Iran

In today’s Strategy Insight, we show why both a quick resolution and a prolonged crisis ultimately point to lower yields.

When the fog of war is thick investors need hard facts and data to cut through the uncertainty. Unfortunately, when it comes to physical commodities, publicly available macro data obscures the reality of moving molecules around the world. Thankfully, we at BCA Research have spent the past eight decades building relationships with clients who do all sorts of things for a living. These folks may rely on us for help with the macro context, but they are all experts in their own subsets of the financial industry. 

President Trump offered to deescalate the conflict in the Middle East on March 23. In a series of wide-ranging comments, President Trump said that regime change had already been achieved, that negotiations with Tehran were progressing, and that he was pausing his threat to target Iranian energy infrastructure for five days. 

WTI is relatively calm amid the current conflict in the Middle East. Markets are too complacent on US crude relative to other international benchmarks. 

Higher oil prices threaten the global economy, warranting an underweight stance on equities. Over the long haul, industrial metals will fare better than crude.

This screener report builds on the macro risk portfolio framework developed in the US Equity Strategy and Equity Analyzer collaboration published on 9 March 2026. Here, we apply the framework to analyze recent Middle East hostilities and identify how bottom-up equity positioning should adapt as the conflict evolves, which we analyzed in a US Equity Strategy report published on 16 March 2026.