It started the way some of the best Paradigm ideas do — on a Zoom call, doing what we always do: talking shop.

That’s when my colleague Enrique Abeyta riffed on Trump’s maneuvers — the tariffs, the on-the-fly reversals, the social media posts that move markets before the opening bell.

Enrique called them “Orange Swan” events.

I wrote that down immediately.

You’re probably familiar with black swans. Nassim Taleb introduced the concept in his landmark 2007 book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It became the go-to shorthand for unlikely disruptors.

Taleb’s criteria: The event is rare and outside normal expectations, its consequences are enormous… and everyone explains it as “obvious in hindsight.”

Think 9/11. The 2008 financial crisis. Only a handful of iconoclasts saw them coming. Afterwards, everyone insisted the warning signs were obvious.

Like its dark-plumed cousin, the Orange Swan shares the same global consequences — but he doesn’t hide.

The Orange Swan tweets.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, April 15, 2026...

The Reopening Trade

Soon after the 2016 election, MarketWatch called President Trump the “Orange Swan Wall Street [is] bracing for.”

A 2017 Daily Reckoning piece by David Stockman picked up the thread. “Watch for an orange swan… one that presently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania.”

The concept has been floating around the edges of financial media for a decade. The Orange Swan is about a very specific kind of predictable unpredictability. You know chaos is coming.

And that distinction matters tremendously.

Which brings me to the biggest Orange Swan event in the room right now: the Strait of Hormuz closure.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) calls it the worst energy shock in history — worse than the 1970s crisis.

That’s the bad news. But here’s where Enrique’s conviction is running high…

The Strait of Hormuz reopens. Not eventually. But sooner and faster than the consensus expects.

Why? Because the same man who opened Pandora’s box can close it — and he has every incentive to do so.

Gas prices are up more than $1.20 per gallon since the war started. Trump told Fox News Sunday he expects prices to be “around the same” by the midterms. That’s a politician with one eye on the pump and the other on midterms

And JPMorgan’s commodities desk wrote Monday that reopening the strait has become “the market’s most time-sensitive priority.”

Not to mention: China, the destination for roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports, has every reason to push Tehran toward a deal.

The market is pricing in prolonged chaos. Enrique thinks the market is wrong — because it’s modeling Iran’s slow, grinding resistance and ignoring Trump’s ability to flip the script in an instant.

I’ve watched Enrique operate for several years now, and high-conviction, one-directional calls are not his default mode. When he goes there, I pay attention.

If he’s right — if the Orange Swan that shut the strait is the same force that breaks it wide open — the market doesn’t just breathe a sigh of relief. It rips.

Shipping resumes. Oil retreats. Supply chains recuperate. And the companies positioned for that reopening trade will move fast.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, April 15, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly in the green, just over 7,000.

Oil is up 1% to $92.15 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.30% to $4,834 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is in the green, around $74,200.