Yin Ge’s View: The market impact of the Iran war is no longer very big, while inflation and AI capital expenditure are the two most core storylines ahead.

Iran has started charging some commercial ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz a toll of up to $2 million per voyage, and calls it a new form of sovereign management. Some ships have already completed their payments. This is harder to deal with than a blockade—blockades are short-term shocks, but if the fees continue, they will directly change the global shipping cost structure, with a chain reaction continuing along the path from shipping costs → oil and gas prices → inflation expectations → asset re-pricing.
Inflation: the tail that’s the hardest to shake off
This will be the most persistent force affecting the stock market moving forward.
Several overlapping factors:
A structural rise in energy costs: the Hormuz toll directly pushes up oil prices in energy-importing countries. JPMorgan estimates that if oil prices stay at elevated levels, the U.S. inflation rate will rise by about 0.8%.
The Fed’s dilemma: Nobel Prize–winning economist Hank warns that the Fed has cut rates by 75 basis points, halted quantitative tightening, and loosened bank capital requirements. The money supply continues to expand, and in 2026 the Fed will be unable to achieve its inflation target.
Tariff overlay: the Trump administration’s tariff policies further push up imported inflation, squeezing corporate profit margins under the dual pressure of wage inflation and raw material costs.
This stagflation combination is the most difficult environment for stock-market pricing—bonds and stocks are hard to go long on at the same time.
AI capital expenditure: a bubble or a foundation?
This is another core contradiction in the market.
By 2026, the scale of AI capital expenditure by four major tech giants combined is approaching or exceeding $750 billion.
The issue isn’t AI demand, but the return cycle—when will such a massive scale of capital expenditure translate into visible incremental earnings? If inflation remains high and keeps interest rates from coming down, the discount-rate pressure on high-valuation technology stocks will persist.
The clearest transmission chain in the market’s logic framework going forward is currently:
Hormuz toll → structural rise in energy costs → stronger inflation stickiness → difficulty for the Fed to cut rates → continuation of a high-interest-rate environment → pressure on high-valuation AI tech stocks → at the same time, massive capital expenditure by AI giants squeezes free cash flow → short-term earnings-expectation downgrade risk
The direct geopolitical risk premium from the war is indeed fading. After tensions ease, risk assets may rebound, and the dollar could weaken. But the new variable of collecting tolls makes the inflation tail impossible to cut off cleanly.
In one sentence: geopolitics is the background board, inflation is the main stage, and the pace at which ROI on AI capital expenditure gets realized is the core variable for tech stocks.