Wall Street is waking up to an escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Why it matters: The war is already threatening global energy supplies, and the longer it goes on, the higher the risks are for the economy and markets, which have grown accustomed to shorter conflagrations.

Catch up quick: Oil prices spiked to their highest level in over a year when markets opened last night and then receded somewhat. They have jumped again on news of an attack on a Saudi refinery.

• The global benchmark Brent crude is trading around $78 a barrel this morning, up about 8% from the close on Friday.

What to watch: The extent to which oil prices increase will drive everything else in markets this week, writes Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The latest: The biggest oil refinery in Saudi Arabia sustained damage overnight, per the kingdom's press agency and multiple news reports.

• While the details are scarce, it could represent an expansion of the conflict to petroleum industry sites.

Zoom in: Most investment portfolios have not priced in a long-lasting war.

• They're "overweight peace," as Bob Elliott, the chief investment officer at Unlimited Funds, put it.
• The "Nothing Ever Happens" force is strong in most traders today, he wrote over the weekend.
• The types of assets that do well during wars are different. Bonds may rally initially, but "almost always underperform." Stocks typically trail harder commodities.

Flashback: This conflict looks to be potentially more impactful than the U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities last summer.

• "This round of conflict is more ambitious in scale and considerably higher risk than the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025, which had little discernible impact upon markets," Tina Fordham, geostrategist and founder of Fordham Global Foresight, wrote in a note early today.

State of play: Despite the U.S. efforts to keep oil flowing, ships are already avoiding the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway abutting Iran that handles about a fourth of the world's seaborne oil trade.

• Even without a physical blockade and closure, insurance rates are skyrocketing for tankers moving crude and petroleum products.

Driving the news: President Trump said yesterday the fight could span up to four weeks. That will likely push oil prices up further.

• "If we're looking at this kind of level of military activity in the Gulf for four weeks, I think we will probably have some serious problems, particularly in Asia, for availability of crude oil and oil products," oil markets analyst Ellen Wald tells Axios.

Zoom out: The U.S. is the largest global producer of oil. It had moderate energy prices as a tailwind going into this conflict.

Reality check: That doesn't insulate Americans from rising prices amid such a large shock to supply.

Between the lines: Higher oil prices mean higher gas prices, which Americans hate, and it can translate into higher everything prices, as we learned in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

• That would likely put some pressure on Trump, as affordability concerns are already crushing his approval ratings.

The bottom line: Markets aren't the most important part of a war, when human lives and geopolitical stability is at stake.

• But markets can work as a leverage point in a conflict. For now oil is that leverage point.

Investors are again flocking to gold in the face of uncertainty.

Why it matters: The rise in gold and precious metal prices are typically the investor response to global tensions. They rallied to record highs last year as U.S. hostilities with Venezuela intensified.

Catch up quick: Gold also rose after "Liberation Day" last April and when Trump threatened to take over Greenland in January.

The big picture: This is all part of what some investors call the "debasement" trade, the hunt for assets more insulated from geopolitical and fiscal shocks.

Nearly one week after he wrote a viral doomsday AI scenario that spooked the markets — and tanked the stocks of companies like DoorDash and IBM — the founder of Citrini Research, James van Geelen, does have at least one regret.

• "If I knew it was going to get 30 million views, I would not have mentioned single stocks at all," he said in an interview on the Odd Lots podcast out on Saturday.

Why it matters: There's a new order in market influencing, a change that has been underway for a while but came into focus just recently.

The big picture: Off-the-cuff Substacks and posts on X grab investor attention, and they shift stock prices and market narratives.

• Traditional sell-side research and even investor letters from prominent executives are less momentous.

The latest: Contrast the Citrini response with what happened this weekend when new Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel issued his first shareholder letter.

• Picking up the mantle from his legendary predecessor, Warren Buffett, Abel assured investors that Berkshire wasn't making any major changes.
• With a record level of cash on hand — $373 billion — he said the company was looking for the right investments to deploy some of this dry powder.

Zoom out: This all was dutifully written up by the business press, but viral it was not, a sharp contrast to the outsize attention that Buffett has gotten with his writing over the years.

Between the lines: Investor letters and Wall Street research typically include disclaimers and disclosures of conflicts of interest. Neither research by Citrini nor a post on X is subject to the same strictures, as FT Alphaville notes.

The bottom line: AI is supposed to make writing a commodity. Clearly there's still a market for the human written word, but traditional voices might have to yell louder to be heard.