Brent Crude Oil Price

Brent is the benchmark for the two-thirds of world oil that trades by sea, which is why a chokepoint shock shows up here before it shows up anywhere else. The chart plots the spot price over the last twelve months, with the trailing three-month change alongside it, from the source named under the chart; the page refreshes from the live data every hour and shows nothing cached or estimated. It is a price measured against its own recent past — not a model of what oil should cost.

Read the direction, not the level. On this page a rising Brent is the alarm — it is the disruption in the straits reaching the price. A falling Brent does not mean the risk is gone; it means the shock has not yet reached the market.

For US equities, oil is the one input the economy cannot substitute on short notice. Every post-war oil shock has shown up in inflation, interest rates and stock prices within months: in 1973 the embargo quadrupled oil and took 48% off the S&P 500 while inflation ran above 12%; in 1979 a supply cut of barely 5% doubled crude and forced the Fed to hike above 19%; and the 2022 spike to $139 ran alongside 9.1% CPI and a 25% equity drawdown.

The two directions are not symmetric. A rising Brent is fuel and freight costs feeding inflation within weeks, inflation forcing the Federal Reserve's hand on rates, and the rate path repricing every stock — that is the alarm, and it is unambiguous. A falling Brent is genuine relief for the inflation and rate outlook — but it can also mean the shock simply has not arrived yet: while the transit counts stay below baseline and the days of cover are still draining, a calm price is the buffer working, not the risk gone.

The cause of the current move is counted tanker by tanker on the Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb transit pages, and the buffer absorbing it is measured on the days-of-cover page. This price is where all three meet.