MacroVoices #539 Rory Johnston: Hormuz Crisis, is it Really Over?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high net worth individuals, family offices and other sophisticated investors.
Macro Voices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics, telling it like it is. Bullish or bearish, no holds barred. Now, here are your hosts, Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.

**Erik Townsend** (0:33)
Macro Voices episode 539 was produced on July 2nd, 2026 I'm Erik Townsend.
Commodity context founder Rory Johnston returns as this week's feature interview guest. Rory and I will discuss the Hormuz crisis, China's role in tempering global oil demand, and the outlook for what comes next as negotiations evolve in the Middle East.
We're excited to introduce a show format change this week. I'll be stepping away from the post-game market wrap segment to make room for Maciel Begden to join the team. The old post-game segment will be replaced by our new and improved Macro Voices trading desk, where Patrick and Maciel will deliver a fast-paced market wrap featuring Patrick's Trade of the Week, fresh positioning insights from the Commitment of Traders reports, and a concise breakdown of the key markets you need to watch. It's a new addition to Macro Voices, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

**Patrick Ceresna** (1:29)
And I'm Patrick Ceresna. We saw another week of meaningful repricing across the macro markets. The S&P 500 advanced roughly 164 basis points week over week, continuing to push higher as risk assets remained firm. But the more notable move week over week was once again in crude oil, with WTI falling another 690 basis points to 6726 As the market continued to unwind geopolitical premium and press the downside in energy. So we've got some important moves developing here. And in our new Macro Voices trading desk segment, Ms. Siela and I will break down these charts in greater detail, along with the latest commitment of traders positioning to see where the crowding and the real market risks may be building. This week's feature interview guest is Commodity Context founder Rory Johnson.
Erik and Rory discussed the crude oil outlook, what's really driving the latest collapse in oil prices, whether the move really reflects fair value or forced flows, and what the physical and geopolitical backdrop means for energy markets from here and more. Erik's interview with Rory Johnson is coming up as Macro Voices continues right here at macrovoices.com.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:54)
And now, with this week's special guest, here's your host, Erik Townsend.

**Erik Townsend** (3:00)
Joining me now is Commodity Context founder Rory Johnston. Rory, straight of four moves, let's dive right in. You and I both thought that it would be nearly impossible for it to stay closed this long without a much higher price reaction. So why don't we start with what's happened, how we got here, and what's driving the price action?

**Rory Johnston** (3:21)
Yeah, so I think, you know, looking at the straight right now, and obviously thanks for having me back on the show, Erik. I love, always love our check-ins. So if we look at what's happening in Hormuz right now, we have a jailbreak going on. The pace of flows out of Hormuz have been impressive. On multiple days over the past week or two, we've seen flows out of Hormuz alone exceed 20 million barrels, which is the pre-war level, combined with the fact that we've seen all the other reroutes, Yonbu and Fujairah and everything else, all maxed out. We've probably seen days where we've had kind of 130% or so of pre-war supply coming out of the Middle East. But I think what's important to note here is that you're seeing a lot of additional things kind of juice those numbers, most notably the drawdown of the long stranded barrels that have been floating in the Gulf for the past three, four months now. So we've been seeing those drawdown by at least a pace of over four million barrels a day. And by our numbers, you can only likely sustain that for another week or two. So eventually, as though as that drawdown of effectively floating storage falls out of the market, and I'm using the broader oil and water category than the stricter floating storage category, but after that falls out, you'll then need to sustain that exit with kind of fresh loadings. And fresh loadings have materially lagged the pace of exits. So on a 10-day kind of trailing average basis, and all of these numbers I'm going to quote to you now are on that basis. I'm hopefully publishing a piece in two days, kind of going through all this math. What we've seen in terms of coming out of Hormuz is we've seen give or take kind of 12 million barrels a day getting out of Hormuz. But we've only seen loadings of around five-ish, five to six million barrels a day. So the rest of that's being made up for by big drawdowns in kind of remainder of that floating crude that was in Hormuz.