The missile strikes on Feb. 28 changed the math for every commodity desk in the world….
Operation Epic Fury resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and perhaps the near-total collapse of the Iranian command structure. But President Donald Trump signaled this is just the beginning.
In a video released from Mar-a-Lago, Trump warned of a “big wave” of attacks yet to come and suggested a four-week window to finalize regime change.
That four-week window is already closing. Twelve days into Operation Epic Fury, the conflict is costing the U.S. an estimated $1 billion per day, Iran has launched numerous waves of retaliatory strikes across the region, and the administration’s stated war aims have shifted multiple times. The structural damage to global trade is not theoretical anymore — it’s being priced into every futures contract in the world.
Brent crude crossed $100 per barrel on March 8 for the first time since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, peaking at $126 as the Strait of Hormuz has effectively shut down.
Over 200 vessels are now stranded, according to Lloyd’s List, and insurance coverage has been pulled entirely from the waterway.
JPMorgan’s $120-per-barrel projection has already been breached, albeit briefly.
Analysts at Kpler are now warning of $150 per barrel if traffic through the Strait doesn’t recover by the end of March.
Shipping costs have hit all-time highs as the Strait moves toward zero traffic.
Iran’s IRGC officially confirmed the closure on March 2, and has reportedly begun laying naval mines in the waterway, a development that could extend the effective blockade for weeks beyond any ceasefire.
Maersk, CMA CGM, and MSC have suspended operations entirely, while protection and indemnity insurance was withdrawn for all vessels as of March 5.
You might think defense stocks are the obvious winners, and they’re surely going to see some upside, but the real story is the logistics of replenishment.
The U.S. fired more than 100 Tomahawk missiles on the first night alone, and many more since.
Replacing those assets requires more than just a Congressional appropriation. It requires a specific set of rare earth alloys and chemicals that the West has ignored for three decades.
With all this going on, here are six companies investors must watch.
Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY): “Safe Barrels” in the Permian
Geopolitics has turned the oil market into a game of “where,” not “how much.”
And Occidental Petroleum (OXY) is a primary beneficiary of this geographic flight to safety.
As a dominant producer in the Permian Basin, OXY’s core assets are thousands of miles away from Iranian drone swarms. These are “safe barrels” that do not require a naval escort.
While Middle Eastern producers face the constant threat of infrastructure sabotage, OXY operates in a theater of relative domestic security.
The company’s Feb. 18 earnings report highlights its readiness for this type of volatility. OXY reported total company production of 1,481 Mboed, consistently exceeding the high end of its guidance.
More importantly, its organic reserve replacement ratio remains robust at 107%.
When WTI was averaging $59 in late 2025, OXY was generating a billion dollars in quarterly free cash flow.
At $80 or the projected $120, that cash engine becomes a juggernaut that few other independent producers can match.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has acted as the “smart money” floor for years, but the ceiling is being lifted by a strategic transformation.
OXY recently completed the $9.7 billion sale of OxyChem to sharpen its focus on upstream production. By reducing principal debt to $15 billion, OXY has lean-manned its operations just as the commodity cycle turns vertical. This financial discipline allows the company to aggressively ramp production without over-leveraging its balance sheet.
OXY’s role in the 2026 economy is that of the “guarantor of supply.” While the conflict in Iran creates a vacuum in global production, OXY’s assets in Texas and New Mexico provide the stability the market craves.
If the Strait remains closed for months rather than weeks, the “Permian Premium” will become a more permanent fixture of OXY’s valuation. It is the ultimate hedge for an era of regional instability.
REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY): Breaking the Metallization Bottleneck
While the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited” supply of heavy weaponry, according to President Trump, the specialized magnets that power the guidance systems in those missiles are a different story.
These systems do not run on raw rare earth ore…they run on high-performance alloys that must survive the extreme thermal stress of a Tomahawk’s flight path.
And REalloys sits at the midstream chokepoint, metallization and alloying, that determines whether those production lines stay open or grind to a halt.
For decades, the West treated rare earth independence as a mining problem, but digging rock out of the ground in Nevada or Saskatchewan is only the first 10% of the battle.
The real crisis is the “missing middle”, the chemical and metallurgical process that turns mining concentrate into defense-grade metals. China currently controls roughly 90% of this specific conversion step.
REalloys is the only company in North America with an operational facility, located in Euclid, Ohio, that has already been working with the Department of Defense to produce these critical metals.
The 2026 conflict could turn REalloys’ partnership with the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) into a strategic asset for the Pentagon.
Under their executed agreement, REalloys secures 80% of the annual production from the SRC’s Rare Earth Processing Facility, which is expected to begin commercial-scale output of Dysprosium and Terbium oxides by early 2027.
This is the only “China-free” heavy rare earth refinery in North America. By securing these “heavy” minerals, the dopants that prevent magnets from demagnetizing at high temperatures, REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) and is well positioned to be a dominant player in the domestic market for the materials required for F-35 engines and missile interceptors.
The big news for ALOY is tied to a hard regulatory deadline: Jan. 1, 2027. On that date, strict new U.S. defense procurement rules (DFARS) take effect, legally barring the use of Chinese-sourced magnets in covered military systems.
With Operation Epic Fury likely to deplete existing stockpiles, the scramble for DFARS-compliant magnets could reach a fever pitch.
The company’s recent raise of close to $50 million has provided the necessary liquidity to help accelerate its expansion.
This capital is earmarked for the Phase 2 expansion of its processing facilities, aimed at producing 20,000 tonnes of heavy rare earth permanent magnets annually by the end of the decade.
Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): Replenishing a Depleted Arsenal
The first 48 hours of Operation Epic Fury proved that modern warfare is a “burn rate” business. The U.S. arsenal of roughly 4,000 Tomahawks sounds massive until you realize that 2.5% of that total was expended in a single night of strikes.
Lockheed Martin (LMT) is entering an unprecedented era of demand as the Pentagon realizes its “deep magazine” can become shallow.
Lockheed exited 2025 with a record $194 billion backlog, and that was before the first B-2 stealth bombers struck fortified ballistic missile facilities inside Iran.
CEO Jim Taiclet has already unveiled plans to triple PAC-3 missile production to 2,000 units annually. This isn’t just a sales bump; it’s a total industrial mobilization.
The company is spending $2.5 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, a 70% increase, to build new Munitions Acceleration Centers.
Every Tomahawk fired represents a high-margin recurring revenue event that will take years to replace. The market priced this in immediately, with shares jumping 3.37% as the “replenishment” thesis became the dominant narrative in defense circles.
The company is also the prime contractor for the “Golden Dome” shield, a multi-layered defense architecture being integrated across the Middle East.
As regional states like Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia face retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, the demand for LMT’s interceptors is reaching a fever pitch.
Lockheed’s F-35 program also stands to benefit from the high-kinetic environment. The 191 jets delivered in 2025 were a record, and the jet’s performance in suppressing Iranian air defenses on Feb. 28 will likely trigger new orders from Gulf allies.
As the U.S. pivots away from the “forever wars” of the past toward high-tech regime change, Lockheed’s role as the primary provider of the F-35 and HIMARS systems makes it the most direct beneficiary of the “Big Wave” Trump promised. The backlog is no longer a static number; it is a roadmap for a decade of growth.
The financial filings reveal a company that has successfully navigated the supply chain “hangover” of previous years.
Net earnings hit $5 billion in late 2025, and margins are beginning to expand as production volumes for the F-35 and missile programs normalize.
CF Industries (NYSE: CF): Protecting Global Food Security
One-third of the global trade in urea and ammonia, the building blocks of fertilizer, transits through the Strait of Hormuz.
When the Strait closed, urea prices at New Orleans surged from $475 per ton to $520–$550 per ton within the first week of the conflict, according to CRU Group, with some dealers now quoting above $700 per ton as buyers scramble ahead of the spring planting window.
CF Industries (CF) is the ultimate “security of food” play for investors watching the Middle East collapse. As the world’s largest producer of nitrogen fertilizers, CF is capturing a massive margin spread that its global competitors simply cannot reach.
CF operates a cost-advantaged North American production network that uses domestic natural gas as its primary feedstock.
While competitors in Europe struggle with crippling energy costs and unreliable gas supplies, CF is pumping out ammonia at record levels. The Iran conflict has supercharged these dynamics by trapping Middle Eastern supply lines from Qatar and Saudi Arabia behind a blockade.
For a global buyer, a barrel of oil is replaceable; a ton of urea during the spring planting window is not.
Management expects nitrogen demand to remain positive through the spring 2026 application season, fueled by high planted acres of corn in the U.S. and a scramble for domestic supply.
CF generated $1.79 billion in free cash in 2025 and has been aggressively repurchasing shares, including a new $2 billion share repurchase program authorized just before the conflict began.
In 2025 alone, the company reported adjusted EBITDA of $2.89 billion, and that was in a relatively “quiet” geopolitical environment.
CF isn’t just selling fertilizer…it is selling the stability of the global food chain.
As shipping costs hit all-time highs, CF’s domestic logistics network becomes an even greater competitive advantage.
MP Materials (NYSE: MP): Sovereignty at Mountain Pass
While REAlloys handles the sophisticated alloying, MP Materials (MP) owns the source.
The company operates Mountain Pass, the only scaled rare earth mine and separation facility in the United States.
In 2025, MP doubled its NdPr (Neodymium-Praseodymium) oxide output to 2,599 metric tons. If China decides to retaliate against U.S. strikes by weaponizing its rare earth monopoly, MP becomes the only scaled source of magnetic materials for the Western world. It is the “Fortress America” anchor for the entire high-tech economy.
The company is targeting a 6,000-metric-ton annual run rate by the end of 2026. More importantly, it is breaking ground on its “10X” magnetics facility in Texas. This facility, supported by a $200 million incentive package, will produce 10,000 metric tons of high-performance NdFeB magnets annually, serving direct offtake agreements with General Motors and Apple.
MP is a vertically integrated chemical and magnetics leader that is essential to the future of both electric vehicles and military hardware.
Financially, MP is hitting its stride. While the company faced revenue pressure in early 2025 due to a cessation of third-party concentrate sales, its earnings per share of $0.09 in Q4 crushed expectations by 350%.
The shift from selling raw concentrate to refined oxides and finished magnets is where the true valuation expansion lies.
Exiting 2025 with $7.2 billion in cash and equivalents, MP has the “fortress balance sheet” needed to survive a prolonged conflict and fund its aggressive expansion plans.
Bonus: Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR): Targeting as a Service
When the first waves of B-2 stealth bombers crossed the Iranian border, the mission relied on a data architecture that didn’t exist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The ability to identify the exact coordinates of the Supreme Leader’s compound and distinguish it from civilian university blocks in the Seyed Khandan area required the synthesis of millions of data points in a matter of seconds.
Palantir (PLTR) has effectively become the central nervous system for this new era of high-kinetic regime change.
And the company’s recent financials confirm it has moved past the experimental phase and into the “mission critical” phase of its lifecycle.
In early February 2026, Palantir reported Q4 2025 revenue of $1.41 billion, a 70% increase that blew past institutional expectations.
The most significant figure in the filing, however, was the $10 billion U.S. Army Enterprise Agreement. This contract institutionalized Palantir as the foundational data layer for the Army’s operational command.
In a conflict like “Epic Fury,” where the U.S. is managing a multi-front theater involving Israel, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea, Palantir’s Gotham and AIP platforms are the only tools capable of maintaining a coherent picture of the chaos.
One of the most valuable aspects of Palantir’s role in the 2026 conflict is its “Edge” deployment capability.
As Iranian drones targeted U.S. bases in Qatar and Bahrain, military units needed intelligence that could function even during the massive internet blackouts reported across the region.
Palantir’s IL6-certified platforms allow for decentralized data processing. This means a unit in the field can still run complex targeting and logistics simulations on mobile hardware without needing a constant link to a central server in Virginia. This “disconnected” capability is a major reason why the U.S. has been able to maintain operational tempo despite Iran’s retaliatory cyberattacks.
As Trump promises a “big wave” of attacks to come, the demand for Palantir’s “Targeting as a Service” will only accelerate. The company issued 2026 guidance of $7.2 billion, but even that might be conservative given the scale of the current mobilization.
By. Michael Kern
The AI boom is triggering an unexpected and unprecedented bull run in natural gas and power stocks. If you aren’t paying attention to the energy demands of data centers, you will miss the biggest energy story of the decade. The smart money is already quietly moving into the few companies prepared to power the trillion-dollar AI machine.
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