Is The Oil Crisis Over? Or Is It Just Beginning?

Summary

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Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing

Episode Title: Is The Oil Crisis Over? Or Is It Just Beginning?
Date: July 1, 2026
Host: Travis Hoyam
Analysts: Lou Whiteman, Tyler Crow

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the surprising resilience of the oil market in 2026, despite the ongoing disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and geopolitical tensions with Iran. The team unpacks why oil prices remain moderate and whether the worst of the oil crisis is truly behind us—or if structural risks linger beneath the surface. Later, the team tackles the launch of a new institutional stablecoin and ponders if true disruption is possible when incumbents drive change. The episode wraps up with a tough look at Nike’s recent earnings, what the results signal for the brand, and whether a comeback is plausible.

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Segment 1: Oil Crisis—Resolved or Deferred?

(Start: 00:02)

Key Discussion Points

• Initial Predictions vs. Reality

  • When the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil was expected to soar to $200/barrel. Instead, WTI is ~$70, up only 20% for the year.
  • The market assumed supply disruptions would cause a crisis, but fears were “overblown” as the supply situation was better than anticipated.

• Factors Behind Oil Price Resilience

  • Large global strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) releases buffered supply losses.
  • Market oversupply and demand destruction, particularly from China (imports fell off “a cliff” at around 5 million barrels/day), offset lost barrels from the disrupted strait.
  • Ongoing but temporary negotiations and ambiguous reopenings of the strait kept traders guessing but avoided sustained shocks.

• China’s Pivotal Role

  • Tyler Crow highlights the “massive drawdown” from SPRs—1.3 billion barrels globally—and notes uncertainty over China’s true reserves.
  • Lou Whiteman adds:

    “China probably saved us all a ton... It wasn’t really benevolent, but they had the oil and they decided not to draw the oil so others could.” (04:25)

• Market Resilience and Limits of the Current Approach

  • The hosts note that band-aid measures like SPR releases work—but only up to a point.

  • Both analysts express concern about sustainability if the crisis continues:

    “Six months, I think we might be pushing it. I mean, we’re I think four months into it now, and there it is strained. Let’s not take away from the fact that like SPR releases have been patching things together. We can’t do this, you know, for forever.”
    — Tyler Crow (05:47)

• Future Structural Changes

  • The UAE and others are investing in alternate routes and pipelines to lessen future disruption risks.
  • Long-term, the crisis may “build a slightly more resilient system that can absorb these shocks even better than before.” (Tyler Crow, 06:36)

Notable Quotes

• “The big takeaway here is we can survive these things, but I don't know if we want to press our luck and try it again.”
  — Lou Whiteman (04:47)

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Segment 2: Stablecoins—Incumbents Disrupting Themselves?

(07:11)

Key Discussion Points

• New Stablecoin Consortium

  • “Open USDT” launches with backing from Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, BlackRock, Google, IBM, Solana, and almost 100 other big names.

• Nature of Disruption

  • Lou Whiteman:

    • Sees the biggest impact as disruption for existing stablecoins, not the payment incumbents.
    • Power will consolidate with institutional-backed stablecoins—“If this is where the cool kids are playing, this is where everyone will go.” (07:51)
    • Foresees lower payment processing fees but stable margins for Visa/MasterCard due to their scale and operational “inertia.”

  • Tyler Crow:

    • Skeptical this is “real” disruption: “Is it really disruption if every major existing player in a system is implementing it?” (08:47)
    • Suggests it’s more analogous to new industry standards (like the Basel rules post-financial crisis) than a Schumpeterian shakeup.

• Merchant & Consumer Impact

  • Host Travis points out that significantly lower fees (e.g., 1.5% instead of ~3%) could help merchants, especially those with tight margins (like restaurants).

  • However, the shift may have ambiguous effects for banks, issuers, and when factoring in cash-back rewards for consumers.

  • Lou Whiteman:

    “Disruption means incumbents fall, and I think incumbents get stronger here. Maybe there is a benefit for retail... But Visa and MasterCard, the idea that you should sell these stocks because technology that they can adopt too, is coming, that's—to me, I don't get that.” (11:27)

Notable Quotes

• “It seems like they’re just disrupting the disruptors... every major entrenched institution is basically playing a better version of your own game.”
  — Tyler Crow (10:41)

• “Never underestimate the power of inertia in finance, especially, especially among these big players. The house usually wins.”
  — Lou Whiteman (08:29)

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Segment 3: Nike Earnings—Is a Turnaround Possible?

(14:33)

Key Discussion Points

• Earnings Snapshot

  • Revenue: Flat (reported), down on a currency-neutral basis; direct-to-consumer sales fell 7%.

  • Beat ultra-low expectations on EPS, but much of the profit came from non-operational sources (tariff recoveries, not true business strength).

  • Lou observes:

    “I don't think these were great results... Even the good news was bad news. If you look under the hood, they earned 72 cents per share. But 52 cents of that was related to tariff recovery... This is not a company where individual quarters matter. What we need to see is that there is a turnaround in place. And I don't know how you can read this and say anything other than if there is a turnaround going on. We are very, very, very early here.” (15:00–15:54)

• Brand & Strategy Challenges

  • Tyler points to Steph Curry’s major endorsement shift—signing with Chinese brand Li Ning after leaving Under Armour— as emblematic of Nike’s struggle to stay relevant and innovative in athlete partnerships:

    “...His brand still carries a lot of weight. The fact that Nike... couldn’t land Curry, I feel that that’s emblematic of the challenges… trying to meet the customer where it wants to be.” (15:56)

• Geographical Weakness

  • North America: Wholesale numbers up double digits year-over-year.

  • China: Ongoing headwind; 17% decline in retail sales quarter-over-quarter. Nike’s China sales are down 30% over 5 years—reversing what was once a major growth driver.

  • Tyler concludes:

    “It’s gone from... a structural tailwind for them for many years into a headwind. And I struggle to see when that... decline reverses course.” (17:15)

• Can Nike Recover?

  • Lou: The brand is durable enough for some recovery, but returning to previous heights is unlikely in a world where tastes shift rapidly and brands can go viral without legacy marketing power.

    “The Nike of my childhood is never coming back. I do think it's possible... to grow from here. The challenge... is, will that equal market beating returns? I'm very much on the fence about that.” (18:15)

  • Travis notes: Nike is trending towards discount status, a dramatic shift from being once a status symbol.

Notable Quotes

• “Nike is now kind of a discount brand. That’s not the way that it was when I was a kid and you were going in and buying Jordans... You really stood out when you had them... I don’t think that’s really the case anymore.”
  — Travis Hoyam (18:52)

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Key Timestamps

| Segment | Start Time | Notable Highlights | |---------------------------------------------|------------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | Oil Crisis Analysis | 00:02 | Strait of Hormuz, global oil supply shocks, China’s role | | Geopolitics & Market Resilience | 01:07 | SPR releases, impact of global reserves, demand destruction | | Market Adaptation & Risks | 05:11 | Limits of current “band-aids,” future infrastructure changes | | Stablecoin Consortium Discussion | 07:11 | Institutional adoption, merchant fees, “real” disruption debate | | Nike Earnings Breakdown | 14:33 | Weak underlying results, global/regional sales trends | | Brand Legacy & Future | 17:00 | Steph Curry deal, China’s importance, brand’s future |

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “China probably saved us all a ton...It wasn’t really benevolent, but they had the oil and they decided not to draw the oil so others could.”
  — Lou Whiteman (04:25)

• “Is it really disruption if every major existing player in a system is implementing it?”
  — Tyler Crow (08:47)

• “The Nike of my childhood is never coming back.”
  — Lou Whiteman (18:15)

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Conclusion

This episode offered a nuanced take on three headline stories for investors:

• Oil’s “crisis” proved survivable—but mainly because of emergency measures and fortuitous oversupply, with China playing a critical if opaque buffer role.
• The stablecoin revolution may have arrived—but the power structure in payments could become even more entrenched as legacy giants adopt the tech first.
• Nike’s earnings illustrate a global brand at a crossroads—far from collapse, but with its days of effortless dominance apparently over, especially with China no longer a key growth engine.

Useful for investors: The episode underscores the value of looking past headlines and examining underlying fundamentals, second-order effects, and who really benefits when “disruption” arrives.

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Transcript

[A]

Is Nike coming back into fashion? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Molly fool and Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoyam, joined today by Lou Whiteman and our special guest, Tyler Crow. Guys, we're going to get to Nike. This Nike stock was down pretty big after the market closed yesterday after they reported earnings. And now it's, it's shockingly up today. We'll get to that a little bit later. But I wanted to start with an area of the market that we don't talk about all that much, but it's actually a huge deal for consumers, for the economy overall, and that's oil. And Tyler, this is a commodity that we thought was going to be a huge problem for the economy. By this time in 2026, when the Strait of Hormuz closed, we were supposed to have $200 barrels of oil. Oil's still up for the year, up about 20% for the year, but we're down to about $70 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate. What is going on with the oil market? Is the fear, did that just never materialize into the economic concerns that we thought they were going to, and is this whole thing over?

[B]

Well, I mean, talk about a loaded question here. I think one of the things with the initial fears, so much of this was basically this. For a lot of commodity traders, this was considered the doomsday scenario. But what, and you know, some of the things that ended up happening were, you know, with a lot of investing decisions and major global geopolitical reactions. There was a lot of like second or third order, like knock on effects that sort of affected this in some sort of ways. For one, like we started this war or conflict, however you want to label it, with the, with this closure of the straight or four moves where not too long after it was like, oh, we're going to open it back up. Either we're going to open it up by force, we're going to start negotiating. And then there's just been this tit or tat, it seems like, for two or three months now of, you know, negotiations have started. Negotiators are we're going to open it. And there's been a lot of like, okay, this is temporary, we can get through this. And as we came into the crisis, there was actually quite a bit of surplus oil on the market. Like, we were actually oversupplied relative to demand in the market. So we were in a kind of a position of strength on the market. And at the same time, there was a lot of unprecedented changes that we saw Yeah, I mean, over this period so far, about 1.3 billion barrels have been drawn down from strategic petroleum reserves around the world, whether in the U.S. in Europe, Japan. And, you know, that's been a major buffer for this. And not to mention what China has done as well, because demand imports from there have also fallen off a cliff.

[A]

But isn't that kind of like a band aid for the market? Maybe

[B]

this is the really hard thing to say because one of the things that is not necessarily known is how much oil in storage or how much does China have? You know, there are some what they call floating tank storages where that you can actually monitor. And that's been like, you know, using satellite imagery data. People have been able to do this because obviously China does not publish their strategic, Strategic Petroleum reserves, but they also have these massive underground caverns that nobody really knows is how much is in there at any given moment. And so it's been using those as a massive drawdown. And they were reducing their total amount of imports at the time at about 5 million barrels per day. And so when you started thinking about a 13 million barrel per day gap that was leaving the Strait of Hormuz, taking five out was a huge chunk. And you start adding in SPR releases, you saw demands, destruction in other parts of the world. It has somewhat deflected the blow that I think a lot of people had seen so far.

[A]

Lou, I remember talking about this a few months ago, and one of the things that we talked about was you just don't know what the second and third order effects were. And we were talking about that in a negative way. But it seems like the market has been. I think the word that you used was resilient in ways that we maybe didn't anticipate.

[C]

Yes, certainly. I think we've learned that maybe we have evolved some on oil. But just to underline what Tyler said, China is the most interesting story here. And China probably saved us all a ton, as Tyler said. Fortunately, we were washing oil going in, which made it easier. But something weird and we may never know. I mean, my pet theory is with China is that they have been building a bigger stockpile than we realized for a long time simply because they wanted, you know, if mischief happened in Taiwan or something, or if they were cut off just to have it. And they decided it was not in their best interest as exporters to see the global economy crash. So it wasn't really benevolent, but they had the oil and they decided not to draw the oil so others could look the big takeaway Here is we can survive these things, but I don't know if we want to press our luck and try it again.

[A]

I want to get out of here on this from both of you quickly. If this conflict with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, if oil is not flowing the way that it normally does over the next six months, let's say through the end of this year. Tyler, I'll start with you. Do you think we can keep oil prices the way that they are or are we going to. Are these what I call band aids just going to. There's only so much strategic petroleum reserve that you can pull out of it and eventually we're under supplied overall and that's going to impact prices or is that not the right way to think about it?

[B]

Six months, I think we might be pushing it. I mean we're I think four months into it now and there it is strained. Let's not take away from the fact that like SPR releases have been patching things together. We can't do this, you know, for forever. And also take into mind into account too that, you know, Russia has also significantly lost a lot of refining and export capacity recently because of its conflict with Ukraine. So there are some other things that are kind of knocking on here. If we were to go for another six months, that would be a little bit harder to do. Now on that Band Aid sort of situation, you're also seeing, for example, the UAE is starting to build pipelines so they can actually circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. Can't really build one and a port in six months. But there does seem to be some momentum towards ways to circumvent the existing bottlenecks. And maybe over the six months it wouldn't happen. But I think over the next couple of years we're going to probably end up building a slightly more resilient system that can absorb these shocks even better than before.

[A]

When we come back, we're going to get to a new stable coin in the market. You're listening to Motley Fool, Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Move over tether and USD. A new stablecoin is here. Open USDT is out. It has the support of a massive number of institutions. Lou, this is, this is why I wanted to bring this to you. I know that you've been questioning the future of stablecoins, But Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, BlackRock, BYN, Google, IBM, Temp, you know, Solana, all of these companies. There's a list of about a hundred companies that are going to be adopting this stablecoin. Is this finally this disruption to payments that we've been promised from the blockchain over the past five or 10 years?

[C]

I think it's disruptive for every other stablecoin. I don't know if it's disruptive for anyone else. Inevitably, most of the money is going to gravitate towards one stablecoin or a couple of stablecoins if it goes anywhere at all. If this is where the cool kids are playing, this is where everyone will go. So if you were trying to compete against this stablecoin, all of these partners definitely puts you at a disadvantage. As far as the consumer goes. I don't see this as anything at all to worry about behind the scenes. On the enterprise side of it, there is the potential here to make existing payment flows more efficient. I know everyone always talks about how that was going to tear down Visa and MasterCard. It's going to destroy these plump margins they get. I think more likely, as they adopt these tools, they grow more efficient. They lower their fees, but keep margins intact. Never underestimate the power of inertia in finance, especially, especially among these big players. The house usually wins. I think this might end up with lower fees everywhere, but I think Visa and MasterCard will be just fine.

[A]

Tyler, what do you think?

[B]

Is it really disruption if every major existing player in a system is implementing it?

[A]

Let me make the case for this because I've been watching this for a while and one of the things, if you've ever run a business and you paid the 3% credit card fees, that's a massive fee. Like a restaurant, for example, the credit card fee fees are about the same as the profitability of a really good restaurant. So you're, you're, you're basically, you could double your profits if you just didn't have to pay those fees. The potential fee reduction is real. And the example that I always point to is Stripe accepts USDC stablecoins on their platform. It's just a digital transfer, just like a, just like using your credit card. But they charge about one and a half percent as opposed to 2.9% for using credit cards. So that, if it is implemented, could potentially be disruptive to someone in that ecosystem. Now, is that Visa and MasterCard, is it the banks who are actually taking a big chunk of that? I don't know that we necessarily know the final answer to that, but I know that merchants would love to pay a 1.5% fee instead of a 2.9% fee. So, you know, that's potentially the case for this sort of consortium at least moving in that direction, a potentially more efficient way of moving money around. And that will at least change who's got their fingers in the pot.

[B]

That's fair. But I guess when I'm thinking of disruption, I'm thinking of tackling the institutions that have built up whatever problem this happens to be solving. And when I look at this, it's like, well, stablecoins, payment processing. This was supposed to upend the Visa and mastercards and all that. If they're all implementing it, I don't know, it almost feels like we're the Basel rules coming out of the financial crisis. A disruption to the banks or it was a kind of like, standard protocol that everyone adopted and, you know, for the, for better or worse, change the way they do that. Yeah. And this really does feel a little bit more like entrenchment of the existing systems because now, you know, who does, for example, in this, you know, crypto world who are in, you know, think of circle or think of any. Or tether with any of the other stablecoins, like, what is their case? It seems like they're just disrupting the disruptors, I guess is, if you will, because it's, you know, taking something that was sort of starting to gain traction, but then immediate was like every major entrenched institution is basically playing a better version of your own game.

[C]

So I'm team Tyler here, maybe, maybe with semantics, we're talking about words, but disruption means incumbents fall, and I think incumbents get stronger here. Maybe there is a benefit for retail and maybe, you know, that that's. If anything, if Visa and MasterCard can find a technology that allows them to keep their margins. But shut up. All these critics that are always complaining about their high, high fees, that's a win for them. I think the incumbents win here. The technology may change. There may be a little benefit for the restaurants, retailers. But Visa and MasterCard, the idea that you should sell these stocks because technology that they can adopt too, is coming, that's. To me, I don't get that.

[A]

The interesting thing to watch will be how does this change under the hood and that fee structure? Visa and MasterCard actually don't take a huge percentage of that 2.9% that I talked about. They take a pretty small cut. The bigger cut goes to banks and ultimately in a lot of cases, comes back to consumers with the cash back that you may have with your credit card. So is that something that consumers would be willing to adopt? Hey, instead of having that surcharge on your restaurant of 3 or 4% on your bill, you'll have a little bit less in money back. I don't know that is changing consumer behavior that I don't know that we're necessarily ready for yet. But definitely something to watch given all of the huge names that are involved here in adopting this new stablecoin. When we come back, we're going to get to Nike's earnings and why the stock is maybe up today. You're listening to Motley Fool, Hidden Gems Investing.

[D]

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[A]

Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Nike's earnings are out. They on the surface, don't really look all that good. On a reported basis, revenue was flat. On a currency neutral basis, it was actually down direct to consumer sales, down 7%. But Lou, the stock is up about 2% today. So what should we be taking from this earnings report?

[C]

And mind you, still down 35% for the year, which I think is a bigger.

[A]

Yeah, it has not been a good run for Nike.

[C]

But look, I got to be honest with you, I don't think these were great results. If you are a Nike shareholder, I don't think there's much to celebrate here. They did beat expectations, so you have that headline there. But the bad news is expectations were rock bottom. Nobody was expecting much coming in here. And even the good news was bad news. If you look under the hood, they earned 72 cents per share. But 52 cents of that was related to tariff recover recovery. Same story with gross margins improved by 890 basis points. That includes 900 basis points of margin benefits. So margins would have been down without tariffs. Sales were down across the board down in China. Look, this is not a company where individual quarters matter. What we need to see is that there is a turnaround in place. And I don't know how you can read this and say anything other than if there is a turnaround going on. We are very, very, very early here.

[B]

Something happened within the most, couple most recent weeks that actually wasn't anything related to Nike. But I think it's emblematic to some of the troubles or challenges that we've seen with Nike. Steph Curry signed a 10 year shoe deal with Li Ning, which is a Chinese footwear company. He was, you know, a free agent after he left Under Armour. And you know, look, I get it that like maybe Steph Curry isn't like the newest hot thing in the NBA right now, but his this past year in 2026, he was still the top selling jersey in all of the NBA. So whatever brand he has, it still carries a lot of weight. And the fact that Nike, with this, you know, Elliot Hill's win now effort and being obsessed with sport and athletes, I find it kind of strange that it couldn't land Curry. I feel that like that's like emblematic of the challenges that it's been having trying to, you know, meet the customer where it wants to be and all that stuff. And look, I, I've done my best to help Nike. I have bought so many Paris Century Men kits lately, I, you know, I think they should actually be highlighting me in the conference call.

[A]

That would, that would be a really nice call out for you. The thing that I wanted to just ask quickly as we round things up here is is this a company that even can turn it around at this point? Tyler, I want you to go first.

[B]

Yes and no. And that's like the weird disparity in their business because if you look at the North America numbers, it's actually doing surprisingly well. Like wholesale numbers were up double digits year over year. For North America, the challenge is China. And this has not just been like a one time thing. They saw a 17% decline in retail sales quarter over quarter. And I saw this on a substack from the Science of Hitting, who's been tracking Nike for a long time. Nike's sales in China are down 30% over past five years. It's gone from what was a, you know, a structural tailwind for them for many years into a headwind. And I, I struggle to see when that, you know, decline reverses course.

[C]

Yeah, great, great brand. Can they turn it around? As in, can they go up from here? Yes, because the brand isn't going anywhere. Can they get back to their heyday?

[B]

No.

[C]

Like Tyler said, it's a much more international market Instagram influencers have made. You really just need one person on Instagram to promote a brand, not just the, the way they used to throw money and feel ubiquitous. That doesn't work anymore. The Nike of my childhood is never coming back. I do think it's possible that thanks to the brand, they can get their house together with how they do sales and grow from here. The challenge for me as an investor is that were will that equal market beating returns? I'm very much on the, on the fence about that.

[A]

Yeah, it's one of those stocks that people always are making the argument that it's a great value and you do need to look at the underlying businesses and are the long term trends in their favor. One of the things that I look at as you know, I have little kids and we're buying shoes is Nike is now kind of a discount brand. That's not the way that it was when I was a kid and you were going in and buying Jordans and they were, you know, twice as expensive as every other shoe and you really stood out when you had them on. I don't think that's really the case anymore. So lots has changed for Nike. The stock is up today, but we'll see if they're able to implement any sort of turnaround that lasts long term. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talked about in the Motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards. It is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes for Lou Whiteman, Tyler Crowe and Dan Boyd. Behind the glass, I'm Travis William. Thanks for listening. We'll see you here tomorrow.