The situation in Iran is unpredictable, with top whales waiting to buy the dip!

01 Negotiation—Rosensplitting: Was it actually negotiated, or not?

Late at night on March 21, Trump issued a threat on Truth Social: If Iran does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the U.S. military will begin destroying assets starting with the biggest power generation plants, one by one. Calm tone, but vicious content…

The market took it at face value. Asia’s stock markets had a “Black Monday”: Hang Seng fell 3.6%, Nikkei fell 3.48%, South Korea plunged 6.49%, and China’s A-share Shanghai Composite briefly broke below 3,800 points, down 3.63% on the day, with 145 stocks hitting the daily limit down.

Brent crude jumped above $113. In China, gas stations lined up with long queues. The National Development and Reform Commission temporarily intervened in refined oil pricing for the first time since 2013. Under the mechanism, it should have risen by 2,205 yuan per ton, but in practice it only allowed an increase of 1,160 yuan per ton.

Then, less than 40 hours later, it reversed.

On the morning of March 23, in all caps, Trump announced: Over the past two days, the U.S. and Iran had a “very good and productive” in-depth dialogue, and he had instructed the Department of Defense to delay the strikes by five days, depending on the progress of the negotiations.

The fastest to react were oil prices and gold: Brent crashed from $113, down more than 10%, and at one point fell below $97; WTI’s drop briefly exceeded 12% in an instant; gold narrowed from an 8.22% plunge to -1.22%. After the European and U.S. markets turned from down to up, the Dow and Nasdaq each gained 1.38%.

Then Iran spoke.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry statement said it had not negotiated with the U.S., and its position remained unchanged. Foreign Minister Aragchi was even more blunt, saying they would not talk until military objectives were achieved. The counterpart Iran of the “dialogue” mentioned by the U.S.—Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—called it fake news, saying the U.S. was manipulating the financial and oil markets.

Brent rebounded from -11% and finally closed down 10.81%.

Within a single day, oil prices went through a full roller coaster. The market was being led by the nose; the direction was not fundamentals, but Trump’s next tweet.

This isn’t the first time. Looking back at the past ten days of the old man’s complete posts on Truth Social:

On March 14, he said he had destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capability and called for China, Japan, South Korea, France, and the UK to send warships to protect the strait; the phrasing sounded like a battle report;

On March 18, after Israel struck the South Pars gas field, he both tried to distance the U.S. from responsibility and threatened that if Qatar’s LNG were attacked again, he would “completely blow up the entire South Pars gas field with a power like Iran has never seen”;

On March 21, the ultimatum for 48 hours;

On March 23, 15 points of consensus—delay by five days.

Each time he spoke, it was chosen around key market timing nodes. The “good news” on March 23 was released precisely during the window after European stocks had already fallen and before U.S. stocks opened.

02 Volatile, or just imagining?

The market treats every reversal as a new signal, but if you zoom out and extend the perspective, the conclusion might be different.

At some stage of a war, negotiations are inevitable. No matter how things turn out in the fighting, it ultimately becomes talks—whether they can’t talk and then swap people, swap terms, or swap timing. Trump’s ultimatum becomes a delay, and Iran’s blanket denial—at essence, both fit into the same logic framework: both sides need room to create for negotiations, while neither side can look like the one proactively begging for a truce.

From this angle, whether Trump’s announcement of “15 points of consensus” is true or false is not as important as the market reaction suggests. What matters is why he said it at this time, and what happened after he said it.

What happened was: U.S. stocks dodged Black Tuesday; Brent’s single-day drop exceeded 10%; gold retreated from high levels; global markets briefly caught their breath.

The market interpreted this as “the situation easing.” But a more accurate description might be: the market is hedging emotion with emotion. When stocks rise, it’s fear about missing out; when stocks fall, it’s fear about getting trampled. The directions are opposite, but the driving force is the same…

Humans are, after all, creatures of emotion. In the 1973 oil crisis, panic-driven selling in markets lasted for months; in the 2003 Iraq War, stocks actually rose on the day the war began. Geopolitical events’ impact on markets has never been linear, but retail investors’ reactions are almost always linear: when it rises, they chase; when it falls, they cut. When news arrives, they move first and think later.

The question is: in this Rosensplitting, whose information is complete? What retail investors see is Trump’s tweets and news headlines—what do the big sharks see?

03 What are all the big sharks doing?

Warren Buffett did not comment on the Iran war.

But numbers speak. Since 2023, Berkshire has continuously net sold stocks for 13 straight quarters. Apple has cut its stake by more than 75%, Amazon is nearly fully cleared out, and Bank of America has continued to reduce holdings. By Q3 2025, cash reserves reached $38.17 billion, all parked in short-term U.S. Treasuries; at current yields, that’s roughly $17 billion per year in risk-free interest. By March 2026, cash is still stable in the $34 billion to $38 billion range.

This is a systematic strategic retreat spanning multiple quarters.

His logic has never changed: the market is too expensive; cash is safer than stocks; and you wait for opportunities. The line he often says—cash is like oxygen; it’s not noticeable most of the time, but at critical moments it saves your life—reads with a different weight now.

Then look at other big shots on Wall Street.

Ray Dalio wrote on X, characterizing the Strait of Hormuz as “the final battle,” drawing a parallel to Britain’s 1956 Suez Crisis. He warned that this is not a quick strike-and-end affair, but a prolonged war that could reshape global energy and hegemony patterns. He poured fuel on the fire…

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said plainly at an energy conference: The futures market has not really fully priced in the true destruction caused by the closure of Hormuz; physical supply chain disruptions have only just begun.

Kevin O’Leary, on the other hand, predicted that after the conflict ends, a new order will be formed under which multiple countries jointly manage control of the strait—calling it a “global shift in power, which in the long run is a good thing.”

These people may appear to take different positions, but they share one common point: none of them have strongly demanded a ceasefire. There’s no fierce moral condemnation, no collective petition for peace, and no unified line saying “this war is a disaster for the global economy.”

They are observing. They are waiting. Waiting for what?

04 Bargain-hunting feast

If oil prices remain above $100 for the long term, global industrial assets will face a systematic repricing.

The logic chain is as follows: high oil prices raise energy costs, energy costs raise inflation, inflation forces central banks to keep high interest rates, high rates compress corporate valuations, stock markets fall, and asset prices retreat. At the same time, profit margins for manufacturing industries that rely on energy imports get squeezed from both sides—input prices rise and demand weakens.

For people holding large amounts of cash and waiting to buy, this is a feast.

Buffett doesn’t need to trade favors with Trump to benefit from this crisis; he only needs to wait until the market drops to a price he considers reasonable, then make his move. This is what he has done for seventy years. Dalio’s narrative of imperial decline—if it becomes true—means a structural reshuffling of dollar-asset portfolios, which is exactly the kind of hunting ground that macro funds like his specialize in. O’Leary’s “post-war new order” means a new infrastructure investment cycle—precisely the story private capital likes most.

These people may not be on the same side as Trump. But isn’t taking advantage of the moment basically part of what top-tier finance people do?

A Goldman Sachs trader put it plainly: a single exogenous event—the duration of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—can trigger repricing across all assets, and diversification cannot hedge this kind of risk. The other side of that statement is: if you hold cash before the closure, hold cash during the most panicked moments, and then wait until repricing is completed, you’re in the right position.

Retail investors queue up at gas stations, while big sharks wait for assets to be discounted—this is how oddly this world works.

05 Who profits, and who foots the bill?

High oil prices mean different things to different people.

For the U.S. as a whole, of course it’s favorable. High oil prices bring windfall profits to U.S. shale oil companies, energy export revenues soar, and the petrodollar system is reinforced. But it’s unfavorable for Trump personally—what he cares most about is inflation data and midterm elections; if oil stays high, voters will speak with their ballots. This explains why he was eager to announce negotiation progress while fighting.

For China, it’s a mix of good and bad, but structurally it tilts more toward good.

The downside is that it’s still true: China remains the world’s largest crude oil importer. In 2025, its import volume exceeded 11.5 million barrels per day. Three-quarters of its oil is dependent on imports, and 40% of the crude flowing through the Strait of Hormuz ultimately goes to China. For every $10 increase in oil prices, manufacturing cost pressure rises another layer—especially since PPI is already negative for multiple quarters on both ends.

But the upside has a thicker base: China’s crude oil consumption peaked in 2023. Since then, demand for refined fuels has continued to decline at a pace of 3% to 5% per year. The penetration rate for new electric vehicles is expected to exceed 57% in 2026. About one-third of new heavy trucks are already pure electric. In solar, wind power, energy storage, and lithium batteries, China’s global share across the entire supply chain ranges from 50% to 98%.

No matter which country accelerates the deployment of new energy because of this crisis, it can’t get around China’s supply chain and equipment. The crisis is someone else’s crisis, but the orders are China’s orders.

China also has a card that hasn’t been sufficiently noticed: coal-to-chemicals. China’s modern coal-to-chemicals capacity accounts for over 90% of the global total—it’s the only country in the world that has achieved large-scale commercialization. Coal-to-oil, coal-to-olefins, and coal-to-methanol, in scenarios where crude oil imports are blocked, serve as a buffer that can fill short-term gaps.

For other countries that rely on crude oil imports: the payers. In India, Japan, South Korea, and most countries in Southeast Asia, they don’t have China’s new-energy supply chain industries and also lack a domestic energy substitute. High oil prices are simply a cost transfer that directly compresses industrial competitiveness.

So the structure of this game is: U.S. energy companies make money; Wall Street’s big sharks will scoop up at the bottom; Trump has a bit of a headache; China faces short-term pressure but benefits in the long run; and other energy-importing countries quietly foot the bill, while financial sharks holding cash wait for the hunt season once assets are repriced.

There’s a saying that’s been circulating domestically, and it describes the market’s feeling these days very accurately: “Last night we queued to get gas, filling up the tank before 12 o’clock. This morning at the opening bell, we found the car was gone.”

That “the car is gone” is the real situation of every retail investor who rushed in with the news and then chopped out with the news. Nobody knows whether the war is fought, when it’s fought, and how far it goes…

Big financial sharks don’t need to know, because they don’t bet on direction. They bet on volatility itself. Or more precisely: they don’t bet; they wait. They wait until prices fall deep enough and fear spreads thoroughly—then they strike.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s the basic rule of how capital markets have operated for hundreds of years. It just looks more like a massacre when it’s shrouded in the smoke of war.

As the U.S.-Iran conflict escalates, gold and silver crash off a cliff. A-shares plunge and oil prices surge—investment markets are entering a critical moment…

This week’s closed-door live-stream class led by Mu Di will help you, through a professional perspective, understand the logic behind the action, and find the direction for steady progress. The wealth logic that public platforms don’t dare to discuss deeply—explained clearly in the closed-door course.

Enter with a low threshold of 39.9 yuan to unlock the full year’s closed-door content, see the trends clearly, and take fewer detours.