Former White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein has issued a stark warning on energy markets, calling current oil benchmarks “wrong and too low” despite WTI and Brent trading over $100.

In an interview with CNBC this morning, the former diplomat – who is now with TWG Global as a Managing Partner – said paper market prices fail to reflect severe “real-world supply disruptions” across key global transit bottlenecks.

Divergence between paper prices and physical oil market

According to Hochstein, physical crude is selling at massive premium, with geopolitical hostilities, depleted reserves, and impaired refining infrastructure leaving global energy markets “drastically” underpricing the true extent of incoming supply shocks.

He emphasized that headline exchange futures materially underestimate the actual tightness across physical energy markets, adding physical crude transactions globally are fetching rather steep spot premiums ranging between $120 and $150 per barrel.

This massive gap is driven by rapidly dwindling Strategic Petroleum Reserves, which limits flow-rate flexibility and leaves global supplies without a safety net.

Plus, retail product prices paint a far more severe picture – diesel trading at about $6.20 per gallon historically aligns with $200 crude oil, while average US gasoline prices near $4.30 a gallon often correspond to crude trading between $125 and $130 per barrel.

Compounding Middle East disruptions and infrastructure attacks

The pricing mismatch is further exacerbated by escalating supply bottleneck break-downs across major Middle Eastern transit corridors.

With the Strait of Hormuz virtually “non-functional” and the Bab el-Mandeb strait under Houthi control, key maritime bypasses have collapsed.

A recent drone strike disabling Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, a key bypass capable of moving 7 million barrels per day to the Red Sea, has removed another critical “relief valve” for regional exports.

Additionally, refined petroleum products from major Gulf producers such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are unable to exit the region at normal volumes, leaving global refining hubs severely constrained without immediate operational resolution.

Global refining deficits and Russian export halts

The systemic squeeze extends well beyond crude transit into global refining infrastructure, where capacity deficits continue to compound.

Ukrainian strikes on strategic Russian refining facilities have permanently knocked out substantial capacity, shifting Moscow from a key supplier that once accounted for 11% of global diesel exports into a net importer.

According to Hochstein, this structural deficit means lost refining output cannot easily be restored even if geopolitical risks subside.

With primary supply buffers depleted and alternative bypass routes knocked offline, energy markets remain severely exposed to further upward price shocks.

Consequently, analysts warn that without swift intervention or emergency route restoration, paper futures will inevitably be forced to catch up with spot physical reality, triggering unprecedented cost pressure on global transport networks and consumer economies alike.

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Bitget is marking its eighth anniversary with a focus on expanding its Universal Exchange (UEX) strategy across crypto, traditional financial markets and institutional trading.

The Seychelles-based crypto platform said non-crypto assets accounted for as much as 40% of its total trading volume over the past year.

Trading in traditional finance perpetual contracts and contracts for difference (CFDs) also surpassed $10 billion in daily volume at its peak.

The company is entering its ninth year under the theme “8uilt for Perfect Trades,” as it seeks to broaden the range of markets available on its platform.

Bitget expands UEX offering

Over the past year, Bitget launched stock perpetual contracts, US stock options and Hong Kong stock Quanto contracts as part of its push beyond crypto markets.

The company also said its rToken product surpassed $100 million in assets under management within five weeks and has since recorded more than 3 million cumulative transactions.

According to Bitget, one in four new users now starts their trading journey with rToken.

Bitget has also expanded its use of artificial intelligence in trading through AI Playbook, which the company describes as an autonomous trading agent.

“Crypto and traditional markets are converging, AI is changing the trading experience, and institutional participation is accelerating,” Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said.

Chen added that “UEX is our bet on where all of that is heading, and the next chapter for Bitget will be much bigger than crypto alone.”

Security and institutional trading in focus

Bitget said it plans to expand its Proof of Reserves coverage from four to 24 verifiable assets as part of its eighth-anniversary initiatives.

The company’s Protection Fund had an average valuation of approximately $382 million in August 2026.

Bitget said the expansion of its asset offering would be accompanied by continued investment in security, market integrity and compliance.

Institutional trading is also expected to remain a priority during the company’s ninth year.

As of the second quarter of 2026, institutional client net assets had increased 45% from the end of 2025, according to Bitget.

The number of core active market makers also increased from 90 to 248 firms.

The company said it plans to strengthen execution quality, API and quantitative trading infrastructure, institutional services and cross-asset account capabilities.

Bitget prepares for its ninth year

Bitget’s eighth-anniversary celebrations will include KCGI 2026, which features a 3 million USDT prize pool, as well as VIP programmes, community activities and offline events across multiple regions.

The company said its focus for the next stage remains on improving the trading experience while expanding access to a broader range of markets.

Bitget currently says it serves more than 125 million users and offers access to more than 2 million crypto tokens, alongside tokenised stocks, ETFs, commodities, foreign exchange and precious metals including gold.

As it enters its ninth year, Bitget is positioning UEX as the central part of its strategy to bring crypto and traditional markets together on a single trading platform.

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Dell stock retreated in the premarket session as investors dumped technology shares amid concerns about artificial intelligence (AI). It retreated to $550 from last Friday’s close of $567 also as investors started to book profits. Still, on the positive side, some bullish catalysts may boost the stock in the near term. 

Dell stock slips amid AI jitters

Dell Technologies stock is falling, mirroring the performance of other companies in the artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia stock dropped by 2.77% in the premarket session, while Micron and SanDisk were down by over 5%. Other top companies in the AI industry were in the red as well.

The ongoing sell-off is happening as investors react to ongoing concerns about the artificial intelligence industry. In a social media post last week, a former Anthropic employee warned that the sector, left unchanged, will lead to human extinction.

Dario Amodei, the founder and CEO of Anthropic, urged the industry to slow down the pace of AI model development, a statement that the heads of SpaceX, OpenAI, and DeepMind leaders supported. 

Therefore, there are concerns on how these statements will impact the AI industry. For one, the warnings may lead to more data center cancellations. 

However, in reality, these statements will likely have no major impact on Dell and other companies in the industry like Micron, SanDisk, and Kioxia. That’s because the chances of slowing down the investments are negligible since AI companies are seeing elevated competition from American and Chinese companies like Z.ai, DeepSeek, and Moonshot.

Dell Technologies’ business is thriving

The most recent results showed that its business is thriving as demand for AI servers rose. Its revenue jumped by 58% in the second quarter to $47 billion, much higher than what analysts were expecting. The company expects that its annual revenue will jump to $192 billion, up by 69% YoY. 

These numbers mean that Dell’s growth has become largely unstoppable since it made over $88 billion in 2024. Most of its growth came from the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), which made over $31.8 billion, up by 89% on a YoY basis. AI-optimized server revenue doubled during the quarter. 

The Client Solutions Group’s revenue jumped by 20% in the second quarter to $15 billion, with the commercial client rising by 22% to $13.2 billion. 

Most notably, the company, which often is highly conservative, expects that its third-quarter revenue will come in at $49 billion, up by 81% on an annual basis.

This growth has pushed the management to boost its share repurchases since it believes that it is highly undervalued.

Dell stock technical analysis

Dell Technologies stock | Source: TradingView

The daily chart shows that Dell shares have been in a strong bull run in the past few months and is now hovering around its all-time high. It has rallied from a low of $356 in July to a high of $567. 

Dell has jumped above the important resistance level of $513, its highest level on August 13. It remains above the 50-day and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMA). It also remains above the Supertrend indicator.

Therefore, the most likely scenario is where it retreats and retests the support at $513 and then resumes the upward trend, potentially to $600.

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