Brent and WTI — seven-day ratchet
Brent: $94.16 → $111.26 settle → $107.33. WTI: $90.21 → $103.44. Two contracts, identical shape.
Brent is up fourteen percent across the week. The April-no-change contract sits at 99.75 percent on four million dollars. Equity futures opened flat into Powell’s last meeting.
Brent: $94.16 → $111.26 settle → $107.33. WTI: $90.21 → $103.44. Two contracts, identical shape.
$103.44 / 10:18 UTC. WTI front-month sits 14.6 percent above the previous Wednesday’s session at $90.21. Brent settled at $111.26 on Tuesday, gapped lower overnight to a $103.27 floor, ratcheted back to $107.96 in the European session, and prints $107.33 now. The seven-day arc on each contract is identical in shape — five legs of higher peaks, two retracements, and a Tuesday settlement above $111 that the market spent the overnight session retesting from below.
15.5%. The Polymarket contract on Hormuz traffic returning to normal by May 15 carries $964,000 of cumulative volume at 15.5 percent. The May-end contract sits at 35.5%; the June-end at 59.5%; the Trump-announces-blockade binary at 51.5%. Across the 24-hour window covering the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps action on MSC Francesca and MSC Epaminondas — three ships targeted, two seized, all reported by Tasnim and Lloyd’s List — the timing curve moved zero, zero, minus one, zero, plus one percentage points. The crude tape ratcheted 5 percent in the same window.
$3.96M cumulative depth across five contracts. The May-15 contract took the week’s repricing. The June-end contract held the IRGC strike.
99.75%. The Polymarket no-change contract for today’s FOMC carries $4.13 million of cumulative volume at 99.75 percent. The 25-bp surprise hike has $5.18 million parked at 0.15 percent; the 25-bp surprise cut has $4.38 million parked at 0.15 percent; the 50-bp surprise cut sits at 0.05 percent on $1.82 million. $11.4 million of cumulative depth across four contracts ahead of an event the market reads as already-decided.
90.5%. The Polymarket contract on Jerome Powell departing as Fed Chair by May 31 sits at 90.5 percent. The May-15 departure contract sits at 41.5 percent. Kevin Warsh has been nominated to succeed him; the Senate confirmation contracts on Polymarket and Kalshi sit at 94 and 96 percent respectively. Today’s 18:00 UTC announcement is Powell’s last; the 18:30 UTC press conference is his final session at the lectern.
Brent +14% / SPY +0.1% / BTC −0.7% / TLT −0.8% / GLD −3.1%. One supply shock, five assets, four near-flat outcomes.
+0.1% / −3.1%. SPY closed Tuesday up 0.1 percent on the week; gold ETF was the worst major asset, down 3.1 percent. The treasury long bond is down 0.8 percent. Bitcoin is down 0.7 percent and trades $77,766 this morning, $1,400 above yesterday’s close. Equity futures are flat to fractionally positive in the pre-market hour. Four asset classes that should price a fourteen percent oil shock, and only oil has done it.
$11.4M parked, $964K untouched. The depth across the four April-meeting outcome contracts says the rate decision is the easy part. The depth across the Hormuz-by-May-15 contract says the timing curve already absorbed last week’s repricing. Powell’s remaining variable is the press conference — whether oil-driven headline CPI deserves the word “transitory” or the word “structural,” and whether a labor market the Fed has called “weak but not in distress” deserves a different framing in the last paragraph he reads as Chair.