Oil Bull Jeff Currie Says Cash In: Brent's 75% Run Is Enough

Brent crude has rallied 75% so far in 2026, and Jeff Currie — one of the loudest bulls in oil — says that is sufficient reward. The founder and CEO of Real Macro, formerly chief energy strategist at both Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group, told investors on Monday it is time to book profits on the short-term oil trade.

His reasoning is twofold, laid out in a post on X. First, the price has risen a lot, and fast. Second, escalation in the Strait of Hormuz is mutually destructive for both parties. In plain words: the trade has paid, and the scenario that would pay more is one nobody can afford.

What exactly is Currie selling?

He draws a hard line between his short- and long-term views. He recommends banking gains on what he calls "prompt oil" — the spot price or short-dated futures contracts — and on refined products. But he still sees a "structural supercycle" intact that will keep energy prices elevated.

Longer-dated trades and beneficiaries of high oil prices remain in an upswing, in his view. He flags rigs, oil-service companies, bypass capacity, power and storage solutions as the areas still working. The caveat is obvious: a strategist calling both a top and a supercycle is asking investors to time a rotation, which is harder than it sounds.

How has the original call performed?

Currie made his overriding bull call in October 2020, built on three themes: deglobalization, electrification and monetary debasement — weaker fiat currencies enhancing the appeal of physical commodities. In his telling, the Hormuz conflict did not start those trends; it accelerated them.

The numbers back him up so far. Since autumn 2020, the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has returned 260%, against roughly 120% for both the Nasdaq-100 and the S&P 500. That is more than double the equity benchmarks over the same window.

Why sell now, on the eve of midterms?

Currie's core argument for taking profits: "escalation would be so catastrophic for food and supply chains that neither side will pursue it, while a lasting deal is equally elusive." Both escalation and resolution, in his framing, are off the table — leaving the premium in prompt prices with nowhere to go.

He predicts what he calls a "Schrödinger's strait": the chokepoint in the Iranian gulf theoretically open but in practice still closed. The way to trade that uncertainty, he argues, is to exploit the rebuilding of stockpiles and the drive for energy security among many countries. That points to oil infrastructure and logistics plays rather than oil itself.

What did the market do next?

His timing looks sharp. As Deutsche Bank chief economist Jim Reid noted in his "Early Morning Reid" bulletin on Tuesday, part of Monday's slump in oil came from a contract rollover. Even so, Reid wrote: "if you simply take the new active January contract for consistency, Brent crude still fell 7.63%." Talk of renewed U.S.-Iran negotiations was cited to explain the drop.

Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has argued for several weeks that the risk premium in oil was exaggerated, especially as Strait of Hormuz shipments normalize. In an X post on Monday, Brooks said he believes $87 per barrel is probably the right price — and that is why oil tumbles on any rumor of a negotiated settlement. That is roughly $19 below where Brent changed hands in morning trading, at $106.45, up 1.6% after reports of U.S. strikes on Iranian targets overnight.

The gap between Brooks's $87 fair value and the $106 market price is, in effect, the geopolitical premium Currie wants out of — and the infrastructure trade is where he thinks the lasting money sits.