War in Iran Approaches 100 Day Mark

The immediate market impact is not the missile count; it is the repricing of regional logistics risk. Repeated interception episodes raise the probability that shipping, aviation, and energy infrastructure participants start building a persistent geopolitical premium into routes, insurance, and inventory buffers, which is bullish for defensive supply-chain redundancy and bearish for just-in-time operators with Middle East exposure. The second-order effect is that even without a direct energy hit, refinery margins, freight spreads, and war-risk insurance can widen before crude itself meaningfully moves.

The key catalyst is escalation frequency, not escalation magnitude. If attacks remain episodic, markets will treat this as a headline risk with a 1-2 session fade; if we get any evidence of broadening to maritime assets or Gulf infrastructure, the move can become self-reinforcing over a 2-8 week window as carriers reroute and counterparties tighten terms. The asymmetry is that downside to risk assets is immediate on a single failed interception, while upside from de-escalation tends to be slow and incomplete because insurers and operators typically do not unwind precautionary measures quickly.

Consensus may be underestimating how much of the shock transmits through bottlenecks rather than outright damage. Even intercepted strikes can still force higher security spend, slower customs throughput, and precautionary stockpiling, which tends to favor domestic defense, cybersecurity, and U.S.-centric industrial names over globally exposed transport and chemicals. The contrarian view is that the market may overprice a straight-line oil spike; absent damage to export nodes, crude can stay range-bound while volatility, freight, and defense budgets do the real work.