A sharp risk-on reversal. Late Thursday Trump called off a fresh round of Iran strikes about three hours before launch and declared a “settlement” that could be signed this weekend, with the Strait of Hormuz to reopen on signing — though Tehran says nothing is final. Markets ripped: the S&P closed +1.75% and the Nasdaq +2.54%, oil fell back to ~$86, the dollar dropped the most in a month and gold slid. Layered on top, SpaceX priced the biggest IPO ever — $75bn at $135/share, a ~$1.77tn valuation that tips Elon Musk into the first-trillionaire bracket, and it starts trading today. The counterweight: yesterday’s ECB hike to 2.25% (its first since 2023), a still-hot US CPI of +4.2%, and UK GDP that shrank 0.1% in April.
Index levels below are the Bloomberg Europe “Top Securities” ticker read this morning Rome time. With US cash shut pre-open, the S&P / Nasdaq / Bloomberg 500 prints are Thursday’s closing levels — a session that ripped higher on Trump’s call-off of the Iran strikes and the SpaceX listing. Oil, gold, FX and rates trade round-the-clock and show the live relief: crude lower on the de-escalation, gold giving back its war premium, the dollar broadly soft. The swing factors from here are whether the Iran “settlement” is actually signed this weekend (and Hormuz reopens) and SpaceX’s first day of trading under SPCX.
Top of the morning
Trump cancels Iran strikes hours before launch, claims a “settlement”; oil drops, stocks rip
After a week of whiplash — a downed US helicopter, tit-for-tat strikes, even a Trump threat to seize Iran’s oil and Kharg Island — Washington pulled back a fresh wave of strikes roughly three hours before launch, with the President declaring a deal that he says could be signed this weekend and would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s foreign ministry counters that nothing is finalised, so the de-escalation is real but fragile. Markets took the relief: oil fell ~2% to ~$86, the dollar dropped the most in a month, and global equities rallied hard.
SpaceX prices the biggest IPO in history — $75bn at $135, valuing it near $1.77tn; trades today
Musk’s rockets-to-AI group sold ~555.6m shares at $135 to raise a record $75bn, dwarfing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing (~$29bn) and instantly making SpaceX one of the ten most valuable listed companies on earth. The float tips Musk into trillionaire territory while leaving him >80% of the voting power. Japan took a $2.2bn slice; Founders Fund and Andreessen are poised for record returns. The stock is set to start trading today under SPCX — though some flag governance and the “leveraged retail trade” building around it.
ECB delivers its first hike since 2023, to 2.25% — and signals it isn’t done
The ECB became the first major central bank to tighten in response to the Iran energy shock, lifting rates 25bp to 2.25% and raising its inflation forecasts. Bundesbank’s Nagel said a further move is possible as soon as July, and other officials privately echo that. The euro held near 1.16. It sets up an awkward divergence: Europe tightening into a war-driven price spike even as growth wobbles.
Hot US inflation keeps the Fed boxed in; Warsh’s first meeting won’t bring cuts
May CPI at +4.2% — a three-year high on the energy shock — and a University of Michigan sentiment read that sank to a record-low 44.8 (year-ahead inflation expectations jumping to 4.7%) leave little room to ease. FT’s curtain-raiser on new Fed chair Kevin Warsh’s inaugural meeting is blunt: the idea he’d come in cutting rates is “firmly off the table.” Today’s oil drop helps at the margin, but the rate path stays hawkish on both sides of the Atlantic.
UK economy shrinks 0.1% in April as the war bites; Starmer loses his defence secretary
Britain’s GDP contracted 0.1% in April as higher energy costs hit households and firms — the first hard read of the Iran shock’s domestic toll. Politically, defence secretary John Healey resigned over a spending standoff, calling the PM “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling”; Bloomberg frames the exit as shattering Starmer’s legacy, with Dan Jarvis stepping in. Separately, FanDuel-owner Flutter said it will scrap its London listing — another knock to UK equity markets.
Asia’s energy crunch hits “worst case”; BOJ heads for a landmark 1% rate next week
The ADB warned Asia’s energy crisis is now at its “worst-case” scenario, with 15 countries requesting ~$4bn in emergency support; Indonesia’s rupiah keeps hitting record lows and India is curbing diesel sales. Japan’s BOJ is still expected to raise rates to 1% next week — its first such level in years — even with Governor Ueda hospitalised and set to miss the meeting, complicating communication. Hedge funds, meanwhile, trimmed bets on SK Hynix and Samsung after their AI-driven rally.
The AI capital machine keeps roaring — and the private-credit bill keeps growing
Beyond SpaceX, Jeff Bezos detailed a $41bn AI lab (“Prometheus”), Apollo and Blackstone closed a $35bn private-credit package to fund Anthropic’s chips, and Bloomberg/FT both describe the “AI public-market floodgates” opening. The flip side: PE firms are “partying as LPs wait for cash,” Apollo concedes the industry got “a little out of whack,” a record >$8tn sits in money-market funds, and one hedge-fund cohort faces a $525m clawback — the cracks beneath the boom haven’t closed.
FT portfolio signal · tied to your holdings
What FT flagged for your book
Macro / regime read. The tape flipped from defensive to a relief rally, but it’s a fragile one. The pivotal variable is the energy tail: Trump’s call-off and talk of a weekend “settlement” that reopens Hormuz knocked crude back to ~$86 — the single biggest input to the whole inflation/rate regime — even as FT cautions Iran’s underground missile capacity was only “temporarily suppressed,” so a re-escalation is the line that would flip the regime back. Rates/inflation still skew hawkish: the ECB hiked to 2.25% and hints at July, the BOJ is set for 1% next week, the new Fed chair won’t cut, and CPI is at 4.2% — a persistent headwind for high-multiple and rate-sensitive names that today’s softer oil only partly offsets. Credit cracks are still widening (PE LPs waiting for cash; Apollo “out of whack”; >$8tn in money funds; a $525m hedge-fund clawback). War-chest deployment rules stay dormant: yesterday’s risk-off never tripped a severe trigger and today’s bounce pulls further from one — respect the regime, don’t chase the rip.
AI capex (theme — your semis/cloud shelf). Three reinforcing signals: the $35bn Apollo/Blackstone private-credit deal for Anthropic’s chips, Bezos’s $41bn “Prometheus” lab, and the SpaceX listing’s AI framing all point to durable compute demand that reads through to the custom-silicon and lithography shelf (Broadcom, ASML, the cloud names). Watch-item: how much of the buildout now rides on private credit.
Semiconductors (theme). Hedge funds trimming SK Hynix and Samsung after their rally is a positioning signal worth noting for the memory/AI-hardware read-through; on the policy side, Infineon’s new German fab underscores the EU chip-sovereignty push (read-through to ASML).
Amazon (shelf single-name). Surfaces only indirectly — via Bezos’s personal AI lab and a Bloomberg feature on “rewriting Amazon’s playbook for the AI age.” An AI-capex tag on a direct holding, but no standalone Amazon catalyst in the window.
Defensive corners quiet. No GLP-1 (Novo Nordisk / Eli Lilly), UnitedHealth, Vertex, Thermo Fisher, Intuitive Surgical, Microsoft, Alphabet, Visa, Mastercard, Berkshire, Caterpillar, Deere, Booking, Nike or Costco single-name items in the FT feed today.
Shelf single-names live today: none at the name level — the only direct tag is Amazon (indirect, via the Bezos/AI-age threads). The actionable read stays theme-level: durable AI-capex demand (SpaceX’s debut, the $35bn Anthropic financing, Bezos’s $41bn lab) against a still-hawkish rate backdrop and visibly fraying private credit.
Net: a fragile relief rally on Iran de-escalation — softer oil eases the stagflation tail, but ECB/BOJ tightening, a no-cut Fed and fraying private credit keep the regime defensive. No severe trigger, so war-chest rules stay sheathed. Watch-lines: whether the Iran settlement is actually signed (and Hormuz reopens), SPCX’s first trading day, and next week’s BOJ move.
Markets snapshot
Bloomberg Europe “Top Securities” ticker, read this morning Rome time. US cash is shut pre-open, so the S&P / Nasdaq / Bloomberg 500 prints are Thursday’s closing levels — a risk-on session powered by the Iran call-off and SpaceX. Oil, gold, FX and rates trade round-the-clock; the move column compares to yesterday’s briefing levels where useful.
Instrument
Last
Move / context
S&P 500
7,394.30
+1.75% · Thu close · Iran de-escalation + SpaceX
Nasdaq
25,809.66
+2.54% · AI / tech led the rip
Bloomberg 500
2,672.53
+1.81% · broad risk-on
FTSE 100
10,303.88
+0.48% · firmer despite UK GDP dip
US 10-year Treasury
4.47%
eased ~7bp · softer oil trims inflation premium
EUR/USD
~1.16
firmer · dollar drops most in a month
GBP/USD
~1.34
steady · UK GDP −0.1% caps sterling
Crude Oil (WTI)
~$85.90
−2.1% · de-escalation; Hormuz reopening floated
Gold (spot)
~$4,200
−2.1% · war premium unwinds; FT flags worst quarter in ~a decade
Figures transcribed from the Bloomberg Europe “Top Securities” ticker. Pre-open Friday the US index prints are Thursday’s cash close — the risk-on session driven by the Iran strike call-off and the SpaceX listing. Crude, gold, FX and rates reflect the live relief move (oil and gold lower as the war premium unwinds; the dollar broadly soft). The weekend Iran “settlement” signing and SPCX’s trading debut are the next catalysts.
Global markets & macro
The dominant move is a relief rally. Trump’s decision to call off a fresh round of Iran strikes — reportedly with aircraft hours from launch — and his claim of a “settlement” that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz pulled the war premium out of risk assets: the S&P closed +1.75%, the Nasdaq +2.54%, crude fell back to ~$86, and the dollar saw its biggest one-day drop in a month. The 10-year eased to ~4.47% as the softer-oil read trimmed some inflation premium. But the macro backdrop is still tightening, not loosening: the ECB hiked to 2.25% (its first move since 2023) and flagged July as live, Japan’s BOJ is set to reach 1% next week, and with US CPI at +4.2% and Michigan sentiment at a record low, the incoming Fed under Kevin Warsh has no room to cut. Gold extended its slide (~$4,200, down ~2% on the day), with FT noting bullion is on track for its worst quarter in nearly a decade as the haven trade unwinds.
Sitting above all of it is the capital-markets event of the year: SpaceX priced a record $75bn IPO at $135 a share, a ~$1.77tn valuation that vaults it into the world’s ten largest listed companies and makes Musk the first trillionaire; it begins trading today under SPCX, with a $2.2bn Japan tranche and record paydays lined up for Founders Fund and Andreessen. The float caps a frantic AI-capex stretch — Bezos’s $41bn Prometheus lab, the $35bn Apollo/Blackstone private-credit deal for Anthropic’s chips, and what both desks call the opening of the “AI public-market floodgates.” The same paradox recurs: this wave of equity and private-credit supply is a confidence vote in the buildout, yet it can drain liquidity from existing names and concentrate risk in private credit just as that market frays (PE firms slow to return cash, >$8tn parked in money funds, a fresh $525m hedge-fund clawback). Asia stayed strained — the ADB’s “worst-case” energy warning, record-low rupiah and Indian diesel curbs — even as the de-escalation should lift the region’s tone into the weekend.
Geopolitics & world news
The Middle East still sets the tape, but the direction reversed overnight. After a fortnight that ran from a downed US helicopter and reciprocal strikes to Trump’s threat to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub, Washington pulled back its latest strike package and the President now says a settlement is close — possibly signed this weekend — with the Strait of Hormuz to reopen once it is. The caveats are large: Iran’s foreign ministry says nothing is final, FT reports Tehran’s underground missile cities were only “temporarily suppressed,” and India has protested after three of its sailors were killed in a tanker attack. So markets are pricing relief while the ceasefire is still unsigned — the gap between the two is the key risk into Monday.
In Europe, politics is the story: the UK lost its defence secretary in a public spending row that Bloomberg says weakens Starmer, Germany is scrambling to salvage a next-generation fighter after scrapping its joint venture with France, and China abruptly cancelled high-level meetings with the EU as trade tensions deepen. Switzerland votes Sunday on a first-of-its-kind population cap (9.5m). For the medical reader, several Bloomberg threads are worth a longer look on a calmer day: a piece arguing US policy shifts have weakened pandemic preparedness, an interview with Ebola pioneer Peter Piot on how worried the world should be, and a feature on how extreme heat — amplified by a looming “super” El Niño — is starting to sap productivity and growth in labour-intensive economies like India.
Today & week ahead (CET)
Fri 12SpaceX (SPCX) trading debut — first day of trading after the record $75bn IPO priced at $135; watch the open and any “leveraged retail” flow
Fri 12UK GDP (April) · out — −0.1% m/m as the energy shock bites · eyes on US import prices and any Iran headlines into the close
WkndIran “settlement” signing watch — Trump says possibly this weekend; a signed deal would reopen Hormuz, an unsigned one risks a relief-rally unwind · Swiss population-cap referendum (Sun)
Next wkBOJ decision — expected to hike to 1% (Governor Ueda hospitalised, set to miss it) · new-Fed-chair Warsh’s first meeting approaches
WatchStrait of Hormuz / Iran ceasefire & oil · ECB & BOJ rate paths · private-credit stress · China–EU tensions · the AI IPO supply wave