{"id":428374,"date":"2026-03-12T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T15:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/britains-defence-secretary-says-iran-is-likely-laying-mines-in-strait-of-hormuz\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T15:25:10","slug":"britains-defence-secretary-says-iran-is-likely-laying-mines-in-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/britains-defence-secretary-says-iran-is-likely-laying-mines-in-strait-of-hormuz\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain’s Defence Secretary says Iran is likely laying mines in Strait of Hormuz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WTI crude oil is now up 10% and has risen above the highs from Asian trading.<\/p>\n

Britain’s Defence Secretary says “it’s clear Iran is likely laying mines” in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

That’s an odd phrasing that indicates both clarity and uncertainty. I guess we won’t really know if there are mines until:<\/p>\n

1) Iran says so<\/p>\n

2) A ship hits them<\/p>\n

3) Someone else discovers and clears them<\/p>\n

Also importantly, Defense Minister Healey said mine clearance is near impossible during conflict and the best way to reopen the shipping route is to de-escalate. So overall, I take this as a call to de-escalate.<\/p>\n

Further hurting equity market is that Fed rate cut pricing is down to 24 bps for the year. It was at 60 bps before the war started and we’ve got a poor non-farm payrolls report since then. It’s an indication that markets are giving up the idea that this will be a short conflict. The dollar index has now broken Monday’s high.<\/p>\n

With the latest move in oil, we’re seeing fresh lows of AUD, NZD and CAD. Previously they were holding up well in the conflict and AUD\/USD this week touched a multi-year high but the downsides for global growth in a prolonged conflict are now starting to bite.<\/p>\n

Again, I find the public call for de-escalation to be what’s most important here. In private, the US is likely getting tremendous pressure from allies to find an off-ramp for the conflict. The US itself has some levers to pull for domestic oil prices but most other countries don’t.<\/p>\n

Brazil’s Lula just hit the wires saying “oil prices are out of control.”<\/p>\n

It’s a precarious moment right now but it can all change with one tweet from Trump. Unfortunately, right now he’s talking about Iran’s soccer team not coming to the US-hosted World Cup.<\/p>\n

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WTI crude oil is now up 10% and has risen above the highs from Asian trading. Britain’s Defence Secretary says “it’s clear Iran is likely laying mines” in the Strait of Hormuz.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}