The strikes stopped and the price fell. Brent was down 6.72 percent on the day, at $90.28 [1]. That is a real move, and it is being read as the war winding down.
The trackers tell you what the waterway is actually doing, and it is not reopening.
Day 148 of the closure. The most recent IMF PortWatch count, dated July 19, records 15 vessel transits against a pre-crisis baseline of 88 a day [1]. Seventeen percent of normal. A separate tracker puts the seven-day tanker average at 1.0 a day against an estimated normal of 21, and counted two tanker transits on July 26 [2].
War-risk insurance is where the market prices what it actually believes. A VLCC passage costs roughly $2.5 million to insure, about eight times the pre-crisis rate [1]. That is not a number that moves on a two-day pause.
There are 425 vessels anchored or stopped inside the zone, within a seven-day range of 307 to 540. Ninety-four tankers went dark - AIS transponders off - in 24 hours, against a baseline of 70.8 [1]. Ships turn off their transponders when being seen is the risk.
The oil price is the part that moved, and even it has not moved far. Brent at $90.28 is about 25.4 percent above the roughly $72 level before the crisis [1]. The fall is from a spike, not to normal.
Two cautions on these figures, because they matter. These are third-party AIS aggregators, not primary registries, and should be read as such. The PortWatch transit count also carries an eight-day lag, so the 15-vessel figure describes July 19, not today [1].
What the numbers support is narrow and solid: the shooting paused, and the strait did not reopen.
