How many ships have passed the Strait of Hormuz and how many were attacked?

Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed by more than 95%, with only 279 transits recorded between February 28 and April 12 and 22 ships attacked since the war began. The blockade of Iranian ports by the US and Iran's conflicting routing instructions are disrupting one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments, with more than 45 ships transiting only since April 8. The escalation is a major risk to global energy flows and has already helped push oil prices up about 50%.

Analysis

The market is treating Hormuz as a binary closure risk, but the more important near-term issue is routing friction rather than absolute shutdown. When traffic falls this sharply, the winners are not just the obvious LNG/oil producers; they are the shippers with available hulls outside the Gulf and the traders who can arbitrage prompt dislocations into deferred barrels. The second-order loser set broadens quickly to refiners in Asia and Europe that rely on Middle East feedstock and to any carrier with high Gulf exposure, because even a partial reroute forces longer voyage times, higher insurance, and a tightness in effective tanker supply.

The blockade introduces a weird asymmetry: it is more disruptive to Gulf export economics than to global supply in the first few weeks, because the system can limp along on stockpiles and re-routing while freight rates and demurrage explode. That means the most profitable trade is often not outright commodity beta but the spread between physical scarcity and equity lag—especially in shippers, OFS, and select LNG names with long-duration contracts. A sustained 4-8 week disruption would also pressure Asian macro first, which can cascade into weaker chemical, airline, and industrial demand even if headline oil stays elevated.

The key catalyst is not the blockade announcement itself, but whether Iran credibly enforces the alternative lane and whether a single high-casualty attack triggers a much wider insurance pullback. If attacks remain sporadic, the market may start to fade the risk premium within days; if a major vessel is lost or mines are confirmed, the premium can re-rate for months. The contrarian angle is that the current move may still underprice operational brittleness in the tanker fleet: one or two weeks of elevated routing uncertainty can remove more effective capacity than the lost volume suggests, forcing freight spikes before oil fully reprices.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long FRO / TNK / INSW for 2-6 weeks: asymmetric upside if Gulf routing stays constrained and Suez-like freight dislocations emerge; cut if headline risk fades and spot rates fail to accelerate within 10 trading days.
• Long LNG / short industrials pair: buy FLNG or GLOP against short XLI or a shipping-sensitive European industrial basket for 1-3 months; thesis is that energy route disruption lifts LNG transport economics faster than it hurts contracted upstream cash flows.
• Buy XOP or OIH vs short airline basket (JETS) on a 1-2 month horizon: crude and jet-fuel sensitivity is immediate, while E&P cash flows reprice upward faster than downstream demand destruction; stop if Brent retraces the risk premium.
• Use call spreads on XLE rather than outright longs: 1-3 month bull call spreads capture an energy risk premium while limiting reversal risk if diplomacy restores partial traffic flow.
• Avoid chasing integrated majors here; prefer shippers and niche logistics names where the market usually underestimates duration of freight tightness and insurance repricing.