Today, the market surged up to 4% on intraday highs as the Pentagon confirmed that US Airstrikes in Bahgdad killed Iran's top commander, Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was considered to be responsible for the attacks by Iran on the US Embassy earlier this week, and the strikes have been framed as a retaliation for those attacks, as well as a preemptive action to prevent alleged further attacks in the works on US targets in the region.
This afternoon, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei promised retaliation ("Severe Revenge"), and the US announced that 3500 additional troops would be deploying to the Middle East.
Concerns are obviously mounting about the nature of Iranian retaliation for the strikes, with the major concerns being either an escalation to war between the US & Iran, or that we will see Iran begin to attack crucial infrastructure in the region again, like they allegedly did in Saudi Arabia this past September.
It is important to remember however, that when last September's attack took 5.7mmb out of global supply instantaneously, and essentially halved Saudi Arabia's production capacity, the markets spiked, but had essentially returned to flat within a few trading days.
That is to say - it's anyone's guess whether we continue to climb or the market does a quick turnaround over the next week of trading.
We did back off intraday highs by the close, where ULSD was up +.0373 to 2.0614, RBOB was up +.0446 to 1.7488, and Crude settled at $63.05/bbl.
However, the story is still developing so it's hard to know what impact any late afternoon & weekend developments may or may not have on the the electronics as well as Monday's open.
Stay Tuned!
