U.S. headline and core inflation are heading back above 3% once more, and inflation expectations for the year ahead are building a head of steam. The only crumb of comfort for the Federal Reserve is that long-dated price rise expectations are better behaved - but even these have been irked by the Iran-war-related oil shock. A relatively short energy market hiatus can be taken on the chin by most central banks for a while, but their big worry is that a protracted crude outage feeds the [Read more]

Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a published written message on Thursday that a new chapter for the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz has been taking shape since the Iran war with the United States and Israel broke out on February 28. Iran's Supreme Leader said that Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as "the enemy's abuses of the waterway." The Supreme Leader added that new management of the Strait of Hormuz would bring calm, progress and economic [Read more]

The U.S. is pushing for other countries to form an international coalition to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a State Department cable seen by Reuters, as oil prices surged to their highest in more than four years on fears of longer-term disruptions to global fuel supplies. Two months into the war that started with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, the vital sea channel remains closed, choking off 20% of the world's supplies of oil and gas. That has sent global [Read more]

J.P. Morgan on Thursday said the UAE could attract greater investments from U.S. companies once it is in a position to pump more oil after the country decided to leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries group. The fourth-largest producer in OPEC said on Tuesday it would exit the group on May 1. Key points from JPM's note: * The country's decision carries no immediate practical implications for its ability to produce and sell more oil, as the Strait of Hormuz is blocked. * [Read more]

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed the United Arab Emirates' move to pull out of OPEC and said he thinks the move could help lower oil prices. "I think it's great," Trump said when asked by reporters at the White House what he thought of the UAE's decision. The UAE - one of the group's biggest producers - said on Tuesday it was quitting OPEC, dealing a blow to the group as an unprecedented energy crisis caused by the Iran war exposes discord among Gulf nations. "I think [Read more]

The United Arab Emirates' decision to quit OPEC and OPEC+ has brought years of tensions with Saudi Arabia out into the open, marking a strategic break with Saudi-led oil governance in a rebalancing of power shaped by the Iran war. Political analysts and regional experts said the move to leave the groups of oil-producing nations, announced on Tuesday, was more than just a dispute over OPEC oil output quotas that Gulf sources say Abu Dhabi sees as tilted against the UAE. It is also part of a [Read more]