The Institutional Risk Analyst

The renewed fighting between the US and Iran again jeopardizes global oil supplies, after stockpiles were drained earlier in the conflict, Reuters reports. “We’ve burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything,” one trader told the Financial Times. Energy markets had some slack to absorb the first shock, but that cushion is “smaller and shrinking further.” We continue to be concerned about shortages of refined products and particular grades of petroleum in 2H 2026.

The major Wall Street investment firms tracked by the WGA Bank Top 50 followed the industry trend and reported lower credit costs in Q1 2026. Income was higher due to the brisk activity in the capital markets in the first three months of the year, but asset returns and funding costs fell significantly. We suspect that both trends will be partially reversed in Q2 2026 results and very visible in 2H 2026. Suffice to see that Elon Musk was lucky indeed to get his IPO for SpaceX