Maxence Visseau, a macro trader in Dubai, didn’t sleep for the first 48 hours of the Iran War. He was reducing what would have taken days of research into hours by using Anthropic’s Claude to stress-test parallel outcomes across asset classes while keeping an eye on interceptions over the United Arab Emirates on one screen and running scenario models on another.
He later claimed that the Iranian conflict was exactly the kind of situation where AI becomes essential. Not because it takes the place of judgment. Because having a tool that can reduce your research time by 80% can mean the difference between being ready for the market open and being buried by it at 3 a.m., when oil is moving 11% in a single session and every headline out of Tehran contradicts the one before it.
| Market Context | Iran War — Global Market Turmoil, March 2026 |
|---|---|
| Key Conflict | U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran; Strait of Hormuz largely blocked |
| Brent Crude Peak (Crisis Period) | Surged to ~$119/barrel before pulling back to ~$108 |
| Key Fund Manager Quoted | Tom Hancock, Head of Focused Equity, GMO Asset Management |
| GMO Quality Fund Track Record | Beaten 98% of similar funds over 15 years (Morningstar data) |
| Hancock’s Recommended Sector | Healthcare / Biotech (defensive + secular growth opportunity) |
| Key Risk to AI/Tech Trade | Middle Eastern sovereign wealth outflows reducing U.S. tech investment |
| Investor Using AI for Research | Maxence Visseau, Founder, Arkevium (Dubai-based macro trader) |
| AI Research Time Savings | ~80% reduction in research time (Visseau, using Anthropic’s Claude) |
| Key Biotech Risk Factor | Rising interest rates compress present value of future biotech cash flows |
| Australian Rate Cited | Reserve Bank lifted cash rate to 4.1% (direct response to Iran oil shock) |
| Reference Website | GMO Asset Management |
One trader, two screens, and 48 hours of nonstop work are all depicted in that picture, which accurately depicts the damage this conflict has caused to professional investors. The conflict with Iran has affected more than just the energy sector.
In an environment where Brent crude rose to almost $119 per barrel before losing most of those gains, where tanker traffic has been largely blocked in the Strait of Hormuz, and where the secondary and tertiary effects are still making their way through inflation forecasts, central bank models, and sector rotation strategies across every major market in the world, it has accelerated the pace at which information needs to be processed, tested, and acted upon. It’s not always the traders who anticipated the conflict that are successfully navigating this. They are the ones who developed procedures quickly enough to keep up.
Alongside the cacophony, however, is a more subdued tale. A portion of professional money managers have been making a different calculation, while retail investors have been selling widely due to concerns about recession, anxiety about oil prices, and the kind of headline-driven panic that geopolitical crises consistently cause. Tom Hancock, who oversees GMO’s Focused Equity team and whose Quality Fund, according to Morningstar data, has outperformed 98% of comparable funds over the last 15 years, has been considering where capital will go if the unrest in the Middle East becomes more persistent than transient.
Healthcare is his response, which he gave with the measured assurance of someone who has successfully navigated several cycles of this nature. In particular, he stated that if market conditions worsen, he would be investing more money there. It’s not a defensive crouch. That is a thoughtful distribution from a manager who has a history of being correct when the consensus is incorrect.
Though less evident than the oil story, the reasoning linking Iran to the technology sector is the one that merits greater attention than it is currently receiving. Middle Eastern oil producers make less money when they are unable to freely transport their oil across the Strait of Hormuz.
They invest less in U.S. assets when their income declines, such as the technology stocks, AI infrastructure funds, and private equity vehicles that have taken in massive amounts of sovereign wealth capital over the last ten years. Hancock made the connection clear: oil money comes in and is recycled into data centers, venture capital, and tech hardware. If this recycling slows down because the oil isn’t flowing freely, the funding environment for capital-intensive AI infrastructure becomes more restrictive.
An Iranian blockade won’t cause TSMC’s Taiwanese factories to close. However, it was evident in their profit margins. Additionally, businesses that borrow a lot of money to construct AI data centers would experience the tightening of that capital supply in ways that eventually appear everywhere but don’t show up right away in quarterly earnings.
Geopolitical crises, on the other hand, tend to strengthen rather than weaken the logic that underpins healthcare. Regardless of the state of the oil price, people fall ill. Well-established healthcare businesses that have products on the market and are making money make money regardless of interest rate conditions, sovereign wealth recycling, or market sentiment regarding risk.
The majority of investors have an intuitive understanding of this defensive argument. Hancock’s argument, however, goes beyond defensiveness. He described healthcare as one of the best secular opportunities in the market at the moment, indicating that he believes there are basic reasons to own it regardless of the crisis, and that the crisis is only making the entry point more alluring as capital rotates out of everything and seeks a place to hide.
The impact of the Iran War on early-stage biotech is significantly different from that of large-cap pharmaceutical names, so it’s worth taking a moment to consider this distinction. Early-stage biotech companies are cash consumers; they rely on outside funding, spend money on R&D without making any money, and are primarily valued based on the discounted present value of future cash flows that could be years away. Interest rates follow an increase in inflation, which is a direct result of an oil shock this size.
Even if the underlying science remains unchanged, the present value of speculative biotech investments decreases when interest rates rise because the discount rate applied to those future cash flows rises. In direct reaction to the oil shock caused by Iran, the Reserve Bank of Australia raised its cash rate to 4.1%; no analyst had included this change in their biotech projections at the beginning of the year. In ways that do not distinguish between good and bad science, that type of rate surprise is actually detrimental to early-stage businesses.
Observing the more seasoned end of the market navigate this, there’s a feeling that the investors who survive this phase the best will be the ones who resisted the urge to interpret every headline as a trading signal and instead asked a more straightforward question: which companies will continue to do well in two years regardless of what transpires in the Strait of Hormuz?
Not everyone has the same response to that question. However, it steers a significant number of serious, seasoned managers away from the highest-multiple, most capital-intensive areas of the technology sector that relied most heavily on a funding environment that the Iran war may be in the process of disrupting and toward healthcare and quality-focused equity portfolios with robust margins and defendable business models.
How long the blockade lasts and whether a diplomatic solution is reached before the secondary effects become fully apparent are still unknown. It’s evident that those who had a procedure in place prior to the crisis—a method for quickly stress-testing scenarios, finding historical precedents, and making allocation decisions in the face of uncertainty—are handling this far better than those who didn’t.
