If you listen to the President, he loves the headline and the headline tends to make things good. In the days gone by the President and Madison Avenue would go hand in hand. Now days, there are still public relations firms on Madison Avenue but it does not have the same weight. In many areas of the economy, similar firms cluster together for example Wall Street means the stock exchange, but the offices are not Wall Street. Anyways, the President says he will have a deal and ships will flow through the Strait of Hormuz.

In an article by Jenny Gross of the New York Times News Service, the reality is a little different than what the President says. In late May more than 1,500 ships are in the Strait ready to move across the oceans. Prior to the war, about 130 ships went through the Straits on anyone day.

Before the ships begin leaving, companies will need to know how their ships will be prioritized, said Jakob P Larsen, the chief safety and security officer of the Baltic and International Maritime Council.

Given Iran dropped mines into parts of the Strait, what routes would the ships take? If the navies of the US, France, Britain and Germany deployed minesweepers, it would take several weeks.

People to run the ships would need to come back from around the world as ships have bare minimum crews as they are stranded in the Gulf.

Rolf Habben Jansen, the CEO of Hapig Lloyd in a podcast that one of his ships went through, but it required a lot of cleaning to get to maximum speed. The warm weather of the Gulf vessels have accumulated barnacles, sea creatures and algae that can impede navigation.

Lasse Kristofersen, the CEO of Wallenius Wilhelmsen, a car shipping and logistics giant expects it would take at least 30 days to 45 days for shipping to return to normal.

All those issues apply to the shipping of oil, once the ships are available and moving, during the war Iran sent missiles into the infrastructure of the Persian Gulf countries oil infrastructure which needs to be fixed, so the oil can reuse pumping.

In the meantime, like the headlines from the President, but be skeptical of the operational expectations.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when you buy one of these companies you are buying the ability of the company to execute. Execute on their strategy, execute on their plans, execute on their day-to-day operations. Many have demonstrated time and time again they can do it and it gets better every year. We all have high expectations the use of AI will make it easier, but does it? Logistics always needs to be examined.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.