*HEGSETH: WE CONTROL THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly stated that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz, a claim that bears directly on the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of global seaborne oil passes. The primary transmission channel is geopolitical risk premium: statements asserting control over a chokepoint can raise expectations of supply disruption or escalation, pushing crude benchmarks higher through the risk premium embedded in front-month futures rather than through any observed change in physical flows. Crude oil and Brent-linked contracts are the most directly exposed instruments, followed by tanker freight rates, Gulf-region sovereign credit spreads, and energy equities with heavy Middle East exposure. Traders should watch the next weekly EIA inventory report and any official clarification or counter-statement from Iranian or Gulf state authorities, since a formal military posture change or tanker incident would shift the move from sentiment to supply risk.

HIGH-impact news is typically a market-moving event with multi-pip or multi-percent intraday reactions. Examples include central bank rate decisions, major CPI/NFP releases, geopolitical shocks, mega-cap earnings beats/misses, and regulatory announcements. Traders typically position-reduce or hedge ahead of scheduled HIGH-impact events, and follow the wire in real time to react to unscheduled ones (war headlines, central-bank emergency statements, surprise corporate actions). The Trading News Terminal squawk box reads every HIGH-impact headline aloud the moment it hits the wire — so active traders don't have to stare at the feed.

Active traders typically follow a three-step workflow when a market-moving headline hits the wire: (1) read the headline on the terminal or hear it on the squawk box; (2) assess whether the news is already priced in (by checking intraday price action in the seconds before) or whether it's genuinely new information; (3) act — either entering a breakout position, fading an overreaction, or tightening stops on existing trades. Trading News Terminal's Pro plan delivers wire-grade headlines within seconds of the source, with automatic audio squawk on every HIGH-impact event, so the read-assess-act cycle never waits on a refresh button.