As of 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time today, oil is trading at $102.47 per barrel, based on the Brent benchmark we’ll explain in a bit. That’s $1.03 above yesterday morning’s level and $29.44 higher than where it stood a year ago.

Will oil prices go up?

No one can say for sure where oil prices will go next. Many forces shape the market—but at the core, it’s still about supply and demand. When risks like a potential recession or war ramp up, oil prices can change direction quickly.

How oil prices translate to gas pump prices

When you buy gas at the pump, you’re covering more than the cost of crude oil. You’re also paying for every step in the process, including refineries, wholesalers, taxes, and the markup your local gas station adds.

Even so, crude oil has the biggest influence on what you pay, often making up more than half the cost per gallon. When oil prices jump, gas prices usually climb right along with them. But when oil falls, gas prices often slip much more slowly—a pattern sometimes called “rockets and feathers.”

The role of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

If an emergency hits, the U.S. keeps a backup supply of crude oil called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s mainly there to protect energy security during crises, such as sanctions, catastrophic storm damage, even war. It can also help cushion the blow when supply shocks send prices soaring.

It’s not meant to solve long-term problems. Instead, it provides quick relief for consumers and helps keep vital parts of the economy moving, like essential industries, emergency services, and public transit.

How oil and natural gas prices are linked

Oil and natural gas are two of the world’s primary energy sources. A big change in oil prices can affect natural gas by extension. For example, if oil prices increase, some industries may swap natural gas for some segments of their operations where possible, which which increases demand for natural gas.

Historical performance of oil

When looking at how oil performs, two main benchmarks stand out:

• Brent crude oil is the main global oil benchmark.
• West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is the main benchmark of North America.

Of the two, Brent gives a better picture of global oil performance because it prices a large share of the world’s traded crude. It’s also the go-to for tracking oil’s historical trends. In fact, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now relies on Brent as its primary reference in its Annual Energy Outlook.

If you look at the Brent benchmark over several decades, oil has been far from stable. It has experienced sharp rises tied to wars and supply cuts, along with steep drops linked to global recessions and oversupply (called a “glut”). For example:

• The early 1970s delivered the first major oil shock when the Middle East slashed exports and placed an embargo on the U.S. and others during the Yom Kippur War.
• Prices fell in the mid-1980s due to lower demand and an influx of non-OPEC oil producers joining the market.
• Prices surged again in 2008 as global demand grew, but then crashed alongside the global financial crisis.
• During the 2020 COVID lockdown, oil demand plummeted like never before—pushing prices below $20 per barrel.

To sum up, oil’s historical performance has been anything but smooth. Again, it’s heavily influenced by wars, recessions, OPEC whims, shifting energy policies, and much more.

Energy coverage from Fortune

Looking to stay up-to-date regarding the latest energy developments? Check out our recent coverage:

• Trump despises wind farms so much he’s paying a French energy giant $1 billion to stop building them
• Chevron’s CEO says oil prices are still too low
• The Iran oil crisis is the worst energy shock ever recorded

Frequently asked questions

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Good morning. The single-point forecast is no longer fit for purpose.

Scenario planning has become boardroom shorthand for preparation to deal with the unknowable, my colleague Geoff Colvin writes in a Fortune feature titled “For CEOs, it’s time for a wartime mindset.”

Colvin argues that it’s a practice that is never more vital than in wartime — when a cyberattack, or even a sanction, can reroute supply chains overnight and send energy prices soaring.

He writes: “Instead of betting on one forecast about how events will unfold, the most resilient CEOs are now rehearsing several plausible futures at once and deciding — before the missiles start dropping, the virus becomes a pandemic, or the markets seize up — what they will do in each.

“It’s an approach that was pioneered by Shell precursor Royal Dutch Shell. In the 1970s, the energy company began developing a set of vivid alternative futures involving potential oil-supply disruptions. Shell did not invent the idea of developing such scenarios, which had earlier roots in military and Cold War strategy, but it was the first major company to embed systematic scenario planning at the center of corporate decision-making, largely through the work of economist and planner Pierre Wack.” You can read more of Colvin’s article here.

CFOs are strategic partners to CEOs, and financial scenario planning isn’t just about reducing risk—it can also uncover new opportunities, according to Gartner research. For each scenario, CFOs should define actions that enable rapid response, while prioritizing moves that apply across multiple outcomes, such as locking in supplier contracts or accelerating product launches, Gartner advises. This kind of proactive planning helps to ensure companies can act quickly. The firm also points to AI scenario planning models to track key metrics in real time, and autogenerate scenarios based on real data, not just guesses.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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If yesterday’s five-minute relief rally taught analysts one thing, it’s that traders are keen to jump on the optimistic bandwagon when it comes to Iran. After weeks of volatile trade, yesterday Wall Street celebrated after President Trump indicated he was working toward a “complete and total” resolution of hostilities with Iran.

There’s one small issue: While Trump said there was “productive” conversations with Iranian leaders, Tehran reportedly maintained that “no dialogue” has occurred between the two nations. There are talks between intermediaries in Riyadh, but it’s not clear how far along they are, or how willing either side is to compromise.

Wall Street, however, has adopted a new behavioural trait since Trump returned to office: Investors are reacting (justifiably or not) to social media posts from the Oval Office without much verifiable evidence to go on.

Wall Street’s early optimism that the war in Iran would resolve relatively quickly means they are more inclined to act on positive updates from the commander in chief, according to UBS’s chief economist Paul Donovan.

He noted to clients this morning: “Markets are not reacting to information, they are generally reacting to social media posts and headlines—even if those posts or headlines are fake news or contradictory. The absence of verifiable facts is already complicating economic assessments, for instance, it is difficult to assess how much Dubai might have to spend repairing war damage, when there is little verifiable information about the extent of war damage.”

Wall Street has come to expect (indeed, sometimes bank on) rapid updates and changes in foreign policy under President Trump, often shared on social media rather than through more traditional channels. Trump’s social media posts have covered everything from tariff threats on trading partners and calling out specific businesses, through to criticism of the Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

The rapidity of these updates, and often the ensuing reverse ferret, has earned a nickname: TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). The updates from the president on Monday, some have speculated, may the latest example of a TACO.

While it could be argued that Trump’s social media posts, above all others, should be monitored by investors, Donovan highlights that this should not obscure factual information. He added: “There is now a risk that investors will start looking for leading indicators of social media posts, rather than leading indicators of actual indications.”

Confirmation bias

There’s a further issue: Traders want the war in Iran to be over. When the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, Trump said the action would only last for a matter of weeks, and this is the baseline many economists and analysts have stuck with.

Donovan argues that for this reason, markets are “bewitched” by good news, and so are more inclined (such as yesterday) to act: In a matter of moments yesterday, oil sunk below the $100 threshold and was down 15% while equities added $1.7 trillion in value (much of this promptly unwound when Iran denied the talks).

“Investors are also perhaps influenced by loss aversion and confirmation bias,” added Donovan. “Investors want the war to end, there’s an irrational bias in favor of rising markets. If there is a story that seems to confirm that desire, investors are more likely to react to it. This does not mean that negative stories will be ignored … for now, markets do seem to be content to trade strongly on stories but to provoke an equal negative reaction would probably need more hard evidence of adverse developments.”

Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid echoed that markets will now be looking for follow-through from Trump 2.0, writing this morning: “Obviously, much now depends on the progress of any talks, and whether the more optimistic rhetoric is followed up by concrete action.”

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When everyone agrees, that might be the biggest warning sign of all. Unanimous decisions often reveal as much about group dynamics as genuine agreement.

There is an unlikely field that studies this problem with unusual clarity: avalanche safety.

In avalanche safety training, there is one rule that overrides all others: if a single person in the group says “no,” everyone turns around. Corporate boards could learn something from that.

Corporate boards make some of the most consequential decisions in business — acquisitions, strategic pivots, leadership transitions, major capital allocations. Yet when those decisions appear in board minutes, they are almost always recorded as unanimous. Research suggests dissent occurs in only about 1% of board decisions. That unanimity often reveals as much about group dynamics as it does about genuine agreement.

The rule exists because of a pattern instructors see again and again. Someone senses something is wrong — unstable snow, deteriorating conditions, a risky route — but speaking up means challenging the plan and slowing everyone down. In larger groups especially, that voice often stays quiet.

The most dangerous variable, instructors often say, is not the snowpack. It is the group.

Corporate boardrooms operate under strikingly similar conditions. Directors must make consequential decisions with incomplete information: often within the compressed time frame of a board meeting. The question isn’t whether boards face pressure to align. It’s whether that pressure is silencing the most important voices in the room.

Consensus has obvious virtues. Boards function best when directors ultimately align behind a course of action. A unified board gives management clarity and confidence in execution.

But consensus can be a signal. It can also be a warning.

Anyone who has spent time in boardrooms recognizes how quickly the momentum of a conversation can tilt toward agreement. Management presents a proposal. A director offers a supportive observation. Another suggests refinement. Gradually, the discussion shifts from whether the proposal is sound to how it should be implemented.

Eventually the chair looks around the table and asks a familiar question: “Is everyone comfortable moving forward?”

Directors sometimes recognize the dynamic only after the meeting ends. Following a unanimous decision on a major initiative, someone may quietly remark in the hallway, “I had some reservations about that.” Another director admits they did as well. In the room itself, however, those doubts never surfaced.

Seasoned investors understand the value of dissent. Warren Buffett has long argued that the best boards are those where directors are willing to challenge assumptions rather than simply ratify them. But even strong boards can find that once a discussion begins to converge, raising a late objection becomes psychologically difficult.

Psychologists call this dynamic groupthink: the tendency of cohesive groups to suppress disagreement in pursuit of harmony. Boardrooms are particularly susceptible: — directors meet periodically, relationships are collegial, and open disagreement can feel unnecessarily disruptive.

Avalanche educators warn about the same pattern. As groups become larger, responsibility diffuses and individuals become less likely to challenge the emerging consensus. The very structure of the discussion can begin to suppress caution.

If that dynamic shows up in boardrooms — and the evidence suggests it does — improving board decisions isn’t only about who sits at the table. It’s about how decisions are made once everyone is there. Boards have spent decades focused on composition: independence, diversity, expertise. The next frontier is deliberation.

Some boards already experiment with structured disagreement. In evaluating major transactions, directors may organize “red team/blue team” exercises, assigning one group to argue for a deal while another is tasked with challenging it. The objective is to stress-test assumptions before committing capital.

Yet most board deliberation still takes place in a single conversation around a table. That format encourages the emergence of a dominant narrative before competing analyses have had time to develop.

Boards might consider what could be called parallel deliberation: briefly breaking into smaller groups before reconvening to compare conclusions.

After management presents a proposal, the chair divides directors into small groups and asks each to answer the same three questions: What assumptions must be true for this plan to succeed? What could cause it to fail? Under what circumstances would we say no? Fifteen minutes later, the board reconvenes and compares conclusions before continuing the discussion.

Such a structure introduces several useful dynamics. Smaller groups lower the social cost of dissent. Independent discussions generate multiple lines of analysis rather than a single conversational path. And by interrupting the momentum of a room-wide consensus, the structure helps surface concerns that might otherwise remain unspoken.

The goal is not to manufacture disagreement. Boards ultimately need alignment. But alignment reached through rigorous debate is far stronger than consensus that emerges quietly around the table.

In avalanche training, the group turns around when one person says no.

In boardrooms, that same voice is the one most likely to stay quiet — and the one most worth hearing.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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The giant asset manager Invesco revealed on Tuesday that it will run a crypto investment vehicle known as the Superstate Short Duration US Government Securities Fund (USTB), which holds over $900 million in assets under management. Like BlackRock with its flagship BUIDL fund, Invesco is betting on an emerging category of assets known as “real world assets” or RWAs, which consist of traditional investments packaged in blockchain wrappers.

While BlackRock’s BUIDL, the biggest of the RWA funds, is technically a money market fund that holds both Treasury Bills and repos, Invesco’s USTB, which is the fourth largest RWA fund, holds only T-bills. Another big player in the space is Paxos, which offers a fund backed primarily by physical gold.

While the RWA offerings are still niche products, they are growing fast. Their appeal derives from the blockchain packaging, which lets holders settle trades instantly, freeing up collateral. And unlike stablecoins, they provide easy access to yield. While tokenized funds have so far been marketed primarily to institutional investors, this could change in coming years as players like Invesco and BlackRock, which have large retail customer bases, expand their offerings.

“Invesco has been strategically building the capabilities required to support institutional-grade digital asset products since 2019, and this partnership reflects that long-term commitment,” said Kathleen Wrynn, Global Head of Digital Assets at Invesco, in a statement.

In an interview with Fortune, Superstate founder Robert Leshner explained that his company built USTB and another tokenized fund in part as a prototype to show Wall Street that the RWA concept worked in practice. Founded in 2022, Superstate also operates as a transfer agent and is positioning itself to offer its tokenization technology as a white label service across Wall Street. Superstate’s prime rival in this is Securitize, which provides the technology powering BlackRock’s BUIDL fund.

Leshner declined to provide the financial aspects of the new tie-up between between Invesco and Superstate, which in January raised an $82 million Series B funding round. He did, though, confirm that his firm would serve as an ongoing technology partner to Invesco, and that the financial giant would take over the branding and operations of the T-bill fund.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink underscored the growing importance of RWAs in his annual shareholder letter that was published on Monday. The letter contains six references to “tokenization,” including in a passage where Fink notes, “Tokenization could help accelerate [the] future by updating the plumbing of the financial system—making investments easier to issue, easier to trade, and easier to access.”

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Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:

• Stock traders rejoiced at the news that President Trump may be searching for a way out of Iran. Oil is still above $100 a barrel, and both Tehran and Wall Street expect American voters to punish Republicans at the midterm elections if this goes on much longer. There is an off-ramp, but it risks making Iran look like the winners, experts say. Suspiciously, a massive set of highly profitable trades in oil and stock futures were placed in New York minutes before Trump announced he wanted Iran to come to the table. 
• Exclusive: Some people are so addicted to their phones that they end up in a $1,000-a-day rehab clinic outside Seattle.
• In Asia there are shortages of jet fuel, toilet paper, and fertilizer.
• Morgan Stanley warns of a “chaotic melt toward stagflation.”
• Private credit funds have shut the gates on some investors.

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Cambridge Mobile Telematics has quietly become one of the most important companies you’ve never heard of in the race to make driving safer—and now some of the world’s biggest insurers are doubling down on it. The Cambridge, Mass.–based company has secured a $350 million strategic investment led by TPG’s Rise Funds and Allianz X, Fortune exclusively learned, with existing backer State Farm also participating in the all-secondary deal.

CMT builds AI-powered telematics software that turns everyday devices—smartphones, car sensors, dashcams, and other connected hardware—into real-time risk detectors on the road. Its DriveWell Fusion platform ingests sensor data from millions of devices and fuses it with contextual information, creating a unified view of how people actually drive, from hard braking and speeding to phone distraction. Insurers, automakers, and public agencies then use those insights to price risk, detect crashes, and nudge drivers toward safer habits. 

To date, CMT-powered programs have helped prevent more than 100,000 crashes and 54,000 serious injuries, and support over 140 safe driving initiatives touching more than 55 million drivers in 25 countries, according to Frost & Sullivan and the company. According to TPG, the company already serves nearly all of the 25 top U.S. auto insurers.

The business behind that impact is not small. Third-party estimates peg CMT’s private valuation above the billion‑dollar mark. The new deal follows a $500 million investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund in 2018, one of the largest tech financings in Massachusetts at the time.

Powers, CMT’s cofounder and CEO, has a simple way of explaining what all that capital is funding. “If you think of the world of mobility, we are an artificial intelligence mobile sensing company,” he told Fortune. “Most vehicles have a signal coming from them. Now it might be the driver’s phone, it might be the vehicle itself, but we measure the signal. We do not track things. We measure signal.” Beyond insurance, CMT’s public sector division works with cities and transportation agencies to understand how people move, redesign dangerous roads, and prepare aging infrastructure for more automated driving.​​

The strategic investment into CMT is notable not just for its size, but for what it is not. Powers says, “none of this is primary capital. This is all secondary transactions, meaning there’s no dilution with this transaction—zero.” The new money instead is meant to push the business further in its innovation by buying out older investors and providing liquidity to long‑time employees and shareholders. “We’ve been at this for 16 years,” he told Fortune. “We continue to generate cash and continue to deliver liquidity to folks along the way.”​ 

Akash Pradhan, partner at TPG’s Rise Fund, told Fortune, the firm’s investment in CMT comes from his belief that the telematics company is slated to become the “mission critical” infrastructure of road safety turning more than 30 petabytes of data into foundational AI that can help both save lives and lower premiums.

For Allianz X, the deal is as much about strategy as returns. The unit is the strategic investment arm of Allianz, rather than a conventional GP/LP fund, and sits inside a group that wrote about $217.1 billion in total premiums and generated $20.2 billion in operating profit in 2025, serving roughly 97 million customers worldwide. “At Allianz X, we’re not a fund, so we don’t have a GP structure,” CEO Dr. Nazim Cetin told Fortune. “We are a strategic investment unit of Allianz.”

Allianz has been building a digital claims stack in recent years, acquiring firms like ControlExpert, Innovation Group, and GT Motive to automate everything from photo-based damage estimates to routing cars to the right repair shops. CMT’s telematics is meant to sit upstream of that system, helping prevent accidents in the first place and feeding richer data into claims workflows when they do happen. 

Cetin stresses that Allianz X still underwrites the deal like a classic venture investor. “We do not invest if the company on a standalone basis would not give us the risk-return profile that we expect,” he says. “In this case, what we would expect is what every VC investor would expect from such an investment on a standalone basis.” But unlike a traditional fund, Allianz’s capital “doesn’t have an expiration date,” giving it more patience to realize both financial returns and operational gains like lower claims frequency and more tailored pricing for policyholders.​​

The check also comes from serious financial firepower. TPG manages more than $120 billion across strategies and has built its Rise impact platform into what it calls the world’s largest dedicated impact-investing franchise, with roughly $19 billion in assets under management. Allianz X sits inside one of the largest auto insurers in Europe and globally, while State Farm—an early CMT backer—runs one of the most widely used telematics programs in the U.S., Drive Safe & Save, across more than 90 million policies and accounts.For Powers, that network is as much about distribution as dollars. “Because we’ve been profitable for so long, and because we really control our destiny, we really get to be selective of who we choose to work with,” he told Fortune. But ultimately, Powers says, his vision for CMT is simply to help leave the world better than he found it.

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady reports on energy CEOs’ reactions to the war in Iran.
• The big story: The knock-on effect of Mark Zuckerberg’s AI sidekick.
• The markets: Mixed globally as uncertainty hangs over the Iran war
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Energy leaders from around the world are in Houston right now for the annual CERAWeek gathering, organized by S&P Global. A major theme, of course, is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has cut off 20% of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas, creating the greatest global energy supply shock ever.

As Fortune’s Energy Editor Jordan Blum reports from Houston, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth believes oil prices may be too low. As Wirth told attendees: “There are very real physical manifestations of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that are working their way around the world through the system that I don’t think are fully priced in.”

Indeed, hard-hit Asian countries are trying to stockpile and conserve energy through work-from-home efforts, school closures, and more. The war is also crippling supplies of helium and fertilizer, hurting chipmakers and farmers alike. (Stocks and even Bitcoin rallied Monday on news of possible peace talks.)

A number of Middle Eastern leaders are not in Houston this week because of the conflict: Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser withdrew while others are participating virtually. Sheikh Nawaf Al-Sabah, CEO of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), is scheduled to participate virtually today. Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE’s minister of energy and advanced technology and head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc), gave a virtual address yesterday in which he said  “weaponizing the Strait of Hormuz is not an act of aggression against one nation. It’s economic terrorism against every nation.”

While U.S. CEOs may not face as direct a hit in terms of energy supplies, they have other consequences to contend with. I spoke about that with CEOs at our New York dinner last week, as well as some executives en route to CERAWeek. Some quietly echoed the sentiment of political leaders who say stopping Iran is necessary for regional prosperity; others conveyed anger at the costs being inflicted on their companies by a war they didn’t start. All are managing the consequences, recognizing the fallout could continue long after any peace deal is reached. As one person put it: “This war has caused lasting damage to friends and foes alike.” 

Be sure to follow Jordan’s coverage of the news coming out of CERAWeek and the Middle East.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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