Hormuz Transits Fall to Seven Ships as Walmart Blames $4 Gas
Only seven commercial ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday — four inbound, three outbound — exactly half the previous day's tally. According to Reuters, citing Kpler tracking data, not one of them was a very large crude carrier or an LNG tanker; before the war began in February, the waterway carried close to a fifth of the world's seaborne crude oil and LNG. What pushed traffic down to that level was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's announcement on Thursday evening that the U.S. will impose "the toughest sanctions in history" on Iran, with details to come at a press conference on Monday; Bessent also urged China to cooperate, since China buys more than 80% of Iran's seaborne oil and draws roughly half its energy from the Persian Gulf.
Brent is trading just under $94 a barrel and is on track for a second straight weekly gain of about 6%, with WTI near $86 — which keeps U.S. pump prices above $4 a gallon and sent the bill straight to the worst-performing large cap of the last session, Walmart. Walmart's Thursday premarket report beat on both lines, with adjusted EPS of $0.81 against $0.74 expected and revenue of $187.9B against roughly $186B, and e-commerce grew 23%; but U.S. comparable sales rose just 2.6% versus the 3.7% consensus, and CFO John David Rainey explained it plainly: "when fuel prices increase and got above $4, customers are making trade-offs." The company raised full-year guidance to 4%-5% revenue growth and adjusted EPS of $2.80-$2.87 — yet even the top of that range sits below the $2.97 Wall Street was modeling, and the stock fell 9%.
