Nakul Sarda@nakul_sarda
I've stopped reading Gulf war headlines. Here's what I track instead.
We run an India-focused equity fund. 85% of India's crude comes from imports. Half of that normally passes through Hormuz. So yes — this crisis is personal.
But the information environment right now is garbage. Trump says the war ends tomorrow. Iran says Hormuz is shut forever. One analyst says $150 oil, another says $60. You can't build a portfolio view on this.
So I've narrowed it down to 4 signals. These are priced by people with real money on the line. They don't lie.
1. Ship insurance premiums through Hormuz
This is the single best signal. Lloyd's underwriters have billions at stake on every pricing call. Before the war, insuring a tanker through Hormuz cost 0.25% of the ship's value. Today it's 3.5–10% — and almost nobody is buying. A $100M tanker that cost $250K to insure now costs up to $10M. When this drops below 2%, the people with the most to lose are telling you it's getting safer. No press conference can replicate that.
2. How many ships are actually crossing
Every ship carries a GPS tracker (AIS). You can count exactly how many cross Hormuz each day. Before: 100+. Now: 8. That's a 92% collapse. You can't spin a ship being somewhere it isn't. Iran is letting some Chinese and Indian ships through, but it's a trickle. When this number crosses 30–40, trade is resuming. You can track this free on the WTO Hormuz Trade Tracker.
3. Paper oil vs real oil
This one most people miss entirely. Brent crude (the headline price) is at $112. But Dubai physical — what Asian buyers actually pay for delivered oil — is at $126. That's a $14 gap. It exists because Trump's comments keep pushing paper prices down. Traders call it jawboning. But the refiners buying cargo aren't getting any discount. If you're looking at Brent to assess India's oil bill, you're looking at the wrong number.
4. The mid-April cliff
Multiple emergency measures expire around the same time. The 400 million barrel SPR release runs dry ~April 15. The US waiver letting India buy Russian crude expires. Formosa Plastics has declared force majeure from April 1. Right now these stopgaps are keeping the supply gap at ~5 mb/d. Without them, BCA Research estimates it doubles to 10 mb/d — the largest crude disruption ever. If Hormuz doesn't reopen by mid-April, we're in uncharted territory.
Bottom line: track the insurance premium, the ship count, the paper-physical spread, and the April timeline. Everything else is noise.
