Oil price spikes and market crashes: the 50-year pattern

0:00Look, I wasn't going to make this video, but oil didn't just hit $115 a barrel. At the same time, Bank of America, that's what we were just reading on the sofa, put out a report that they sent to the institutional investors, the hedge fund guys, not you and me, which tells you exactly what we need to do about it. I thought we weren't going to make a video today, were we, Winston? But I think you deserve to know. Don't you think you deserve to have the same information, the same insight the lovelies on Wall Street have access to? Well, if you do, put it down below in the comments, say "deserve."

0:33The reason this matters is that, all right, sit down. Sit down. Go on. Relax. He doesn't want to stay on the sofa. He's had a rumour about snacks or something. But seriously, $115 a barrel, it should terrify you because, well, unless it makes you very, very rich, which is possible because every single time that oil has spiked like this in the last 50 years, I'm talking 1973, 1979, 1990, 2008, a market crash followed. Every single freaking time. Not usually, but literally every time.

1:08And right now as gold and silver, the things that are supposed to protect you in a crisis, are crashing too. Gold's down 20 odd per cent, silver's down 44 per cent. It's an everything crash. And most investors have really no idea what's coming next. So I'm going to show you in the next few minutes. Winston and I are going to walk you through the exact pattern and why Wall Street is quietly positioning right now while CNBC tells you stay calm.

1:35Because the Bank of America research note that literally most retail investors will never ever get to see, because this gets written for Bank of America clients, not retail clients, but the big money clients, it lays out exactly where the smart money is going. So stick around and I'll break it down for you. If you're wondering who the heck we are, my name is Felix. This is Winston and I'm an ex-investment banker and economist.

1:58We've also founded the Goat Academy 6 years ago where our retired Wall Street mentors teach regular investors these strategies that are usually preserved for the almighty, I'm sorry, the Wall Street bankers. Right? So we have dedicated our retirement to spreading that joy and that information to regular people. And what I'm seeing right now in gold and in the data, it's a pattern that we've seen again and again and again.

2:24Now you of course all know what's driving the madness, right? Iran, wars, the Strait of Hormuz. And where do you think you're going? Sit down, mister. Go on, stick around. It'll be fun. We've got some serious stuff to cover. Gold and oil and all that stuff. But yeah, following the war which kicked off about a month ago, the oil flowing through that strait is literally down 70 per cent. Right, we're at near zero. So we're losing about 5 million barrels a day, which is significant. Winston agrees. He likes his ears massaged. So it's a risk that's real. It's not some hypothetical.

3:00And the last time we saw this was properly '73. And as I'm recording this, Brent crude futures, the paper price of oil, is trading at $113. But, and this is what matters, and this is what mainstream isn't telling you, the price for actual physical oil being delivered to Asia is $150 plus. And what happens when the physical price diverges from paper? The gold and silver loons watching this, you're familiar with that story, right? It means there is real scarcity and it's far worse than the financial markets are telling you. Meaning the market is in denial about this.

3:39Now the Federal Reserve has modelled 3 scenarios for this, is what we were just reading about. There is a mild scenario where oil is at $98. We're past that. There is a base case where we're at $115. We're now at $150 in the real world. And then there's this severe scenario where oil hits $130 and we get a major global recession. Well, oil just hit $150, at least for the lovely people in Asia. So we're really in a very severe scenario here.

4:12And if you had no idea that physical oil is trading $150 because the headlines are lying to you, then put "paper" in the chat and I know that you're paying attention and you're probably a bit of a gold and silver bug. Now look, before I show you, I'm going to walk you through the 50-year patterns and I'll see if my editor can put some magic on the screen to make it even easier to understand for you.

4:35Wall Street is profiting in this market crash. And not in theory, but there are actual institutional strategies that we've learned from our mentors, guys who've worked in the biggest banks on the planet. And I'm going to run a special session for you guys this coming Saturday where I'm going to teach you Wall Street's rules for profiting in market crashes. And maybe you think that's weird, but no, that's actually where the real money is typically made. If you want to join us for that, go to felixfriends.org/training. Links down below in the description, is the first link you can click in there.

5:12And a high oil price has been the most reliable crash indicator we have. Literally every single spike. 1973, right? Oil went from 3 bucks to 11 or something like that, the S&P dropped 48 per cent. Which is pretty unpleasant. At the end of the '70s, Iranian revolution, oil went up from $14 to $39 and inflation went to crazy levels. Interest rates went to 19 per cent. Deep recession followed.

5:43What about the first Gulf War? Well, not the first, but the 1990 Gulf War again. Oil spikes. The S&P drops 20 per cent. And the dot-com boom, that was caused by oil. Believe it or not, oil tripled from 1998 from $10 to $35. The S&P fell 49 per cent over 2 years. Took 7 years to recover until 2007. And what happened in 2007? We got another oil spike and the global financial crisis. Yes, that was also caused by oil.

6:15Oil has a way of shaking out that there are shenanigans, crack somewhere in the system. Oil went up from $55 to $147 in July 2008. 168 per cent increase just before the global financial crisis, right? And the S&P fell, what is it, 57 per cent or something crazy. So oil is always the canary in the oil drill mine. Doesn't work very well, does it, as an analogy? But you get the idea.

6:52Russia, Ukraine, again oil went up 81 per cent, the S&P dropped about 7 per cent. It then V-shaped, right? But that was a geopolitical shock. It wasn't a structural supply shock. This here is a little different. So oil's gone from $70 to now about $115 in the paper market, about $150 in the real world. And this closure isn't just temporary, it's structural. The damage to oil and gas facilities, the fact that countries like Iraq essentially stop pumping oil because their storage is full. It takes a long time to bring that back online, even if the war were to stop tomorrow. So if you're thinking this time is different, well, those are typically the most expensive words in investing.

7:40So you've seen the pattern. Let me show you the mechanism now because oil does not crash the market in a direct way. It's a chain reaction, a domino chain, right? Very hard to stop. The first domino is transportation energy costs explode. Ships, trucks, planes, everything. We're seeing that, right? Diesel goes from $3.50 to $5.50 a gallon. So everything that's made and moved in America gets more expensive. And that's real, right?

8:08So then that price hits your groceries, your Amazon packages, and so on. Sit down. Sit down. Go on. This is important. People need your brains. Second, producer costs rise. So oil is an input for everything. Plastics, chemicals, fertilisers, packaging, manufacturing, all that stuff, right? So everything goes up and then consumer prices go up. That's the third spike and that's when you really start to feel it.

8:38Inflation readings for the year for the US are already at 4 per cent plus. Goldman Sachs, the bankers with a big golden heart, raised their inflation forecast to 3 per cent. So the fourth domino, the Fed can't cut. They might even hike, right? So we're all expecting 3, 4 rate cuts. This year was meant to be a golden year for everybody. And the market's now pricing in a 50 per cent chance of a rate hike. We've gone from 4 cuts to possibly a rate hike, right? Absolutely insane.

9:13What happens then? You, my friend, the consumer, well, you want to stop spending money apparently, right? The humorous consumer sentiment index is at horrible levels. Job reports show unexpected losses. Unemployment is going up. So every domino is there. It's all happening.

9:34Now this is where this gets a little weird. In a normal crisis, you'd expect gold to go up. And then oil shock, well, it isn't. Typically gold's territory. Why do these safe havens fail in situations like this? Well, the first thing is the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. He's an inflation hawk. So the Fed held rates, revised their dot plot only to 1 cut from 2026, down from 2, even though we're all expecting more. And higher rates mean what?

10:04He's going to come back for the gold bit. He just told me. It means opportunity cost for holding gold is higher. Why? Because you can get higher interest on bonds suddenly and gold pays you nothing according to Wall Street. The dollar is strengthened, that's number 2. And then of course CME COMEX does their shenanigans with margin calls and that kind of thing. And we also have tech stocks tumbling, right? Microsoft, terrible decline there in stock. So this becomes the everything crash and everybody just panics and everybody wants to go into something even safer.

10:44So what's the elephant in the room? Stagflation, right? And that again sounds terribly boring, but you need to

10:50Understand it because it's what's going to drive a lot of the sentiment in the coming weeks. That means you get inflation and a stagnating economy at the same time.

11:01What does it mean? It means you can't cut interest rates because inflation gets worse. If you hike rates, the economy crumbles even faster. So essentially, it neuters the Fed. I hope Winston didn't hear that word. He doesn't like the word neuter.

11:15So how do we then come back around to Bank of America's research report? Remember at the beginning of the video, I told you about this. I told you that this is a note that most retail investors will never see. Now, he's saying this. He's saying Bank of America sees a policy panic bailing out the market. He says that once the S&P drops below certain trigger levels, we'll see what he calls a policy panic, meaning governments and central banks will intervene.

11:44How could this look? De-escalation of the war. A bit of a retreat maybe from tariffs. The Fed could even cut rates, although that's very difficult with oil prices. And I think more likely, the Fed could buy some government bonds to lower interest rates. So Bank of America is floating the possibility of a policy emergency package.

12:04And if you can hear some noise in the back, I apologise. We're renovating, which is why I'm sitting here on this sofa trying to find some peace and quiet. So Bank of America is saying the government will panic and hit the emergency button. So what should you own when they do that?

12:22Well, what do we get? The second thing Bank of America says is that the dollar will weaken again. And a weaker dollar is what? Bullish for, yes, golden retrievers and gold. And the dollar weakens, gold and international stocks do better. And that's just a mechanical relationship. So in his view, gold and international stocks will regain leadership as the dollar folds.

12:43And it means that the current gold sell-offs, that 22% crash we've seen, may be a buying opportunity. Now I'm not a financial adviser. I'm not a registered anything. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying that is an interpretation of that. It could be not the start of a gold bear market but actually an opportunity.

13:02Now the third, and this is going to annoy some people. You think this is a political statement. It isn't. But if Trump's credibility has been structurally hit by this Iran war because it drags on much longer and it's much more complicated and unpleasant than what he thought, then his ability to nudge Wall Street and also force foreign countries to invest in the US will be less successful. So think about what that means.

13:30The US stock market's premium valuation depends on the perception that the US leadership can control outcomes. If the Iran crisis demonstrates the US can't resolve a major energy disruption quickly, people will not believe what they say as much. And in response, the dollar will lose value as we've been seeing over the last year. Gold and international stocks will again be the leaders.

13:57Now, here is the thing, the bit that nobody really understands and this is important. Consumer discretionary stocks. Now, what on earth are they? They are everything from your wife's Louis Vuitton bag to eating out to anything that you don't need. And those consumer discretionary stocks are now trading at levels we haven't seen since the global financial crisis and COVID.

14:26So literally retail, restaurants, travel, luxury, it's beaten down compared to the rest of the market as if we were in a global financial crisis or in a pandemic where everybody had to wear a napkin. Literally more than half of the stocks in the S&P consumer discretionary index are trading at least 20% below their last year's highs. And typically, and again that's not a prediction but just in history, it's rallied 14% over the next year every single time it's done that. Well actually not every single time, 23 out of 28 times, which is pretty good. So it's peak pessimism and peak pessimism is where the contrarians potentially make some money.

15:08Now, what does it require? A bull case here requires financial conditions to loosen. What does that mean? Some sort of global policy coordination to lower oil prices, rate hikes not happening, private credit not collapsing. And there is one more, actually there are two more sectors that Bank of America is talking to its wealthy clients about, software and consumer finance.

15:33Again, these are the sectors most beaten down and most sensitive to an improvement in what the government can do, improving financial conditions. Software is super oversold. Consumer finance benefits from lower rates. So Bank of America is basically saying these are the trades. If the policy panic works, as in Trump pulls not just a taco Tuesday, but a proper taco where he's just pulling us back from the abyss.

16:07Now, if any of that surprised you, I appreciate if you haven't got access to this. Put "I'm surprised" in the comments. Be interesting to see, maybe just useful. If you thought it was useful, put that in there.

16:18But maybe we can put this into a framework. That's always what my mentors did with me. They always liked putting things into frameworks. And if someone writes in the comments, Felix, you're not wearing any trousers, I'm wearing shorts. I live in the subtropics for that reason. See, you can do that every single day.

16:33So, what happens? Oil spikes. It's already done that. VIX, the fear index, goes above 20. We've done that. Risk assets have plummeted. We've done that. CNBC goes into full-blown 24/7 panic mode. They've done that. And safe havens are meant to go up, but they sell off too. They've already done that.

16:51So, what do we do? Don't panic sell. Don't chase oil or defence stocks. They've already spiked. You're probably too late on that one. And if you're buying the dip, I can tell you from the data, generally people aren't. And you don't know how deep this goes.

17:06This is the phase when 99% of retail investors make their biggest mistakes. 10 days into a geopolitical shock, the S&P is usually down 5 to 7%. And yes, 12 months later, it is usually up, but you have to have a long enough time horizon for that and a stomach lining of steel to make sure you can hold through this. So the hardest thing usually is to do nothing at all.

17:30Now would I do nothing at all? Well, no. I would definitely remove all leverage. Anything that could really bankrupt you, get rid of it. And look at what your actual risk is. Are you okay if we go down 25 or 30% on say tech stocks? Are you okay? If you're not, you're going to sell at the worst possible moment, in which case you might want to think about doing something now so you don't have to do that later.

17:57And if you think it's just going to bounce back like the tariff thing or even Ukraine, well, look, those didn't have a long-term impact on inflation or energy prices. This looks a lot more structural. The Iranian government isn't exactly the sort of easygoing negotiating partner who's going to be like, "All right, I think you are right. We overdid it. Yes, we called ourselves supreme leaders. We're going to stop all that silly stuff. We'll just be reasonable from now on." Unlikely to happen.

18:27So, where are we putting our money? Pipelines, storage, terminals, oil and gas services, they've done very well. And companies with pricing power, a company that can pass on their higher costs to consumers without losing them.

18:43And then I would really learn about money rotation. Money flows from losers to winners. It happens every week. It happens every month. And that's what I track. That's the only thing I look at. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't have strong opinions on stocks or sectors. I just follow the money.

19:04Statistically, gold typically does very well after a shock, about 19% 6 months in on historical terms. So I think it is worth looking at these sectors that Bank of America is talking about. Consumer discretionary, software, consumer finance, gold, but follow the money. Don't follow the headlines.

19:24Watch out for that policy panic moment where we get government stimulus or the Fed doing more shenanigans, as in more money printing. And I'll tell you about it if you want to stick around. And am I buying these consumer stocks right now? No. I'm waiting for them to come out of that phase where they're going down or sideways to a phase where they're starting to improve a little bit. That's when I start to see the money flows pick up and that's when we start to look at them.

19:54So my thoughts for you would be write down some rules. These are suggestions. I'm not giving you financial advice. You've got to come to your own conclusions. But one, probably want to keep your core portfolio. Don't just blow it all up. If you're in the S&P and you have time, it is going to recover. Now, if you're excessively exposed to airlines, utilities, unprofitable lunatic tech stocks, maybe look at that.

20:17And then tilt. Don't gamble. Make small shifts. Not everything shifts. Don't go all in on oil. Oil rallies always fade within about 6 months of a spike. Don't short the market unless you have a very specific protocol for that and a framework around risk because you need one.

20:38And three, learn to follow the money, not the headlines. Join me on Saturday. I'll break down exactly for you what crisis investment looks like, high risk investment looks like, but doing it with low risk. And that is always where the well-trained investors make most of their money in my humble opinion.

21:02Turn off the news. Stop watching it. Seriously, it's dribble. It's noise. This is going to fill your head. It doesn't really help you whether you know that a missile struck something or other. Much more useful for you would be to get your risk management right.

21:13In place. For example, it's honestly the single most important factor for being profitable long term. Not your stock picks, not your timing, it is your risk management. Know where your stop losses sit, know how big your positions are, right? What is the maximum thing you're willing to lose on a single investment or trade? Do that.

21:35And then let's wrap it up and let me know again if it's useful that I'm sharing these things with you from time to time because I believe in more equality in terms of information and rules, but ultimately it's about rules and skills, not about news. We have oil at $115, which is a pattern that has preceded every major market crisis in the last 50 years, right? So we're in everything crash. Safe havens are selling off. And that's just forced selling across the board.

22:05The Fed can't do much. They can't lower interest rates. It would trigger inflation. They can print money, and they probably will. And the government can do stuff to provide more bailout. Now, all of that means the dollar loses more strength. Gold probably recovers and the most beaten down sectors, and I've told you what they were, I could see some nice rebounds according to the goons at Bank of America.

22:33So this is phase 1 where we are. You got to survive phase 2 and then the profits come in phase 3. Well, that you need a clear plan that you can actually execute. And those specific strategies, those frameworks, that institutional playbook, I'm going to give that to you. I'm going to teach that to you on the weekend when the markets are a little bit more calm and you have a little bit more head space to take it in. And you can sign up for that at felix.org/training.

22:56Let me know if you're going to do that. Write skills in the comment if you want those skills. And I look forward to seeing you there. And if this video has been helpful for you in its unplanned form, share it with somebody. You might also benefit from it.

23:12All the best. The Iran war just margin called central banks into forced gold selling. Very few people understand this mechanism. And right now, countries that spend years stacking