MW Is the world running out of oil? Here are three ways Goldman Sachs is answering that critical question.
By Steve Goldstein
The global economy is running short on oil and related products
It's crunch for global oil supplies.
A three-day break has done little to resolve the market's key issue of when the world economy actually runs out of oil.
A new Goldman Sachs research note published over the weekend, attempts to answer that question in three ways.
Analysts led by Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby, a commodities strategist, looked at product supplies, price responses and anecdotes to address the issue.
In Asia, the pain is already being felt. Asian oil imports plunged by a net 9 million barrels of oil a day by the end of March, and the situation is even worse for petrochemical feedstocks where reserves were low before the war started.
Given the typical length of an oil tanker trip, it took until the end of the month before the lack of supplies from the Persian Gulf actually was being felt. Granted, some countries, notably Japan, have substantial domestic reserves they can tap.
On the price side, refined products like diesel have seen surges on the order of 150%. That has come not just due to the shortages, but because wealthier countries, like the U.K., are competing to buy up jet fuel.
On the anecdote side, there are examples such as the Philippines declaring a national fuel emergency, South Korea restricting public-sector vehicle use and Australia seeing many fuel stations running out of gasoline.
Annoying, there is no hard-and-fast answer given in the report. But it's clear that crunch time has arrived and substantial real-world economic pain is about to be felt unless a resolution is found soon.
The markets
U.S. stock futures (ES00) (NQ00) rose as oil prices (BRN00) fell.
Key asset performance Last 5d 1m YTD 1y S&P 500 6582.69 1.63% -3.63% -3.84% 21.98% Nasdaq Composite 21,879.18 2.20% -3.82% -5.86% 32.20% 10-year Treasury 4.362 0.60 26.20 19.00 18.50 Gold 4725.5 5.25% -8.80% 9.08% 54.63% Oil 109.39 8.11% 19.85% 90.54% 75.53% Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points
The buzz
President Donald Trump set a Tuesday night deadline for Iran to agree to terms to open up the Strait of Hormuz as he warned of attacks on civilian infrastructure. Iraq said it's received permission from Iran to have its oil tankers transit the strait.
The U.S. added a greater-than-expected 178,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate fell a tick to 4.3%, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The ISM services report is due at 10 a.m. Eastern.
JPMorgan Chase $(JPM)$ Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said revised capital adequacy rules were still "nonsensical" in parts, in the company's annual shareholder letter.
Neurocrine Biosciences $(NBIX)$ is near a deal to buy obesity drug maker Soleno Therapeutics (SLNO), according to the Financial TImes.
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The chart
Morgan Stanley's chief stock market strategist, Mike Wilson, points out that the 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y topping 4.5% has often been a line in the sand for equities. That's the point at which multiples on earnings start to compress, he finds. "Given the recent return of an inverse correlation between equities and bond yields, a remaining risk is a further rise in Treasury yields," says Wilson. Overall he's positive toward stocks, arguing the S&P 500 is carving out a low and that it makes sense to add length to cyclical and quality growth trades.
Top tickers
Here were the most active stock-market tickers on MarketWatch as of 5 a.m. Eastern.
Ticker Security name NVDA NVIDIA TSLA Tesla NIO NIO ADR MU Micron Technology GME GameStop Cl A TSM Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ADR AMZN Amazon.com MSFT Microsoft AAPL Apple AMD Advanced Micro Devices PLTR Palantir Technologies
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BEYOND THE HEADLINES
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April 06, 2026 06:48 ET (10:48 GMT)
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