The signature finally landed. The US and Iran reached a deal to halt the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump saying the strait reopens on signing this Friday — and markets exhaled. Asia ripped: Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi hit record highs in a “risk-on” rally, semis leading. Crude slumped ~5% to about $80 (a three-month low), gold firmed and Treasuries rallied as traders trimmed Fed-hike bets. The catch: roughly 600 tankers are queued and analysts warn the Hormuz backlog could take weeks to clear, so the oil relief may be slower than the tape implies. A heavy policy week now frames everything — the G7 opens today at Évian, the BOJ is set to hike to a 1995-high tomorrow, Warsh chairs his first Fed meeting Tue–Wed (hold expected), and the BOE decides Thursday amid calls for a hike. Off the tape: Anthropic suspended top models after a US export order, and the Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years.
Europe/Rome 06:00 · US–Iran deal reached · Hormuz reopens Fri · Asia at records · risk-on · Big central-bank week
Cash markets reopen today. Equity levels in the snapshot are Friday 12 June’s US/UK closes from the live Bloomberg ticker (cash indices had not reprinted at this 06:00 read); commodities, the 10-year and FX show the live weekend/Monday move reflecting the US–Iran deal — crude down sharply, gold firmer, Treasuries bid. Asian cash markets are already open and at records. Swing factors into the European and US opens: the deal’s Friday signing and Hormuz reopening logistics, the G7 at Évian, and a triple-header of central banks (BOJ Tue, Fed Wed, BOE Thu).
Top of the morning
US and Iran reach a deal to end the war and reopen Hormuz; strait reopens Friday on signing
After months in which the closed strait throttled roughly a fifth of seaborne oil, Washington and Tehran agreed to halt fighting, extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump authorising a “toll-free” opening and the lifting of the blockade once the text is signed Friday. The reported terms include a 60-day ceasefire extension, mine-clearing in the waterway and the start of fresh nuclear talks; the UK, France and Germany signalled readiness to lift relevant Iran sanctions. Tehran has floated slightly different versions of the deal and analysts note the hard parts — verification, sequencing — are left for later, so it is a truce of convenience rather than a settled peace.
Asia rips to records; oil slumps ~5%, gold firms, Treasuries rally on the relief
The risk-on response was immediate: Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi printed record highs, with semiconductors (Samsung, SK Hynix) leading on strong Korean export data, and the euphoria of Friday’s record SpaceX IPO still in the tape. WTI fell more than 4.5% to about $80 — its lowest since early March — and Brent slid toward $83, though both remain up 20%+ on the year. Gold steadied higher (~$4,347), copper and bitcoin popped, and Treasuries rallied as traders trimmed Fed-hike bets. The caveat: about 600 vessels are waiting to transit and the backlog could take weeks to clear, so physical flows recover slower than prices.
A triple-header central-bank week: BOJ hike Tuesday, Warsh’s Fed debut Wednesday, BOE Thursday
The BOJ concludes its meeting tomorrow and is ~97% priced to lift rates 25bp to 1.00% — the highest since 1995 — even with Governor Ueda sidelined by illness; yen short bets sit at a nine-year high as the carry trade revives. Kevin Warsh chairs his first FOMC on Tue–Wed with a hold near-fully priced; the focus is his inaugural press conference and a fresh dot plot Wednesday alongside May retail sales. The BOE decides Thursday and is expected to hold at 3.75% despite FT reporting mounting inflation anxiety and some calls for an immediate hike. The ECB, fresh off the first G7 hike since the war began, remains minded to tighten further.
The AI financing wave keeps reshaping markets — and stretching the plumbing
Friday’s ~$75bn SpaceX IPO — the biggest in history, briefly crowning Musk a trillionaire — capped a record fundraising haul as SpaceX, Anthropic and Alphabet financings test investors’ appetite to absorb a torrent of new issuance. Bloomberg’s Big Take frames SpaceX and OpenAI as ending Wall Street’s “era of stock scarcity,” with banks rushing to fill chief-AI roles and Mistral reportedly in talks near a €20bn valuation. The strain still shows in plumbing, not demand: a record ~$8tn parked in money-market funds, private-credit retail investors eyeing the exits, and equity-supply pressure building — the buildout is increasingly funded by capital that is starting to ration itself.
G7 opens today at Évian; Trump to meet Mideast partners, China invited
Macron hosts the 52nd G7 at Évian-les-Bains (15–17 June), the first rich-nation summit since the Iran war — and he will work to keep Trump engaged. Trump plans Middle East sideline meetings to build on the deal; a China invitation and a possible Putin–Trump follow-up loom over the agenda. The transatlantic backdrop is tense: Starmer will use the summit to confirm an Australia-style social-media ban for UK teens, faces a possible NATO “humiliation” over fighter-jet funding, and Europe is still digesting the collapse of the Franco-German FCAS jet programme and questions over US wartime NATO commitments.
Geopolitics stays busy: Kyiv struck after a Putin–Trump call, AI export controls bite
Russia hit Kyiv just hours after a Putin–Trump call, with US-brokered Ukraine talks stalled while Washington focused on Iran; Ukraine’s own drone campaign is choking fuel supplies to occupied Crimea. On tech policy, a sweeping US export order froze Anthropic’s top models (Fable and Mythos), forcing the company to suspend foreign access — Canada’s Carney warned it shows the risk of relying on a few big AI providers, and a coalition of state AGs is probing OpenAI. Elsewhere: Xi is swapping fighter-jet shows for diplomatic pressure on Taiwan, China is teeing up a cross-border digital-payments system to rival the dollar, and UniCredit edged closer on its long-running Commerzbank pursuit.
For the medical reader: Ebola preparedness, the screwworm’s return, and an AI energy bill
A calmer-day thread worth a longer look: FT keeps the DR Congo Ebola outbreak in frame as a warning shot on “Disease X” preparedness amid shrinking global health budgets, and Bloomberg’s interview with Ebola pioneer Peter Piot weighs how worried the world should be. The New World screwworm’s return to Texas cattle remains a cautionary tale of how fast an eradication win can reverse. On the systems side, FT flags that AI efficiency gains carry a high energy cost and a revival of interest in nuclear (fission and fusion) — the power-demand story sitting underneath the datacentre boom.
FT portfolio signal · tied to your holdings
What FT flagged for your book
Macro / regime read. The deal flips the near-term tape to risk-on: FT’s own read is “Asian stocks soar” on the US–Iran peace deal plus SpaceX afterglow, and the energy tail — the single biggest input to the inflation/rate regime — is draining as crude slumps toward $80. But FT plants two yellow flags. First, the oil relief may be slower than priced: it reports the Hormuz backlog could take weeks to clear and flows stay vulnerable to renewed disruption, so don’t extrapolate the first-day drop. Second, the rate path is contested, not resolved: FT runs the “populist case for ending easy money now” (Ruchir Sharma: Warsh’s first act should be a hike), flags mounting inflation anxiety into Thursday’s BOE (likely hold at 3.75%), and revisits the “old financial framework” where the sources-and-uses of capital matter again as competition for funds rises. No fresh severe trigger — war-chest deployment rules stay sheathed, and the bounce pulls further from one — but a no-cut/hike-leaning rate backdrop keeps the regime defensive-to-neutral. Respect the regime; the oil-backlog and the BOJ/Fed/BOE cluster are the lines to watch.
AI capex (theme — your semis/cloud shelf) · Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon in frame. FT’s record-fundraising coverage tags Alphabet alongside SpaceX and Anthropic, and its Robert Armstrong / Katie Martin pieces argue Big Tech increasingly needs external capital, making leaders more confidence-sensitive. Read with today’s semis-led Asia rally (Samsung, SK Hynix at records), the signal for your Microsoft / Amazon / Alphabet and Broadcom / ASML shelf is durable compute demand — but funded by a growing slug of private credit, so the funding source, not end-demand, is the watch-item.
Energy / electrification & power (theme). FT flags AI’s high energy cost and a revival of interest in nuclear (fission and fusion) drawing start-up investment, plus Italian and broader corporate decarbonisation accelerating after the energy shock. A read-through to the grid/power-capex complex and, indirectly, to the datacentre power demand underpinning your cloud names — reinforced now that oil is falling but electrification is structural.
Healthcare (sector — your defensive sleeve) · quiet on names. No GLP-1 (Novo Nordisk / Eli Lilly), UnitedHealth, Vertex, Thermo Fisher or Intuitive Surgical single-name items in today’s feed. The health thread is policy/biology-led (Ebola preparedness, screwworm) rather than a catalyst for held names; last week’s GSK $10.6bn cancer-biotech deal remains the standing signal that large-cap pharma M&A is reopening.
Payments / consumer / Berkshire — quiet. No Visa, Mastercard, Berkshire, Caterpillar, Deere, Booking, Nike or Costco single-name items in the FT feed today. China’s cross-border digital-payments push is a longer-run watch-item for the card networks, not a near-term catalyst.
Shelf single-names live today: Alphabet (and Microsoft / Amazon) — but only thematically, inside FT’s AI-financing and AI-energy coverage, not as standalone catalysts. The actionable read stays theme-level: durable AI-compute demand and structural electrification, set against a contested-rate backdrop, an oil-relief that FT says could be slower than the tape, and a private-credit market still rationing liquidity.
Net: the relief rally has real legs — an actual US–Iran deal and crude near a three-month low ease the stagflation tail — but FT’s caveats (Hormuz backlog of weeks, a hike-leaning Warsh/BOE/ECB chorus, record cash hiding in money funds) keep the regime defensive-to-neutral. No severe trigger, so war-chest rules stay sheathed. Watch-lines: the Friday Hormuz signing/logistics, the BOJ (Tue) / Fed (Wed) / BOE (Thu) cluster, SpaceX follow-through, and private-credit liquidity.
Markets snapshot
Read this morning from the live Bloomberg “Top Securities” ticker. Equity indices are Friday 12 June closes (US/UK cash markets reopen today and had not reprinted at 06:00); the 10-year, FX, crude and gold reflect the live weekend/Monday move on the US–Iran deal. Asian cash markets are already open and at record highs.
−5.17% · three-month low · Hormuz to reopen (backlog ~weeks)
Gold (spot)
$4,346.80
+2.55% · firmer as Treasuries rally / yields ease
Levels transcribed from the Bloomberg Europe ticker this morning. Equities are Friday’s US/UK closes (cash reopens today); crude, gold, the 10-year and FX reflect the live relief move — oil down ~5% near a three-month low as the war premium unwinds, gold firmer, Treasuries bid, the dollar slightly softer. Next catalysts: the Friday Hormuz signing, the G7, and the BOJ/Fed/BOE cluster this week.
Global markets & macro
The war premium that drove markets for months is finally unwinding on substance, not just hope: the US and Iran have a deal to halt fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with the strait set to reopen when the text is signed Friday. Asia took the cue hardest — Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi hit record highs in a risk-on rally, semiconductors leading on strong Korean export data, with Friday’s record SpaceX IPO still feeding sentiment. WTI slumped more than 4.5% to about $80, a three-month low, and Brent slid toward $83; both are still up more than 20% on the year, and FT cautions the physical recovery lags the price, with roughly 600 tankers queued and a backlog that could take weeks to clear. Treasuries rallied as traders trimmed Fed-hike bets, copper and bitcoin popped, and the dollar eased slightly. The policy calendar now dominates: the BOJ is set to lift to a 1995-high 1.00% on Tuesday (Ueda absent through illness, yen shorts at a nine-year high), Warsh chairs his first Fed meeting Tue–Wed with a hold priced and a dot plot due Wednesday, and the BOE is expected to hold at 3.75% on Thursday despite mounting inflation anxiety and some calls to hike now.
Above the macro, the capital-markets story keeps rewriting the plumbing. SpaceX’s ~$75bn debut — the biggest IPO ever — capped a record fundraising haul alongside Anthropic and Alphabet financings, and Bloomberg’s Big Take argues SpaceX and OpenAI are ending Wall Street’s “era of stock scarcity.” The familiar paradox holds: this torrent of equity and private-credit supply is a confidence vote in the AI buildout, yet it drains liquidity from existing names and concentrates risk in private credit just as that market rations itself — a record ~$8tn now sits in money-market funds, retail is eyeing the private-credit exits, and equity supply is set to keep hitting markets. Mistral is reportedly raising near a €20bn valuation, banks are scrambling to fill chief-AI roles, and CalPERS is kicking off a $600bn “total portfolio” experiment. In the cross-currents: China’s economy is stuck in the slow lane with consumption set to drop, Beijing is teeing up a dollar-rivalling digital-payments platform, and it slammed Indonesia’s nickel curbs as a $50bn investment risk.
Geopolitics & world news
The Middle East still sets the tape, but the direction has shifted decisively to de-escalation: the US and Iran reached a deal to end the war, extend the ceasefire 60 days, clear mines and reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Friday’s signing, with the UK, France and Germany ready to lift relevant sanctions and fresh nuclear talks to begin. Analysts and FT both caution it is a truce of convenience — Tehran has floated differing versions, verification and sequencing are deferred, and shipowners want clarity before sending some 600 queued vessels through. The diplomacy converges on the G7, which Macron hosts at Évian from today; Trump plans Middle East sideline meetings, a China invitation hangs over the agenda, and a Putin–Trump follow-up looms even as Russia struck Kyiv hours after their last call and Ukraine’s drones choke fuel to occupied Crimea.
In Europe, politics is the throughline: Starmer will use the summit to confirm an Australia-style social-media ban for UK teens, faces a possible NATO “humiliation” over fighter-jet funding, and the continent is still absorbing the collapse of the Franco-German FCAS jet venture and doubts over US wartime NATO commitments. Switzerland rejected a first-of-its-kind population cap (54% against), and far-right activist Tommy Robinson was detained under terrorism legislation after a week of racial tensions. On tech policy, a sweeping US export order froze Anthropic’s top models, forcing it to suspend foreign access — Canada’s Carney warned of over-reliance on a few AI providers — while a coalition of state AGs probes OpenAI and Xi swaps military displays for diplomatic pressure on Taiwan. For the medical reader, FT keeps the DR Congo Ebola outbreak in frame as a preparedness warning (echoed by Bloomberg’s Peter Piot interview), the screwworm’s return to Texas cattle stands as a cautionary eradication-reversal, and the AI-energy/nuclear-revival thread underlines the power demand beneath the datacentre boom. The one unambiguously cheerful item: the New York Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years.
Today & week ahead (CET)
Mon 15G7 summit opens at Évian-les-Bains (Macron hosts, 15–17 Jun); Trump to meet Mideast partners on the sidelines · US Empire State manufacturing & May industrial production · World Cup continues
Tue 16BOJ decision — ~97% priced to hike 25bp to 1.00%, highest since 1995 (Ueda ill, set to miss it) · FOMC two-day meeting begins · US May housing starts
Wed 17Fed decision & dot plot — Warsh’s first meeting as chair; hold near-fully priced, focus on his press conference · US May retail sales
Thu 18BOE decision — expected hold at 3.75% despite inflation anxiety and calls for a hike · UK Makerfield by-election (Burnham backdrop)
Fri 19US–Iran deal signing — Strait of Hormuz set to reopen on signature; watch oil & tanker-backlog logistics