Bitunix Analyst: From Hormuz to the Fed — Global Capital Faces Simultaneous Supply Shock and Policy Uncertainty
BlockBeats News, July 20th - The US-Iran conflict has escalated further. Iran has announced it will stop implementing the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, warning that if US military action continues, it will transition to a full-offensive phase. The US, meanwhile, has now conducted airstrikes on Iran for the ninth consecutive night, and has deployed additional F-16, F-35, and aerial refueling aircraft to the Middle East. Iran claims to have struck US military targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, while Iranian media has described Strait of Hormuz shipping traffic as having "fallen to zero."
This means the market needs to re-evaluate more than just short-term oil price volatility—it must now assess the "flow risk" of the global energy supply chain. When Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb both face simultaneous blockade risk, oil-producing nations—even with pipeline alternatives—can only partially substitute maritime capacity. Iraq has begun exporting crude via a Syrian route, reflecting that regional countries are accelerating the construction of "de-Hormuz" backup systems. But these alternative routes themselves remain exposed to missile, drone, and infrastructure attack risk.
Even more notably, Iran has for the first time publicly listed Middle East AI infrastructure as a potential strike target. This means the conflict's spillover scope has expanded from traditional oil and gas facilities to data centers, power, desalination, and compute networks. For markets, this brings two layers of impact: first, energy prices could transmit into the AI supply chain via power and cooling costs; second, AI capex—long viewed as the market's core long-term growth engine—must now be incorporated into a geopolitical risk discount framework, meaning valuation logic itself may need to adjust.
At the same time, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is pushing a communication framework with even less forward guidance—with markets even developing an AI-based "WarshGPT" tool to parse his historical speeches for policy signals. While bond traders broadly expect the Fed to hold in July, pricing for a 25bp hike in September or October has clearly risen. The underlying logic: energy shocks and AI investment demand together may make inflation materially stickier than any single CPI print suggests.
Markets are now simultaneously trading two scenarios that rarely coexisted in the past—Hormuz risk pushing energy and shipping costs higher, and a hawkish Fed regaining the narrative while reducing transparency. When these two forces stack together, what is truly being repriced is not any single oil-price move, but the potential upward shift of the entire global cost-of-capital anchor. For risk assets, volatility in this environment will increasingly come from the resonance of "policy unpredictability + energy supply uncertainty," rather than from any single economic data print.
In the near term, markets will focus on three watchpoints: the actual recovery of Hormuz shipping, whether the Houthis formally announce a Bab-el-Mandeb blockade, and the trajectory of Treasury yields ahead of the July FOMC. Should energy risk fail to cool and 2-year Treasury yields remain elevated, global risk appetite for high-valuation tech and high-leverage assets will continue to face pressure.
