Zaid Admani

They were able to disrupt traffic while allowing their own ships to continue and take advantage of the higher crude prices.

According to some estimates, Iran was exporting nearly 2 million barrels of oil a day, mostly to China.

So this blockade by the US military is designed to cut that off and could cost the Iranian economy $13 billion a month.

So I guess the idea here is to force Iran back at the negotiating table,

with less leverage.

But the big risk now is retaliation from Iran, which could increase volatility in the global energy markets.

Gas prices are now already over $4 a gallon here in the U.S., and the Speaker of Iran's parliament warned on X that Americans will soon be nostalgic for $4 gas.

So we'll see if this blockade works.

I mean, oil prices did spike to nearly $105 a barrel this morning, but half pulled back to around $100 a barrel as of this recording.

Let's shift gears and talk about Goldman Sachs.

The bank just reported earnings this morning and it was kind of a mixed bag.

Q1 revenues and earnings both topped estimates.

Revenues came in at $17.2 billion and profits jumped 19% from a year ago to $5.6 billion.

The big driver was their trading business.

Equities trading revenues soared 27% to $5.3 billion, which is the bank's biggest quarter ever for that division.

CQ1 had a lot of market volatility, everything from geopolitical tensions to big swings in oil prices and all the chaos around AI disrupting tech stocks.

And volatility is generally great if you're a big bank like Goldman because more chaos means more clients are calling you to reposition their portfolio.

Beyond the equities trading, investment banking also came in strong for Goldman.

Fees jumped 48% to $2.8 billion in Q1.

So on the surface, Q1 was a great quarter.