Not One Ship Crossed Hormuz on Sunday; Brent Holds at $88.72
Weekend traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively stopped. Ship-tracking data show just five commodity vessels transited the strait on Saturday and none at all on Sunday, against 31 the previous weekend and more than 130 ships a day before the war began in February. The trigger was the UAE's accusation on Friday that Iran struck a third ADNOC-operated vessel, after two others were hit on Thursday evening. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said talks will not resume until Washington meets Iran's conditions on the strait, though contacts through Oman continue.
Oil's response has been measured: Brent rose 0.2% to $88.72 after touching $89.40 intraday, while WTI was flat at $82.35; both contracts closed last week more than 5% higher. Prices are not spiking because the market is pricing a slow squeeze rather than a closure — SEB's Bjarne Schieldrop argues crude needs a full overnight halt in flows, or a closure of Bab el-Mandeb, to move substantially higher, and 49 vessels crossed that southern chokepoint over the weekend versus 55 a week earlier. Hormuz carried a fifth of the world's seaborne crude and LNG before the war; with Donald Trump telling Americans to accept somewhat higher gasoline prices for the duration of the conflict, the Treasury is expected to unveil a fresh sanctions package this week, with the shadow fleet, marine insurers and secondary measures against the independent Chinese refiners that buy more than 80% of Iran's exported crude all on the table.
The second story came overnight from Japan. Second-quarter GDP grew 0.3% on the quarter and 1.1% annualized, against forecasts of 0.5% and 1.67%. The composition was weaker than the headline: capital expenditure contracted 1.2% on the quarter, household consumption was flat in real terms, and all of the growth came from net exports, which added 0.5 percentage points while domestic demand subtracted 0.2 — a mix that complicates the Bank of Japan's September decision after it lifted its policy rate to 1% in June, the highest in more than three decades. Asia rallied anyway: the Nikkei 225 gained 0.3%, the Hang Seng 1.6% and the KOSPI 2.4%, meaning the region is trading the memory and AI theme rather than Japan's macro print.
