r/Stocks Daily Discussion & Fundamentals Friday Sep 18, 2026

Do yourself a favor and monitor the actual flow of oil. This is what the big quant desks are doing. It helps filter out all the noise. I track this daily using many of the same sources big players are using. Ignore the headlines and just track the flow of oil. I have a daily scheduled task setup on ChatGPT. It’s unfortunate that I even have to do this, but with a market so dialed into oil you have no choice. It can give you a sense of if the day will be bullish or bearish at least. It also helps you remove your bias. Just stick to the facts. I get a report that looks like this (it’s long but you can paste it into GPT and have it track the same things for you. “**Material update — Saudi workaround is now quantified** There is meaningful new evidence this morning. Saudi Aramco has sold about **60 million barrels from Ras Tanura for September–October loading**, specifically to move through Hormuz and then undergo ship-to-ship transfer at **Sohar, Oman**. Traders estimate this channel will average roughly **1–1.5M bpd**. The barrels are primarily headed to China, South Korea, India and Japan. That is important confirmation of the dark-shuttle system we have been tracking. Yesterday we had evidence that Saudi Arabia was *attempting* to substitute Gulf exports for lost Yanbu barrels; today we have contracted volumes and identified Asian buyers. The bad news is that this is **not remotely enough to replace Yanbu yet**. Kpler says East-West was moving about **5.5M bpd before the attack, including \~4.5M bpd exported through Yanbu**, and **no crude has loaded from Yanbu since September 11**. Kpler puts full repairs at roughly 4–6 weeks and gives only about even odds to an earlier partial bypass restoring \~2–2.5M bpd. Yesterday’s satellite finding is also now better established: **three East-West pumping stations were damaged**, versus the two initially believed, with industry sources estimating roughly **5–6 weeks for repairs**, although partial operation could return sooner. The tracker reconciliation therefore looks increasingly coherent. Vortexa’s last broad reconstruction had Hormuz crude/products near **\~8M bpd on a seven-day average**, while Kpler/dark-flow reconstruction showed Gulf crude occasionally reaching \~14M bpd on individual strong days when Yanbu and Fujairah were included. The sustained Gulf-wide industry consensus was closer to **\~15–16M bpd before the Yanbu outage**, rather than the 17–18M headline peak occasionally cited by U.S. officials. The new Saudi data does **not** justify treating 60M barrels as an additional 1–1.5M bpd on top of reconstructed Hormuz flows—the STS cargoes are largely the mechanism by which those Saudi barrels are already getting through. My current estimate remains roughly **9–11M bpd of effective Gulf/bypass supply reaching the global system**, but today’s evidence increases confidence that this level can be maintained despite almost useless visible AIS counts. The key equation has become: **\~4.5M bpd Yanbu exports lost → \~1–1.5M bpd Saudi Ras Tanura/Hormuz/Sohar replacement currently contracted → roughly 3M bpd still unreplaced.** That’s why I wouldn’t call today’s news outright bearish for oil. It is **better than yesterday for logistics**, but Saudi Arabia still hasn’t replaced most of the lost western export capacity. The strongest confirmation is downstream: Japanese refiners report supply through **November remains stable**, while the Ras Tanura/Sohar barrels have identifiable buyers across Asia. That is exactly the destination-side evidence we’ve been waiting for—the dark movements aren’t merely tankers disappearing from AIS; the oil is being contracted into Asian refinery systems. **Bottom line:** moderately positive change in the physical-flow picture. Saudi Arabia has demonstrated a functioning **\~1–1.5M-bpd Hormuz → Sohar → Asia replacement channel**, but roughly **3M bpd of the former Yanbu export stream remains uncompensated**. The next threshold I’d consider genuinely significant is either Saudi Gulf/Sohar exports pushing materially above **\~1.5M bpd**, or East-West partially restarting.”