The round trip

When a war closes the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas moves, the price of energy rises, and so does the price of the companies that sell it. The Australian share market read that within a day. What it gave, it later took back just as fast.

This article follows four Australian-listed companies through the seven months of the 2026 Iran war: two gas producers that rose on the war and fell on its ceasefire, and two defence manufacturers that rose whenever the fighting escalated. Every move here is a price change on a public exchange, and this article accuses no one of anything. It is a record of the round trip the war made through the market, and of who was holding the right names on the way up.

01Up

The war began on 28 February 2026, a Saturday. The Australian market’s first chance to price it was Monday 2 March, and it priced it hard. With the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, shuttered by the conflict, Santos and Woodside, the two biggest names on the local energy board, opened sharply higher.

Santos shares were up 7.8 per cent, changing hands for A$7.29 each. Woodside came in a close second, up 7.7 per cent at A$30.50. Brent crude had closed the previous Friday up about 3 per cent at US$73 a barrel, and the market was pricing the disruption to come, not the disruption already arrived ¹.

There is nothing improper in any of this. A shipping lane closes, energy gets scarcer, and the companies that pump and ship gas are worth more; the market does in an hour what the news does over a weekend. The point is only the direction, and the speed: within one session, the war was already money on the board.

02Down

Then it ran in reverse. On 8 April 2026, the first Australian trading session after President Trump announced a ceasefire on the evening of 7 April in Washington ⁷, the same board that had risen on the war fell on its end.

Woodside, Australia’s biggest producer and the North West Shelf operator, plunged 11.4 per cent; Santos shed 5 per cent. Falling oil prices after the ceasefire meant both had now given up all their gains from six weeks of volatile trading since the conflict began on 28 February ².

That is the round trip. A holder who bought Woodside on the war and sold on the ceasefire caught the whole move; a holder who simply held through both watched the gain arrive and leave. Nothing was taken from anyone, and nothing here was hidden; the exchange published every tick. What the two prices mark, six weeks apart, is how completely a single foreign war can be priced into a domestic market and then priced back out.

Correction, 7 October 2026. This section said President Trump announced the ceasefire on 8 April 2026. He announced it on the evening of 7 April in Washington, as this case’s first two articles record; that was the morning of 8 April in Australia, and 8 April was the first Australian session to trade on it, the day of the Woodside and Santos falls ². The text and table now say so, and reference ⁷ has been added for the timing of the announcement.

03The other side of the trade

Where the energy names tracked the oil price, up on the war and down on the ceasefire, the defence names ran on a different signal: they rose when the fighting did.

On Wednesday 26 March 2026, the day Iran rejected a United States ceasefire proposal, calling it unreasonable and putting its own conditions instead, the counter-drone maker DroneShield rocketed 19.4 per cent, closing at A$4.26 a share ³. Two weeks earlier, on 13 March, Electro Optic Systems had risen 3.3 per cent to A$10.25 after telling the market it had secured two unconditional orders for counter-drone systems worth a total of US$45 million, one of them an order for its Slinger remote weapon system from a customer in the Middle East ⁴.

These are small companies beside Woodside and Santos, and their moves are ordinary in kind: a defence manufacturer wins an order or reads a worsening conflict, and its shares rise. The mirror is the point. The energy names were long the war ending badly for oil supply; the defence names were long the war continuing. Between them they covered both ways the fighting could go, and both made money while it did.

04Who rode it

This desk found no inquiry into these moves, and nothing in the sources cited here makes a case for one; they are the market doing exactly what a public market is built to do. The check was ASIC’s media releases of 2026, 26-001MR to 26-245MR, to 15 October 2026: none announces an inquiry into trading in the shares of Woodside, Santos, DroneShield or Electro Optic Systems around these dates, and the one release that names one of these companies, 26-068MR of 9 April 2026, concerns Electro Optic Systems’ failure to disclose a 2022 revenue downgrade, not these moves ⁸. That is also why they appear in this case. A war is, among other things, a set of prices, and the prices moved in plain sight.

What the case can show is who was positioned. Over the same months these Australian names were moving, the largest Australian portfolio on the United States market, Hancock Prospecting’s, was buying the American version of the same trade: a reported US$133 million shift into US defence contractors and gold in the war’s first quarter, set out in full in this case’s third article ⁵. Hancock’s trades are disclosed in its US filings, like these price moves on a public exchange, and this desk read no filing that connects them to one another; the only thing they share is a direction, taken early.

And over the same months again, a Bloomberg report put the forecast lift in Australia’s export income from the very disruption that moved Woodside and Santos at A$38 billion, a figure this case takes up in its third and fifth articles ⁶. The share market caught the war in a day and gave it back in six weeks. The A$38 billion is a different kind of number: a forecast of what exports will earn, not money anyone has received.

The market caught the war in a day and gave it back in six weeks.

If it’s a rort, we cover it.

Correction, 7 October 2026. This section said “the Commonwealth’s own department” forecast the A$38 billion and that the national accounts “caught the same war as a windfall” that no one had been asked to give back. The A$38 billion is a Bloomberg report’s figure for the forecast lift in export income, a forecast of export earnings, not money received by anyone, as this case’s fifth article was corrected to say on 29 September 2026. The text, pull quote and key facts now say so. ⁶

Correction, 15 October 2026. This section, the hero image and its description, the key facts and the 10 September 2026 record said the moves were “under no inquiry” and were “examined by no one” or “by no regulator”. Those are claims of absence, and a search that finds nothing does not prove nothing exists. What this desk checked is narrower: ASIC’s 245 media releases of 2026, 26-001MR to 26-245MR, to 15 October 2026, read by title, none of which announces an inquiry into trading in the shares of Woodside, Santos, DroneShield or Electro Optic Systems around the war’s dates ⁸. The only release that names one of these companies, 26-068MR of 9 April 2026, is an A$4 million penalty on Electro Optic Systems for failing to disclose a 2022 revenue downgrade, with separate proceedings against its former chief executive; it does not concern these moves ⁸. The passages now say what was checked and what was found, dated. Whether the exchange or any regulator has looked at these trades without announcing it is not known to this desk, and the Australian Federal Police and the ASX were not searched.

Correction, 19 October 2026. The summary, the subtitle, the opening, the diagram note, the key facts, the image and this section said every move was lawful and disclosed, and that no filing connects Hancock Prospecting's US trades to these. No source cited establishes either: the price moves are reported by The Nightly ² and others, and the one ASIC release naming one of these companies, 26-068MR ⁸, concerns Electro Optic Systems' failure in 2022 to disclose a revenue downgrade. They now say that each move was a price change on a public exchange and that this desk found no ASIC media release, to 15 October 2026, announcing an inquiry into trading in these companies ⁸, a search that cannot show that no inquiry exists, and that this desk read no filing connecting the trades. The A$38 billion in the summary is now cited to the department's own Resources and Energy Quarterly ⁹, which gives nearly A$8 billion for 2025-26 and A$30 billion for 2026-27 under its end-June disruption scenario.