Transcript: Wildest day for oil ever

This is an audio transcript of the Unhedged podcast episode: ‘Wildest day for oil ever’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Katie Martin

So is the US conflict with Iran over. I’m not just trying to be a smart-ass here, I genuinely don’t know. Earlier this week, Donald Trump said the conflict was, and I quote very complete, pretty much, while his secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, outlined a plan for the next phase of the bombardment.

An enterprising reporter somewhere asked Trump to explain which it was — very complete or still under way. The answer, you could say both. Confused? Well welcome to the club. But investors seem pretty sure they’ve spotted a Taco, T-A-C-O you guys, Trump always chickens out. Oil prices have dropped back and stocks are picking up.

Today on the show, what do investors really make of this war, and what is our best guess of what happens next in the markets? This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I’m Katie Martin, a markets economist at FT HQ in Old London town, and I’m joined all the way from the big apple, New York City by his Excellency, the very Reverend Robert Armstrong off of the Unhedged newsletter. Rob, like seriously, what is going on?

Robert Armstrong

Congregants at Our Lady of Eternal Liquidity, peace be with you. And it’s really hard to say what markets are responding to is not anything about the world outside of Donald Trump’s head. They’re purely responding to the fact that what he signals very strongly yesterday with those comments was he is . . .

Katie Martin

Yesterday being Monday.

Robert Armstrong

I’m sorry, Monday. With those comments was he’s looking for the exit. He’s had his fun, he’s dropped his bombs, and now he’s looking to talk about, think about, do other things. That doesn’t mean anything has changed on the ground necessarily.

Katie Martin

No.

Robert Armstrong

But the markets were anticipating and now they have received confirmation that in the president’s eyes, he wants this thing to be over. And that’s a meaningful fact, even if the facts on the ground war wise haven’t necessarily changed between last week and this week. So, you know, you use the phrase Taco, I’m hesitant to use that here. Not only because it’s kind of a joke and this is a war, but also using that term creates the impression that Trump can just close the door on this thing.

And I don’t think this is that kind of a situation. There are other people involved, to say the least. So the Iranians might have a couple of words to say about whether this war is over, so might the Israelis. So that’s something that this is not liberation day. Trump’s tariff announcements in April where when he chickens out, they are over, right? He is in charge of that, in a way he is not in charge of this war.

Katie Martin

Yeah, so everyone’s talking about this in terms of it being like a Taco thing. As you say, that might not be right for a number of reasons, but one thing that we do know is that we know what we don’t know, and so we’re not gonna get into the geopolitics because we’ve got much, much cleverer colleagues who have got a be