The Strait of Hormuz is the most concentrated chokepoint in seaborne energy trade, and since late February 2026 there has been no agreed answer to whether traffic has normalised: official data, commercial trackers and government statements are hard to reconcile.

The Strait of Hormuz traffic market on XPredict asks whether one published measure of transits returns to a specific level before the end of 2026. Its prices are crowd-implied probabilities, not XT’s view and not a forecast.

What “Normal” Means in This Market

The resolution criteria, published in XT’s public market API rather than on the market page itself, are narrow. The market resolves to “Yes” if IMF PortWatch publishes a 7-day moving average of transit calls (“Arrivals of Ships”) for the Strait of Hormuz equal to or above 60 for any date between market creation and December 31, 2026, and to “No” otherwise. Counted transits span container, dry bulk, roll-on/roll-off, general cargo and tanker ships. Two clauses do most of the work: “Ships not reported by IMF Portwatch will not be considered”, and data integrity issues “do not include cases where IMF Portwatch differs from alternative sources.”

By rule, AIS-dark vessels, ship-to-ship relay cargoes, escorted convoys unseen on public AIS, and every Kpler, Vortexa, Windward or CENTCOM cargo estimate sit outside the benchmark. A 14-day late-publication allowance means settlement can fall after 31 December.

Current Shipping Conditions

IMF PortWatch, the named resolution source, published a 7-day moving average of 3.14 at 27 September 2026, one transit that day, against a threshold of 60. It last reached 60 on 2 March 2026, at 63.29, and has peaked at 31.86, on 29 June, since the market opened on 11 May 2026; the pre-crisis median was about 85 transits a day.

Counts elsewhere do not line up. Windward, via Hellenic Shipping News on 1 October, counted 55 AIS-visible transits between 16 and 23 September, about 94% below pre-war traffic of roughly 910 a week; PortWatch published 27 for the same eight days, a gap no available source explains. Maritime Executive reported 17 transits on 29 September.

PortWatch states its own limitation: it counts AIS-broadcasting crossings only, so vessels that stop transmitting are missed, through reception loss as well as evasion, and data may be revised. A growing but unquantified share of traffic now moves with transponders off.

Security and Diplomatic Context

The IMO, through Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez on 16 September 2026, has verified 80 attacks on merchant vessels in the strait since 28 February and at least 22 seafarer deaths. Its 28 August statement gave 70 attacks, 19 killed, up to 400 ships unable to depart and about 6,000 seafarers stranded.

Three vessels were struck on 29 September and disclosed late, with UKMTO advisories 144-26, 145-26 and 146-26 issued on 30 September, per gCaptain; Maritime Executive named the VLCC Mersin Prosperity and tanker Sinbad. Reporting is degraded: gCaptain documented one strike passed to UKMTO a day late, and the Kuwaiti VLCC Al Funtas, struck 28 September, was dark and never reported directly.

A 25 September Iranian framework, reportedly including reopening on a seventh day, was rejected by President Trump on 26 September, and Iran is reported to be reviewing an unpublished US counterproposal. CENTCOM said it had redirected 125 commercial vessels as of 30 September, per Trend.az, while state media quote the IRGC saying the strait “remains closed”.

Energy and Trade Implications

As a structural baseline, not current conditions, the US EIA records 20.9m b/d of petroleum liquids transiting Hormuz in H1 2025: about 20% of global consumption of those liquids and a quarter of maritime traded oil, plus 11.4 Bcf/d of LNG, over 20% of world LNG trade, against about 4.7m b/d of bypass capacity.

Barrel estimates diverge as sharply as hull counts and carry different denominators. Kpler, via Maritime Executive on 30 September, puts Gulf oil exports by tanker and pipeline at 16.5m b/d in September, with over 70% of oil crossing the strait ending in ship-to-ship transfers and about 40% of regional crude now bypassing Hormuz, up from 17% pre-war; the same report cites JPMorgan assessing volumes at 98% of pre-war. Kpler via Al Jazeera expects 9.719m b/d through the strait itself, and TankerTrackers.com put early September at 5.04m b/d. None revises another.

The Saudi East-West (Petroline) line, 7.0m b/d and the largest non-Hormuz route, shut on 11 September after drone strikes; Lloyd’s List reported VLCC loadings resuming at Yanbu on 29 September, unconfirmed by Saudi Aramco.

XPredict Market Snapshot

Outcome	Yes Probability	No Probability	Multiplier
Hormuz 7-day MA reaches 60 by 31 Dec 2026	20.0%	81.0%	5.00x

Source: XPredict | Volume: $13.6M | Market Close: 2027-01-01 07:59

The two prices sum to 101 because they are last-trade prices on separate order books, Yes at 0.20, No at 0.81. The 5.00x estimated multiplier corresponds to the Yes side.

Crowd sentiment has shifted since the market opened on 2026-05-11 16:03. XT’s Yes series ran 0.795 to 0.825 in May and peaked at 0.905 in June, then closed July at 0.515, August at 0.285 and September at 0.205, with 1 October between 0.195 and 0.205. That is a change in sentiment, nothing more.

What the Market Can and Cannot Show

This market measures one published series, not the strait as a whole. A world in which Gulf oil exports run near pre-war levels and the benchmark reads 3.14 is not a contradiction: the two measure different things, and the rules name one of them. Cargo estimates that include AIS-dark tankers may be right about barrels and still sit outside a benchmark built on reported transit calls.

XPredict prices are crowd-implied probabilities at a point in time, not guaranteed outcomes and not XT’s views, and this article takes no position on how the market will settle.

PortWatch Releases, IMO Reporting and the Diplomatic Track

Thirteen PortWatch releases remain before 31 December 2026, every Tuesday from 6 October to 29 December with about a two-day lag, plus a 5 January 2027 release covering the final days. The next is 6 October. The IMO continues to publish verified attack and casualty counts, and the diplomatic track remains open with the US counterproposal under Iranian review.

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