Oil Is Screaming, Fertilizer Costs Are Insane, and Retail Is Buying $XOM Before Earnings — Here's the Play
With Brent above $112 and 20,000 sailors stranded near a closed strait, energy earnings season just got very, very interesting
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XOM EXXON MOBIL CORP | buy | $171.30 | — | — | — |
| CVX CHEVRON CORP | buy | $211.70 | — | — | — |
| GLD SPDR GOLD TRUST | buy | $414.70 | — | — | — |
| NTR Nutrien Ltd. | buy | $75.50 | — | — | — |
| OXY OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM CORP /DE/ | buy | $65.56 | — | — | — |
| AAL American Airlines Group Inc. | sell | $10.29 | — | — | — |
| SPCE Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc | sell | $2.29 | — | — | — |
Let's set the scene: Brent crude is sitting above $112/barrel, the Strait of Hormuz is processing 2-5 ships per day instead of the normal 130, and roughly 20,000 seafarers are stranded on ~2,000 vessels going nowhere fast. Bloomberg's podcasts this week read less like financial news and more like a Tom Clancy novel. Retail traders have noticed — and they're front-running energy earnings hard.
On the agriculture side, a fifth-generation Illinois farmer on Bloomberg described fertilizer costs exploding from $11,000 to $21,000 in weeks for the same 100-acre corn plot — a near 91% spike. That's not a rounding error, that's a supply chain having an existential crisis. $CF already got its moment; the sentiment crowd is now eyeing $NTR and $MOS... wait, MOS is covered. Eyes on $NTR then. Meanwhile, SpaceX is eyeing a confidential IPO filing for a June 2025 debut — but geopolitical chaos is making risk assets about as popular as a middle seat on a Landmark 'flight' that's actually a bus.
Earnings season just got a tailwind shaped exactly like a missile strike — energy bulls have been handed a narrative, a supply shock, and a Fed too distracted by a government shutdown to ruin the party.