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Original Author: Frank, Maitong MSX

Few anticipated that a military conflict in the Middle East would ripple through multiple links – natural gas, fertilizers, helium, semiconductors, and consumer electronics – ultimately evolving into a systemic stress test spanning dozens of industries.

In late February 2026, the US and Israel launched military strikes against Iran. Iran subsequently restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most critical global energy arteries, pushing it into a semi-frozen state. Shortly after, Qatar's largest natural gas facility, Ras Laffan Industrial City, was hit by consecutive attacks, forcing a shutdown of one of the world's most important LNG production and export hubs.

According to Reuters, approximately 17% of Qatar's LNG export capacity was damaged, leading to an annual shutdown of 12.8 million tonnes of LNG production. Repairs for some facilities could take 3 to 5 years.

On the surface, this might appear to be just an energy event driven by "rising natural gas prices."

But what truly deserves attention is that natural gas is not only a fuel for power generation and heating. It is also the upstream feedstock for several critical industrial products, including ammonia, urea, methanol, hydrogen, and helium. Once this feedstock source is blocked, the transmission chain spreads from the energy market to agriculture, food inflation, semiconductor manufacturing, and eventually leads to valuation divergence in tech stocks.

This is the core logic this article aims to deconstruct layer by layer: This crisis is not a single-point shock but a continuous transmission through four chains – Natural Gas Prices → Energy Sector; Natural Gas → Ammonia → Fertilizer & Agriculture; Helium Supply Disruption → Chip Manufacturing; AI Chips vs. Consumer Electronics → Tech Stock Divergence.

1. Natural Gas Prices: The "First Shockwave" for the Energy Sector

The first domino to fall was the global natural gas market.

The halt of Qatar's LNG production, combined with the obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz, effectively pulled two fuses from the global gas supply side simultaneously. On one hand, Qatar is one of the world's most crucial LNG exporting nations; on the other hand, the Strait of Hormuz is the key maritime passage for its LNG exports. With both production and transport constrained, a sharp spike in natural gas prices was almost inevitable.

Reflecting market performance, Asian LNG spot prices surged rapidly from around $10/MMBtu pre-conflict to over $25, before retreating somewhat, yet remaining significantly above pre-war levels. European TTF prices were also impacted. Goldman Sachs maintained its Q2 TTF forecast around €63/MWh and noted that if Qatari supply fails to recover by early May, prices might need to rise further to curb demand.

The beneficiaries of this chain are quite direct: US and other non-Middle Eastern LNG exporters, along with energy companies boasting stable production capacity and export capabilities. They are the biggest winners in supplying the shortfall. For instance, MSX has listed OXY.M, XOM.M, and CVX.M, corresponding respectively to Occidental Petroleum (Buffett's long-term holding), ExxonMobil (the global oil & gas integrated giant), and Chevron (which possesses both US shale gas and global LNG export capabilities).

But the harmed parties are also clear. Asian economies heavily reliant on LNG imports are the hardest hit, especially South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and parts of South Asia. This explains why energy price hikes won't stop at the profit margins of oil and gas companies.

For importing nations, higher LNG prices translate to increased electricity generation costs, higher industrial production costs, and upward pressure on residential electricity tariffs. Ultimately, this extends the tail of inflation. For capital markets, this compresses expectations of interest rate cuts and puts higher discount rate pressure on high-valuation growth sectors.

In other words, natural gas is the first shockwave, but it is never the final link.

2. Natural Gas → Ammonia → Fertilizer: The Overlooked Agricultural Chain

The second transmission chain is more subtle but hits closer to home, directly impacting the "rice bowls" of the world's 8 billion people.

Why does rising natural gas affect food? The logic isn't complicated: Natural gas is a key raw material for ammonia production; ammonia is the foundation for urea and nitrogen fertilizers; nitrogen fertilizer directly impacts global food planting costs. Therefore, when natural gas supply tightens and prices rise, fertilizer production costs rise in tandem. When the Strait of Hormuz is obstructed, fertilizer exports from the Middle East face further logistical constraints.

This became very evident during the current conflict. CRU Group pointed out that the Middle East situation has exacerbated uncertainties in urea supply. After QatarEnergy stopped LNG and related product production in early March, the 5.6 million tonnes/year urea plant of QAFCO in Mesaieed was also affected, becoming the first confirmed impacted fertilizer production case in this conflict.

Data from IFPRI further illustrates the severity: up to about 30% of global fertilizer trade in 2024 passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Simultaneously, approximately 20% of LNG and 27% of globally traded crude oil also transit this strait. This means Hormuz is not just an oil and gas corridor; it is a major thoroughfare for global agricultural inputs.

The danger of this chain lies in its high correlation with agricultural seasons. Energy prices can react swiftly in futures markets, but the impact of fertilizer shortages on crops has a definitive window. Once the critical fertilization stage of the Northern Hemisphere spring planting season is missed, even if supply later recovers, it's difficult to fully compensate for the earlier losses. This implies the impact of this crisis on food prices may not fully manifest in the current month's CPI but will be gradually released months later through grain production, agricultural product prices, and food processing costs.

However, the difficulty with the fertilizer chain is that a single fertilizer company often struggles to fully capture the complex transmission among natural gas, ammonia, urea, agricultural products, and basic materials. Therefore, ETF tokens are better suited for capturing this medium-to-long-term logic. MSX has listed FTAG.M, MOO.M, and XLB.M, corresponding to the global agricultural industry chain, global agricultural leaders, and the US basic materials sector, respectively.

•FTAG.M leans towards a "basket of agricultural inputs" tool, covering areas like fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and farm machinery.

•MOO.M focuses more on global agricultural production, processing, and equipment leaders, suitable for observing the transmission of rising planting costs into agricultural product prices.

•XLB.M covers basic industrial sectors like chemicals, materials, metals, and construction materials, including companies like Linde and Sherwin-Williams that are significantly impacted by inflation and rising industrial costs.

In other words, if fertilizer price increases represent a long chain from energy to food, these ETF tokens don't just bet on a single company. Instead, they offer a way to capture the repricing opportunity across the entire agricultural inputs chain through a portfolio approach.

3. Helium: A Systemic Risk Overlooked by Most

This is perhaps the most underestimated link in the entire transmission chain, but potentially the most far-reaching in its impact.

If the fertilizer chain connects to food, the helium chain connects to chips.

Many may wonder: why would a halt at a natural gas plant affect semiconductors? The answer is that helium is a crucial byproduct of natural gas processing and cannot be easily manufactured on a large scale through chemical synthesis. Qatar has long been a major global source of helium supply. Reuters cited US Geological Survey data stating that Qatar produces nearly one-third of the global helium supply. After the current Middle East conflict, tighter helium supply has already begun impacting the global tech industry chain.

Helium is nearly irreplaceable in semiconductor manufacturing. It is used for wafer cooling, vacuum system leak detection, inert atmosphere control, and certain precision manufacturing steps. For advanced process nodes, temperature stability, cleanliness, and process consistency are paramount, and helium is one of the fundamental materials maintaining these conditions.

Should supply become unstable, chip fabs can temporarily buffer using inventories and recycling systems. However, if the shortage persists for months, production line scheduling, material prioritization, and customer delivery schedules will be forced to adjust.

More concerning is that helium, unlike crude oil, is not easily stored in large quantities. It is one of the smallest monatomic gases, difficult to store and transport. Liquid helium transportation relies on specialized cryogenic equipment. This explains why this crisis's impact on semiconductors is not a simple "chip stock negative" but rather a more granular, structural shock.

MSX-listed DRAM.M, TSM.M, and MU.M correspond to several key observation points along this chain:

•DRAM.M is the world's first pure-play memory ETF token, covering memory leaders like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. It can be used to observe supply-demand dynamics in storage segments like HBM, DRAM, and NAND in the AI era.

•TSM.M (TSMC) corresponds to TSMC, the pivotal node for global advanced process foundry and a key manufacturer for end-chip clients like NVIDIA, AMD, and Apple.

•MU.M (Micron Technology) corresponds to US memory chip leader Micron, with exposure to DRAM, NAND, and HBM. Compared to Korean peers, it benefits more from the restructuring of the US domestic supply chain.

Ultimately, the helium shortage triggers a much larger proposition: the global semiconductor supply chain doesn't just rely on EUV, EDA, advanced packaging, and high-end equipment. It also depends on industrial gases, chemicals, transportation containers, and regional energy security – elements often overlooked by capital markets.

This is the most underestimated aspect of the current crisis. It's not merely cautioning the market that "chips are important," but rather reminding the market that the buildout of computing power in the AI era rests upon an extremely long, highly fragile, and deeply globalized physical supply chain.

4. AI Chips vs. Consumer Electronics: The Real Divergence Begins

When helium shortages, energy price hikes, and material transport delays cascade to the semiconductor manufacturing end, the market's easiest mistake is to lump all tech assets together.

But reality is quite the opposite. This shock won't simply cause a collective decline in the tech sector; it will drive further divergence within tech stocks.

AI chips will face short-term pressure, of course. Advanced process manufacturing heavily depends on a stable supply of high-purity gases, lithography materials, packaging capacity, and energy. The supply chain links required for HBM, GPUs, and AI servers are significantly more complex. Once upstream materials tighten, AI chip delivery cycles may lengthen, potentially causing periodic disruptions in capital expenditure plans for cloud providers and server manufacturers.

However, on the demand side, the rigidity of AI chips is significantly stronger than consumer electronics. The computing power race among cloud providers, model companies, and enterprise clients is far from over. AI infrastructure remains one of the most certain directions for tech capital expenditure. Therefore, under capacity constraints, manufacturing plants are more likely to prioritize high-margin, high-strategic-value AI chip orders over low-profit, price-sensitive consumer electronics orders.

The ones truly under pressure are likely end-consumer electronics like PCs, phones, and tablets. This means the core contradiction in this tech chain isn't "Will AI continue to grow?" but rather, "To whom will the limited advanced capacity, storage capacity, and key materials be prioritized?"

•NVDA.M (NVIDIA) remains the absolute leader in AI chips. AMD.M (AMD) is the second-largest AI chip designer. AVGO.M (Broadcom) possesses both AI ASIC and networking chip capabilities.

•MSFT.M (Microsoft), GOOGL.M (Google), and AMZN.M (Amazon) correspond to AI infrastructure and cloud computing demand, representing the paths of Azure + OpenAI, TPU self-development + cloud services, and AWS global cloud services.

•In contrast, AAPL.M (Apple) and DELL.M (Dell Technologies) are more susceptible to fluctuations in consumer electronics, PC, server hardware costs, and end-demand, making their exposure logic clearer.

•As for leveraged semiconductor ETF tokens like SOXL.M and SOXS.M, they are better suited for expressing short-term sentiment and sector volatility rather than long-term allocation logic.

In other words, even within tech assets, the risk-reward structures of AI chips, cloud infrastructure, consumer electronics, and leveraged ETF tokens are entirely different. This crisis truly tests whether investors can continue to dissect finer industry chain positions underneath the broad "tech" label.

For investors, the real opportunity isn't simply going long or short on tech stocks. It's about re-identifying within the tech sector who has pricing power, who has supply priority, and who can only passively absorb rising costs.

Final Thoughts

Returning to the core thesis at the beginning, this Middle East crisis, spanning about 60 days, has transmitted all the way from natural gas to AI chips. The transmission chain is far longer and more complex than it initially appears.

After all, the foundation of the global supply chain isn't abstract financial models; it's energy, shipping lanes, minerals, gases, chemicals, equipment, and transport capabilities. In recent years, the market has grown accustomed to understanding tech cycles through grand concepts like "AI," "computing power," and "globalization." But this crisis serves as a reminder that any high-end industry narrative must ultimately fall back to the supply constraints of the physical world.

At the same time, complexity itself breeds opportunity. Because on every transmission path, there