In normal times, about 73 commercial vessels transit the Strait of Hormuz on an average day. Since the closure was declared at the end of February 2026 that count has run in the low single digits, roughly 1 to 5 percent of normal. Helious measures the flow with its own daily gate and publishes the number twice a day, because one shipping count in the Gulf reaches all the way to oil, inflation, bonds and equities.
Ten short questions, answered one at a time.
1. How many ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz each day?
Across the twelve months before the closure, the strait carried a median of about 73 transits a day: tankers, container ships, bulk carriers and general cargo combined. Quiet months near 50 and busy months above 90 are both routine, so the level only means something against its own history.
That history is why the current tape is extraordinary. Most days now print below 5 transits, and on several of them the tanker count has been zero. One important note on the norm: it is fixed to the pre-closure window on purpose. A rolling average would sink toward the disruption the longer it lasted, and a strait running at one percent of normal would slowly appear to recover while nothing changed at sea. The live series is on the Helious Hormuz transit monitor.
2. Why does the strait matter so much for oil?
The Strait of Hormuz is the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil and a large share of global LNG passes through a channel whose shipping lanes are only a few miles wide.
There is no spare sea lane. Cargo that cannot transit either waits at anchor, squeezes into limited overland pipelines, or does not ship at all. That is why the market treats the transit count as a physical supply gauge rather than shipping trivia.
3. How does Helious count the transits?
A transit is one commercial vessel crossing the narrows, established from satellite AIS position tracks. Every voyage between the Gulf and the open ocean has to cross the same line, and there is no route around it, so the yardstick never moves.
A transit is scored only when two consecutive positions from the same ship land on opposite sides of the line. Sitting near the narrows scores nothing. Queueing at anchor scores nothing. Entering the approaches and turning back scores nothing. Once a ship crosses, it cannot count again for 48 hours, so a slow multi-day passage is one transit, not five. Each vessel is classed tanker, cargo or other from its broadcast ship type, the gate records whether the crossing was inbound or outbound, and the day rolls up against the prior day, the 7-day average, the 30-day average and the long-run norm.
Three honesty rules sit underneath. First, the count is a floor, not a total: it can only see vessels that are broadcasting, and through mid-2026 a large share of tanker transits have crossed with transponders switched off, so more hulls move than any AIS-derived series can count. Second, a day with too little signal is recorded as a gap, never as zero: silence is a measurement problem, not an empty strait. Third, the monitor also shows a live Gulf activity gauge, vessels underway anywhere in the region right now: those ships have not passed the strait, some never will, and none of them joins the transit count without crossing the line.
One more thing worth knowing about timing. The measured record publishes weekly, on Tuesdays, carrying days through the preceding Sunday, so the freshest available day runs between two and nine days behind and the same figure repeats through the week. Every number we publish is stamped with the day it measures and how old that day is, so a repeated reading is visibly a repeated publication rather than a stalled page.
The result posts to the Helious terminal feed twice a day, at 8:30am and 3:30pm ET, and the full series lives on the data page.
4. What has happened to Hormuz traffic in 2026?
The break is abrupt and easy to date. Monthly averages of daily transits:
- Through February: 70 per day, squarely in the normal band that had held all year.
- March, the month closure was declared: 2.8 per day. The strait shut in days, not weeks.
- April to May: 5.0 then 3.2 per day, the deepest stretch.
- June to July: 10.7 then 8.4 per day, a partial reopening that did not hold.
- August so far: 4.0 per day, with several days at zero or one.
Against a 73 per day norm, the strait is running at roughly 1 to 5 percent of normal and has been shut to commercial traffic for close to six months. The 30-day chart on the monitor page shows the current stretch; the June recovery attempt and its failure are visible in the full series.
5. What do fewer tankers mean for oil prices?
Fewer tankers through Hormuz means less carried crude reaching the market. Supply that refiners and traders had priced in stops arriving. Inventories draw down, buyers compete for the barrels that remain, and the price of both spot cargoes and futures gets bid.
The transit count works as an early physical indicator: ship movements show the squeeze before delivered-cargo statistics or official inventory data can. You can watch crude react on the terminal's commodities board next to the count itself.
6. What does that mean for inflation?
Energy is the input behind almost every other price. Fuel costs pass through to freight, production and food with a lag of weeks to months, so a sustained oil squeeze keeps headline inflation elevated and gradually seeps into core.
That is what markets mean by sticky inflation: not one hot print, but a supply-driven floor under the price level that monetary policy cannot quickly fix. It is the bridge from a shipping count in the Gulf to the CPI prints traders watch months later.
7. What does it mean for bonds and the Fed?
Sticky inflation pressures the Federal Reserve to hold rates higher for longer, and puts priced-in cuts at risk. Both legs hit bonds: the expected policy path rises, and investors demand more inflation compensation on top.
Higher yields mean lower bond prices, so a persistent Hormuz squeeze reads bearish for bonds, with the front end most sensitive to the policy path. The rates page shows the curve reaction in basis points, and the 2s10s spread tells you whether the market is repricing the Fed or the economy.
8. What does it mean for equities?
Equities take two hits at once. Higher energy costs squeeze margins across most sectors, and a higher-for-longer rate path raises the discount rate on future earnings. Energy producers can benefit, but the broad index bias under a sustained supply squeeze is to the downside.
In practice the equity market takes its cue from the bond market's Fed repricing, which is why the monitor sits beside the scored feed and futures board on the terminal rather than in isolation.
9. Where can I see the data each day?
Two places, both updated daily:
- helious.io/data/hormuz: the full series with the latest count, comparisons and the 30-day chart.
- The terminal feed: the monitor card posts twice a day, 8:30am and 3:30pm ET, alongside the live news feed, economic calendar and auctions hub.
10. How should a trader use the transit count day to day?
Treat it like a physical data release rather than a headline.
- Compare with the 7-day average, not with yesterday alone: single days are noisy.
- Watch the tanker share specifically for the oil read: cargo ships matter for trade, tankers matter for crude.
- Watch for recovery as hard as for collapse. The day flow normalises is the day the inflation premium starts coming out of oil, yields and breakevens.
- Check the curve. If the count stays collapsed and yields keep rising, the bond market is trading the same story. If they diverge, one of them is wrong.
The count is measured the same way every day, so the trend and the turns carry the signal, not any single print.