Some months, the market hands you a theme without asking. This one was Hormuz conflict investing — the Strait of Hormuz conflict that shut down one of the world’s busiest oil chokepoints touched three separate decisions in my portfolio this month, though not always in the way it looks at first glance.
Closing Indra Sistemas: 18% in one month
This trade was planned from the start — I already had my exit target set going in. Hormuz didn’t create the opportunity; it just triggered it earlier than expected. Indra has been riding Europe’s rearmament wave for a while now — record backlog growth, defense orders pushing well past €10 billion for 2026 — and the spike in Middle East tension pushed the stock into my target range faster than the timeline I’d originally planned for. I closed the position after about a month, locking in an 18% gain. Genuinely happy with this one, and it’s a good reminder that having a plan going in means you’re ready to act when the market moves, instead of reacting to the headline itself.
Tatneft: the dividend I’m still holding for
This one is different — Hormuz isn’t just the trigger here, it’s the actual driver. Tatneft just added another 100 rubles per share to my position. I’m not selling yet; I want to see the dividend actually land first, then decide whether to trade out. With roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil trade running through that strait, the disruption pushed Brent crude sharply higher this year, and Russian oil exporters like Tatneft have been direct beneficiaries of that price shock. No pre-existing plan here — just the conflict working directly through the business.
So Hormuz played two different roles this month: for Indra, it was the trigger that executed a trade I’d already planned; for Tatneft, it’s the actual source of the gain itself. Worth keeping that distinction straight — it’s easy to lump both under “geopolitics moved my portfolio” when only one of them actually did.
Buying the Tesla dip
Tesla has nothing to do with Hormuz — this one’s purely company-specific. The stock had its worst single day in over a year, falling more than 14% after a Q2 earnings report that missed expectations and reignited doubts about how much Tesla is spending on AI and robotics without much revenue to show for it yet. Shares are now trading closer to the bottom of their 12-month range than the top.
I bought into that drop. I’m not calling a bottom — Tesla’s valuation is still rich by traditional metrics, and the AI/robotics bet is unproven. But a double-digit single-day move on an established position is exactly the kind of dislocation I look for to start building a position gradually rather than all at once.
The takeaway
Not every trade tied to the same headline shares the same logic. Indra was a plan that got executed early; Tatneft was a plan-free windfall from the same conflict; Tesla was a completely unrelated dip buy. Staying diversified across sectors and geographies is what let me capture two very different outcomes from one event, without confusing “the market moved” for “I had a strategy.”
As always, this is a personal record of my own trades and reasoning, not investment advice.
Related Topics
- MOEX index fell below 2,200 points, dragged down by losses across the mining, oil & gas, and power sectors — according to this market recap.
- Tatneft hit its ex-dividend date on July 15, 2026, capping a year shaped by the sharp oil price rally tied to the Hormuz conflict — according to this dividend data.
- Tesla shares plunged 14.5% on July 23, 2026, after a Q2 earnings miss reignited concerns over AI and robotics spending — its steepest single-day drop in over a year — according to this earnings coverage.
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