The blockade is working. The cartel is breaking. Oil is going down.
Brent jumped 7% yesterday to over $120. The consensus says oil is heading higher and the UK is heading into stagflation. We think the consensus is wrong about oil — and wrong in two directions at once.
Underneath this week's headlines, two mechanisms are working against the prevailing narrative. The blockade of Iran is doing exactly what it was designed to do — Iranian storage is filling, wells will have to shut, and the regime is losing $400 million a day in revenue. At the same time, OPEC is fragmenting in public. The UAE has walked out. Russia's finance minister has gone on the record telling his own budget to brace for lower prices. And the question of whether Saudi Arabia eventually follows the UAE is now genuinely on the table.
In this episode of The Noise Cancelling Podcast, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair walk through how the war actually ends, why losing the UAE breaks OPEC's pricing power, what happens when the blockade and the cartel collide, and why the Bank of England's decision today maps onto exactly the view we've been arguing for weeks. Neil's medium-term view: the structural pull is downward. Brent could trade well below $50 a barrel.
About The Noise Cancelling Podcast
A weekly investment show that cuts through the noise of financial markets. Neil Woodford and Jon Adair on what the headlines miss and what it means for your money.
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