President Trump, Iranian officials, and Pakistani mediators have all said publicly that a deal has been reached to end the conflict in the Middle East. Stocks in Asia and Europe rose on the news as the price of oil fell. Few details have been made available as to what, exactly, is in the deal. Here’s what is being reported this morning:
- The deal will be signed in Switzerland on Friday.
- It contains a pledge of no further hostilities for 60 days.
- Both sides commit to further talks.
- The nuclear issue remains unresolved—talks to come later.
- The unfreezing of $12 billion in Iranian assets.
- The Strait of Hormuz to be reopened after mine clearing.
- The peace deal includes Lebanon but Israel isn’t signing it.
Back to the future: The deal basically puts the region back where it was before the conflict started. “For now the can kicking exercise has been very well received by markets,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid said in a note this morning.
Leaked: Trump has lost faith in Israel’s Netanyahu
Another astonishing report by Axios claimed Trump was furious that Israel was attacking Hezbollah even as the talks neared their conclusion:
- “It is so bad — I couldn’t believe it. An hour before we are supposed to sign the deal.” Trump acknowledged Hezbollah attacked Israel first but stressed it didn’t cause any damage and nobody had been killed. “Why did Bibi have to do a f—ing attack? I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no f—ing judgement. I let him know that,” Trump said.
Trump also chided Netanyahu on social media. “This morning’s attack on Beirut should not have happened,” he said. “There should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon.”
“Ships of the World, start your engines”
Trump, exultant: In one of many posts on social media the president hailed the end of the war: “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
The Rich Starry is on the move
The sanctioned Chinese oil tanker that Fortune has been tracking has made it through the Strait. For weeks it was trapped just off Qeshm island. Now it’s further south, off the coast of the UAE.
THE MARKETS
From war premium to peace dividend: Markets surge
- S&P 500 futures were up 1.29% this morning. The index closed up 0.5% yesterday.
- In Europe, the Stoxx 600 was up 0.64% in early trading and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.15% before lunch.
- Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was up 5.2%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 4.99%. India’s Nifty 50 was up 1.26%. China’s CSI 300 was up 2.39%.
- Brent crude was $82 per barrel this morning, down from 92 yesterday.
- Bitcoin was $65.6K.
Chart via TradingEconomics.com
Is the market’s stomach big enough to eat all these $1 trillion IPOs?
The SpaceX IPO last week was so massive that some traders worried that there would not be enough investment money to eat it all. That worry is likely to continue if and when Anthropic and OpenAI both go public, as they are both likely to also carry $1 trillion-plus valuations.
Fear not, say Kriti Gupta and Abigail Yoder of J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “The scale is undeniably historic. But it is underappreciated how immense the public equity market these firms are entering has become. While we may not have seen companies of this size before, we’ve also never seen a market this large,” they said in a note seen by Fortune. “IPO supply is rising. But so has the market’s capacity to absorb it.”
“Consider two hypothetical scenarios for new IPOs valued at $1 or $2 trillion with a 10% float (shares available for public trading in the market). Naturally, that leads to some selling by benchmark indices. But … the total outflows would only be equal to about 1-2 days of their average daily trading volume. In other words: these are large deals, but may not be too large for today’s market to digest.”
In fact, estimated IPO volume for this year will still be slightly below that of 2021:
- The market already has vehicles of this size within it. The three largest S&P 500 index funds now hold more than $2.6 trillion combined, per Apollo Global Management’s Torsten Slok. “Prices are increasingly set by mechanical flows rather than by anyone judging what companies are actually worth.”
WARSH REALITY
The new Fed chair has little room to deliver the interest rate cuts Trump wants
New Fed chairman Kevin Warsh will host his first interest rate decision on Wednesday. He’s highly likely to keep interest rates on hold at the 3.5% level, according to the futures markets. But as inflation is above that, at 4.2%, it means “the Fed is effectively easing monetary policy by not hiking rates, loosening financial conditions,” according to Bank of America’s Claudio Irigoyen and Antonio Gabriel. “After five years of above-target inflation, and with supply shocks becoming the new normal in a more geopolitically fragmented world, sound risk management for monetary policy may advocate otherwise.”
“Furthermore, the recent decomposition of inflation is bleak. Unless core goods inflation somehow becomes negative, no cuts should be in sight any time soon, even with a deal in Iran,” they predict.
- What to watch for: Until yesterday, most Fed-watchers expected Warsh would remove the word “additional” from the Fed’s next statement, implying that the central bank was no longer enthusiastic about the prospect of applying more interest rate cuts. That’s probably still the case, but with the price of oil now in decline … who knows. Whether this word appears or not on Wednesday will be one of the market-moving issues in the announcement.
- The dot-plot: Warsh is a critic of the chart which shows future rate expectations from the various members of the FOMC. He may remove this from the Fed’s traditional statement.
ONE BIG THING
Anthropic reels after White House bans new models on national security fears
Chris Ratcliffe—Bloomberg via Getty Images
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was given 90 minutes by the White House to pull its Fable 5 AI model from international markets after Trump Administration officials were warned by Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy about concerns that the new models’ powers could be misused by hostile foreign actors, according to Bea Nolan of Fortune. A source told Fortune the company was given no previous communication of a national security threat.
What followed were several calls between Amodei and senior administration officials during which Amodei argued the security bypass found by Amazon was narrow rather than a full jailbreak of the model’s safeguards.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
Social Security faces steep cuts. These senators want to bet on stocks and $27 trillion in debt to save it—but ‘the gamble does not always pay off’ – Jason Ma
A 1% mistake costs $10 billion: Inside the impossible math of managing Elon Musk’s trillionaire SpaceX wealth – Sydney Lake
Meet Gwynne Shotwell, the engineer-turned-COO who runs SpaceX in platform heels and is now worth over $2 billion – Eva Roytburg
Animoca Brands cofounder Yat Siu argues Asia will fuse AI and the blockchain before the West does – Angelica Ang
AI job disruption is here. The problem may be compounded because nearly 75% of people don’t apply for unemployment benefits – Jacqueline Munis
Kevin O’Leary says being liked has nothing to do with success—Steve Jobs taught him: ‘You can’t worry about whose feelings you bruise’ – Emma Burleigh
CHART OF THE DAY
The Iran war accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles in China
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, pushing the price of oil to over $90 per barrel, reinvigorated the Chinese electric vehicle market. “The EV share in car sales jumped since the war started, Daan Struyven and his team at Goldman Sachs advised clients recently. EVs are now the majority of new car purchases in China.
NUMBER OF THE DAY
$1 billion
The size of a request to buy SpaceX stock on Friday from a single family office, according to the Wall Street Journal.
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
OnlyFans ‘agents’ control and threaten creators while taking half their earnings – BBC
Keir Starmer to announce Australia-style social media ban for teenagers – FT
Trump to Axios: Netanyahu has “no fucking judgment” but Iran deal still on – Axios
Anthropic Dispatches Staff to D.C., Racing to Resolve AI Export Restrictions – WSJ
Hedge Funds Reopen Pre-War Playbook as Iran War Risks Recede – Bloomberg
Protest at Stanford University graduation as Google CEO Sundar Pichai takes the stage – NY Post
ONE MORE THING
Ozempic’s hidden superpower: a $200K lifetime saving
People between the ages of 40 and 50 will save on average $192,735 in lifetime medical bills if they take GLP-1 weight loss drugs, according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Surprisingly, those savings climbed to $220,000 for adults within the same age range without college degrees, Fortune’s Mia Osmonbekov reports.
“Obesity is a big comorbidity for a lot of different chronic conditions, so if you start GLP-1s, like that’s gonna kind of trickle down, and it’s gonna save money,” the study’s lead author, Felipe Montano-Campos, says.
There’s only one problem: All those chronic conditions are likely to return the moment a patient stops taking the drug.
