing so yeah um but in terms of finding a direct play on that you know very difficult uh you know like what do you pick out um you know i i originally thought that maybe some of these trading companies were the way to you know take that view and invest but you know it turns out a lot of these guys were caught wrong-footed when the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran and they had hedges on you know for crude that they had in the Gulf waiting to go to its destination and you know really got wrong-footed on that so it's you know it's hitting everybody and it's making it very difficult to trade these markets. And I think, you know, talking to clients, you know, the available liquidity in the market, particularly oil, is pretty much constrained to about six months forward now. And, you know, people still make you one year swap prices and all that. But, you know, people are reluctant to step out very far on large volume in these markets. I don't know if that's the case in the ag so it probably is because you know if you're going to sign on to take a delivery of wheat you know somewhere halfway around the world you're very directly taking an oil view when you do that okay great well thank you for your time bob thank you for your insights tell us a little bit about ryan commodity insights and where we can follow your work sure um we have a web page called uh ryan commodity insights.com so you can just go on there um you'll you'll note and i'll address this i stopped posting uh research yeah there you go uh thank you uh i stopped posting research to it uh because um you know i i didn't want to give it away for free at any longer so um you know and that's where we are now but um yeah so that that's a good place to start there's a you know there's a little thing you have right there, the contact. We'll get to you if you have interest in seeing what we're doing. Okay. Well, we'll put the link down below, so make sure to follow Bob and Ryan Kamala. The insights are there in the links in the description. Thank you so much, Bob, for your time. Good to see you again, and we'll speak again soon. Take care for now. Thanks, David. All the best. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe. Any End