How America’s Top 1% Is Quietly Protecting Its Wealth During the Oil Shock and Market Chaos

Financial advisers to the ultra-wealthy were already on the phone with their clients when crude oil surpassed $100 per barrel in the early weeks of the Iran conflict. Not to alert them. to reassure them. Because rising oil prices are not a problem to be managed for a particular class of American asset holders, such as the family office client, the private equity limited partner, and the direct shareholder in Houston-based energy companies. They have the scale of a bonus and the regularity of a dividend, making them an income event.

In late March, The Financial Times reported that wealthy people are increasingly depending on financial advisors to help them navigate the economic consequences of the Iran war. The majority of those clients are not running from danger, which that sentence subtly and effectively hides. They’re setting themselves up to catch it.

The model for the current situation was created in 2022. Net income for publicly traded oil and gas companies worldwide reached $916 billion after Russia invaded Ukraine and caused energy prices to soar, more than three times the average of the previous years. Of that, $281 billion came from US-based businesses alone, surpassing all of America’s investments in the low-carbon economy over the same period.

Oil Shock, Wealth Concentration & the 2026 Iran Conflict

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In a paper published in Energy Research & Social Science, researchers Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk tracked those profits all the way to the people who eventually received them by using a shareholding network that included over 250,000 nodes, including public companies, private equity funds, pension plans, and family offices. The outcome was striking: the richest 1% of Americans received 50% of all US fossil fuel profit claims. 66 million households, or the lowest 50% of the population, received 1%. Approximately 131,000 families, or the top 0.1%, received 26 times as much as the bottom half put together.

The current price of oil is about $110 per barrel. It was close to $60 at the beginning of the year. The uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and the daily volatility of a military conflict that no one fully anticipated were the main causes of that roughly 70% price move, which was compressed into about 26 trading days. The average price of gas at the pump is slightly over $4.12 per gallon, an increase of roughly 80 cents in just one month.

The Iran war could be a “skunk at the party” for the US economy, according to Jamie Dimon, who warned of ongoing inflation and higher interest rates if the conflict continues in his yearly letter to JPMorgan shareholders in early April. He pointed out that the dynamics of 2021 through 2023, when energy-driven inflation eaten away at household budgets for more than two years, could be repeated at current oil prices.

Regarding the danger, Dimon is correct. He neglected to address the fact that a persistently high-oil environment does not equally distribute its pain and its profits, which is something that is rarely mentioned in shareholder letters. In America, the top 20% of households spend about 2.1% of their total budget on gasoline, while lower-income households spend about 3.3%.

That difference may seem insignificant, but when prices remain high for months, it adds up in significant ways. In the meantime, those who own energy stocks, energy-related private equity positions, and direct stakes in the production of oil and gas profit from those higher prices in the exact opposite way. According to the researchers’ calculations, the top 0.1% of wealth holders’ increased fossil fuel profits in 2022 effectively offset the additional inflation burden they experienced; they were kept financially safe by the same mechanism that was squeezing everyone below them.

The larger picture is supported by the Federal Reserve data. Today, the wealthiest 1% of Americans own almost one-third of the country’s total wealth, while the bottom half own less than 3%. This is America’s “ripping point”—a K-shaped economy that the current oil shock and AI-driven job displacement are further tearing apart, according to Wall Street analyst Whitney Tilson, who was dubbed a “Prophet” by CNBC for his performance on market calls. The underlying math is not as dramatic as the term. According to Moody’s Analytics, the richest 10% of Americans make up about half of all consumer spending, so even a major decline in conditions for the bottom 60% may not always be reflected in top-line consumption data with the urgency it merits.

Early in March, the private banking division of J.P. Morgan released a noteworthy analysis contending that, in the event of a Gulf energy disruption, the United States, as the world’s largest net exporter of oil, is in a structurally different position than Europe or Asia. They pointed out that despite global markets selling off, US stocks have demonstrated a certain amount of resilience. That’s a true observation. It also serves as a reminder that when determining who is protected by that resilience, the makeup of who owns those stocks is crucial. If you own the S&P 500, it’s good news that it’s doing well during an oil shock. If the gas station on your way to an hourly wage job is your primary financial exposure to oil prices, then it is kind of irrelevant.

The most unsettling observation of all is that, as we watch this dynamic recur in 2026—oil prices rising, profits concentrating, households absorbing higher energy costs, and financial markets offering safety to those with assets to shelter—it seems as though the system is operating exactly as intended. A permanent excess profits tax on oil and gas was recommended as a remedy by the researchers who mapped the 2022 windfall. They pointed out that taxing the incremental US profits in 2022 alone would have produced $225 billion, which would have nearly doubled US investment in clean energy. In Washington, that discussion has not taken place. Whether it will is still up in the air. Meanwhile, the transfer is going according to plan, undetectable in wage data, unaffected by automatic stabilizers, and entirely lawful by all relevant standards.