The Best Way presents its general trading brief for Wednesday September 9, 2026. Our thoughts are with all those affected across the region’s waters. For traders and material buyers, last night changed the arithmetic of every quotation on your desk: Brent crossed $100 for the first time since July after US forces destroyed five Iranian tankers and Iran struck ten ships near Hormuz and a base in Jordan. Here is the operational map.
ENERGY — the new base case: Brent $100.44 (+2.57%), WTI $94.92 — Brent up 9% in five days and 19% in a month. Goldman has raised December forecasts to $85 Brent / $80 WTI and warns Brent could exceed $120 in 2027 if Gulf output stays 4 mb/d below pre-war; others see $120 sooner if attacks persist. The IEA has approved a historic 400-million-barrel release. Hormuz transits have collapsed to four to six vessels a day. Treat $100 as the working assumption for Q4 costing, not a spike to be waited out.
LOGISTICS — today’s priority: The IRGC has warned of imminent attacks on tankers near Bahrain and Kuwait and ordered crews to evacuate; Tehran plans an exclusion zone outside Hormuz requiring permission to transit; Washington enforces a naval blockade of Iranian ports. Practical actions today: recalculate every open landed quotation with current freight and war-risk insurance; shorten validity windows to days; insert force-majeure and route-substitution clauses; add buffer days; and shift customers to landed pricing wherever possible. Fuel surcharges will follow oil within weeks.
METALS: The squeeze intensifies — energy raises smelting and transport cost floors while hawkish rate expectations (60% for next week) strengthen the dollar and cap prices. That combination is unsustainable and historically resolves upward in deficit metals: copper’s record year rests on the same Hormuz-linked sulfur constraint now worsening; aluminum’s ~1.7 mmt deficit and disrupted Gulf smelters stand; steel HRC ~$1,186/t remains tariff-split. Stage purchases across Thursday’s PPI and Friday’s CPI; a cool CPI likely triggers a fast repricing higher across the complex.
WOOD: Board prices stay in the five-month-low zone (~$560–570 futures; cash $521) on weak US housing and the unresolved US-Canada trade war. But for our region, the delivered cost is now driven by freight, not the mill. Buy the board price in dated, fixed-price tranches; quote landed only.
The Best Way’s read: Recalculate today, shorten validity, stage the metal across Friday, and price Q4 off $100 oil rather than hoping for $80. Contact us for quotations across timber, aluminum, steel, and project supply — with war-risk-inclusive landed terms.
