The conflict in Iran has not only driven up the price of oil – it has also made it next to impossible for Wall Street firms to forecast future crude costs, On The Money has learned.
The commodities team at JPMorgan, one of the biggest players in the global oil markets, is telling clients it can no longer reliably model where crude prices go from here, according to reporting by Fox Business’s Teuta Dedvukaj.
With the White House’s on-again, off-again Iran negotiations dragging into their seventh month, JPMorgan’s commodities team has abandoned its “baseline view” on oil prices, the benchmark targets that weigh various factors that influence oil markets.
“For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view. We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” JPMorgan commodities strategists told clients last Thursday in a conference call with a large institutional investor, according to a person at the confab.
The comments underscore just how tricky the conflict has become for investors trying to play the oil price swings, businesses seeking to hedge oil expenses and, of course, consumers getting squeezed by higher gas prices.
President Trump recently indicated he would be open to meet the president of Iran to end the hostilities – good news for consumers even if it underscores the problems with gauging future movements since such seemingly positive developments have sputtered repeatedly in the past.
“We assumed there were economic red lines the US administration would be unwilling to cross,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients. “Six months later, many of those lines have been crossed, yet the exit strategy is less clear, not more.”
A JPM executive who is authorized to speak to the press tells On The Money: “We continue to publish estimates, but the research team wanted to acknowledge that the end game has become hard to model given the ongoing volatility and a wide range of potential outcomes.”
The continued conflict has throttled about a quarter of the world’s oil that is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel that passes through Iranian territory. Saudi Arabia — the world’s second-largest oil producer (the US is No. 1, Russia No. 3) — has cut oil shipments to Europe after drone attacks damaged its key export pipeline to the Red Sea.
Messaging from the White House hasn’t helped. Trump has repeatedly announced progress and near-deals to end the conflict – including the Islamic Republic giving up its nuclear program – only to reverse course.
Last Thursday, the president told Axios that he is weighing a major decision over the war, including whether to resume large-scale military operations against Iran or move toward eventually bringing the conflict to an end.
Without clear answers to such basic questions, oil prices, set in global commodities markets, are likely to get increasingly volatile.
The pricing of Brent crude has been bouncing in a wide band. When war started back in February, it traded at around $72 then surged to roughly $126 in April. Prices fell toward $73 in June and have since climbed back to around $100 a barrel.
According to Dedvukaj’s reporting, JPMorgan believes the price shock from the lack of supply was offset somewhat by consumers cutting back on the use of petroleum products like gasoline.
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