By David Uberti and Xavier Martinez
For days, the global oil market has swung wildly while traders from New York to London to Singapore have watched footage of drones and missiles flying across the Middle East. Tuesday's selloff was sparked in part by a social-media post.
A plunge in oil prices intensified in the early afternoon after Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on X that "The U.S. Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets." The prospect of a prolonged energy shock momentarily dimmed. Futures for oil, diesel and gasoline slid. Stocks jumped.
But the message vanished within minutes, leaving investors the world over struggling to see through the fog of war emanating from the Trump administration itself.
U.S. officials soon after said that the military isn't currently escorting commercial ships through one of the world's chokepoints for oil and natural gas.
"A video clip was deleted from Secretary Wright's official X account after it was determined to be incorrectly captioned by Department of Energy staff," an agency spokesperson said. The administration is reviewing other options to resume tanker traffic, the spokesperson added, "including the potential for our Navy to escort tankers."
The since-deleted post was enough to wipe out million-dollar trades. Benchmark U.S. crude futures plunged by as much as 19% at one point. During a roughly 10-minute span when Wright's post appeared, an exchange-traded fund linked to oil futures saw $84 million of its market capitalization evaporate.
"That's an unforgivable error right there," said Robert Yawger, commodity specialist at Mizuho Securities.
Much of Wall Street has been waiting for President Trump to reverse course in the military campaign against Iran for fear that surging oil prices could slam the U.S. economy before midterm elections. As traders hang on every headline and speculators propel huge price swings that ripple through markets, Yawger added, "Where's the line between fantasy and reality? It's hard to say."
Futures bounced off their lows, but still settled Tuesday down 12% at $83.45 a barrel, the steepest one-day decline in four years. The intraday low of $76.73 capped a 36% plunge from Sunday night's peak of $119.48, the largest two-session peak-to-trough drop since April 2020, during the depths of the pandemic.
Oil has had a two-day stretch that has left traders and executives struggling to price the risk from a conflict with no clear resolution in sight. A day earlier, a 31% overnight surge in U.S. crude had nearly evaporated after Trump told CBS News the war was "very complete, pretty much."
"There is a sort of randomness both from a political perspective and then in terms of market reactions to all of this," said Michael Rosen, chief investment officer at Angeles Investments.
Stocks suffered their own volatility. The major indexes spent the session swinging between modest gains and losses. The S&P 500 spent much of Tuesday's session in the green, driven in part by a handful of companies important to the artificial-intelligence build-out. Data-storage companies Sandisk and Micron, along with fiber-optics firm Corning, each gained more than 3%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped as high as 1% Tuesday afternoon, but closed the session down less than 0.1% -- its biggest blown gain since November. The S&P 500 lost 0.2% and the Nasdaq composite rose less than 0.1%. Small-cap stocks were also turbulent: The Russell 2000 index was up 1.5% at its high point, but closed down 0.2%.
U.S. airlines, which are key oil consumers, climbed around the time of Wright's post before turning negative. Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines each finished Tuesday down more than 2%.
Major American energy producers fell alongside crude prices. U.S. oil majors, Appalachian gas producers, liquefied natural-gas exporters and major tanker operators finished in the red. The S&P 500's energy sector shed 1.3%, making it the session's worst-performing group.
Meanwhile, the fighting continued. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday's airstrikes against Iran would be the most intense yet, while Iran's foreign minister said cease-fire talks were off the table. On an earnings call Tuesday, Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser warned of "catastrophic consequences for oil markets" the longer the disruption to energy flows continues.
"While we have faced disruptions in the past," he said, "this one by far is the biggest crisis the region's oil and gas industry has faced."
Write to David Uberti at david.uberti@wsj.com and Xavier Martinez at xavier.martinez@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 10, 2026 18:51 ET (22:51 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
