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Crude oil soars past $100pb: global implications are huge!

March 9, 2026·11 min·1 clip

U.S. crude oil just hit $120 per barrel as Middle East tensions escalate, threatening a new global energy crisis.

The episode opens with an immediate price report: US crude hit $120 per barrel at the Monday open before retreating to $107, while Brent peaked at $113 and both remain above $100. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical energy choke point, is described as presently closed. US natural gas is up 6% on the day and European TTF gas futures face a deeply negative open. Equity markets in Asia opened with heavy losses and US and European futures signal losses of two to three percent. Gold is down despite its inflation-hedge reputation, with a Bloomberg report suggesting Middle East disruptions are stranding gold in Dubai and depressing prices there. China has ordered its largest refiners to stop oil exports in preparation for a prolonged war. The US strategic petroleum reserve holds approximately 450 million barrels — roughly 60% of capacity and well below the 640 million barrels of recent years — limiting its usefulness as a durable response to a sustained shock. The host projects that oil will eventually peak but remain elevated for weeks to months, fuelling a global inflation revival and slowing growth. The US economy was already showing stress before the conflict: February's non-farm payroll report showed a loss of 92,000 jobs rather than gains, manufacturing payrolls fell, the prior month's figure was revised down 69,000, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 4.4%, while wages accelerated to 3.8%. Retail sales remained firm, driven by wealthy consumers, but the combination of job losses and rising wages alongside surging energy costs creates a difficult stagflationary mix. The US two-year yield spiked to 3.63% after the jobs report, and the 10-year yield hit 4.20%, with global yields broadly rising on the expectation that central banks will need to tighten to address the energy-driven inflation. The host argues the Fed will likely not be able to cut rates twice this year as previously anticipated and raises the possibility that even a politically motivated cut might fail to transmit to markets, as bond investors could reject what they see as an unjustified move. She cites the September 2024 jumbo cut as a direct precedent: the 10-year yield rebounded 120 basis points in the three months that followed. A structurally important detail is the food price channel: the Haber-Bosch process, developed over a century ago, produces nitrogen fertilizer using natural gas, and the Gulf region handles a large share of global nitrogen fertilizer trade — both are now disrupted. This process supports roughly half of global food production, meaning the conflict is likely to push food prices higher in the coming weeks, ahead of any future CPI prints. The episode closes with a reminder not to panic sell and a call to follow SwissQuote's social channels and YouTube for ongoing updates.

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