Oil Prices: The Real Economy's Dirty Secret

1. Oil prices aren’t pure supply-demand: They’re skewed by geopolitics like the Strait of Hormuz choke point because buyers willingly accept risky routes instead of safer ones for a discount.

2. Price beats value as a signal: When oil’s cost ignores real fundamentals, it acts like a better “index” of global risk, politics, and psychology than any textbook met…