Gold Is Down Since the Iran War Began. This Obscure Shipping ETF Is Up 1,168%.
When the US and Israel began striking Iran, gold did what every financial advisor said it would. Then something strange happened in an obscure corner of the freight market that almost nobody was watching.
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US stock and bond markets closed for the week on Friday, September 11, 2026. Measured from the close on February 27, 2026, the last trading day before the US and Israel began large-scale strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, according to The Guardian, one obscure freight fund has done something no other widely held asset has come close to doing.
Breakwave Dry Bulk Shipping ETF (NYSEARCA:BWET) closed at $57.30 on February 27 and at $726.92 on September 11, a gain of 1,168.62%. Over the same window, SPDR Gold Trust (NYSEARCA:GLD), the largest fund that holds physical gold, went from $483.75 to $398.77, a decline of 17.57%. Gold is the asset Americans are told to own when war breaks out. It fell.
A precision note: the headline says gold, but what we measured is GLD, the exchange traded fund. The fund and the metal track closely, but they are not the same thing.
Every Asset on the Same Clock
Using the identical February 27 to September 11 window for every asset, the numbers stack up like this: BWET +1,168.62%, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) +23.48%, Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) +17.72%, iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ:IBIT) +17.69%, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) +11.41%, and GLD -17.57%. The SPY and QQQ figures are price returns that do not include dividends; their true total returns would be somewhat higher.
The contrast worth sitting with is BWET’s isolation from the pack: one narrow, geopolitically leveraged bet sitting far outside the tight band where the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, bitcoin, and the market’s most talked-about AI stock all clustered.
Gold Ran Up Into the War, Then Sold Off
Gold’s shape matters more than its direction. GLD climbed as tensions built, then sold off after the first missiles flew. Year to date through September 11, the fund is up 0.62%, essentially round-tripping back to where it began the year at $396.31. Traders call this pattern buying the rumor and selling the news: the hedge gets bid up in anticipation, and once the feared event actually arrives, the people who bought early cash out into the crowd showing up late.
Why Freight Rates Repriced Hardest
According to The Guardian, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed soon after the first day of strikes. In normal times, per The Guardian, more than 100 vessels passed through the narrow waterway each day, carrying about a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade. When a chokepoint like that shuts, the binding scarcity becomes the ships and routes available to move oil around the obstruction. Freight rates reprice violently. BWET holds futures on dry bulk shipping rates, which is why it moved on a different scale than energy stocks or crude itself.
Reading the 3,673% Figure Correctly
BWET’s year-to-date figure is 3,673.35%, and it is circulating as a war statistic. That framing misleads. The fund closed 2025 at $19.26 and had already run to $57.30 by February 27, before a single strike. A substantial portion of the year’s gain predates the conflict entirely. The war-driven portion is the 1,168.62%.
This fund’s entire move rests on a shipping chokepoint staying shut. It can retrace as violently as it climbed.
This is what concentration in a single geopolitical outcome looks like beside a diversified portfolio, and it cuts both directions. A position like this belongs in the sliver of a portfolio reserved for speculation, sized and fenced with rules (we wrote a free playbook on doing exactly that here: Small Stakes, Big Swings). 24/7 Wall St. covered this fund back in July, when the move was far smaller, and urged caution then. That caution stands.
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AJ has spent the past 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
