Global governments released record emergency oil reserves overnight in a coordinated effort to cap prices. Crude went up anyway. Three more ships were struck in the Persian Gulf this morning. The SPR dump failed. Here is what that actually means.
I've watched this pattern since COVID. GameStop had no fundamentals. AMC had no fundamentals. Crypto had no fundamentals. Gold is up 40% on what exactly. Now oil ignores a coordinated G7 reserve dump because Iran said $200. Markets aren't pricing reality anymore. They're pricing the story people tell about reality.
This isn't new. It's just more visible now. When sentiment drives price, the traditional tools stop working. Reserve releases, rate decisions, earnings reports — none of it matters if the narrative is stronger than the data. The most powerful pricing mechanism in human history has become a sentiment machine.
What that means practically: oil stays elevated not because supply is actually constrained, but because nobody believes the constraint is going away. That's a different problem than the one governments are trying to solve with reserve dumps. You can't drain a sentiment with barrels. Is there any policy tool left that actually works on a sentiment-driven market, or have we just accepted that vibes set the price now?
