Market Report.
📈 The market appears to be stabilizing. As we noted yesterday at the start of the trading day in our report, there is a clear de-escalation of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz on the part of the U.S., which, at the very least, does not seem to be escalating matters with new military actions.
🏦 On the economic front, before we enter into today’s geopolitical complexity, we highlight today’s Fed rate decision, where we expect no change.
📉 The markets are currently pricing in a near-zero chance that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will be cutting interest rates at their upcoming meeting or any other meeting in the near future.
📅 Futures pricing suggests that policymakers at the FOMC won’t even consider easing monetary policy until at least September, and more likely October. Even then, the market is only pricing in a single interest rate cut for the remainder of 2026.
⚔️ Israel continued the escalation of the war, killing the iranian country’s security chief Ali Larijani. Iran confirms the death of senior official Ali Larijani, saying he “died alongside his son and security team as a martyr.”
🎙️ The Canadian journalist, Aaron Mate, specialized in US foreign policy said: “Israel just made that a lot more difficult today by assassinating Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, who’s previously advocated diplomacy with Iran”.
🗣️ John Bolton says, “Good, let the regime collapse,” in response to the question of whether assassinating Iran’s leadership creates a vacuum too dangerous to talk with. He suggests arming the Iranian opposition, separating the conventional military from the IRGC, and allowing a military regime to assume power.
☢️ Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant has been attacked. Russia’s Rosatom condemns strike on the nuclear plant. Iran informed the IAEA that a projectile hit the Busher nuclear power plant. There were no immediate reports of damage to the power station.
🚀 Iran launched another wave of retaliatory attacks against Israel and US bases in the region. Domnald Trump said on Monday that if the US withdraws from the Middle East, Israel would be annihilated.
🛸 A drone attack targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, with a source telling AFP that one drone directly hit the compound but it was not immediately clear whether there was any damage.
🇫🇷 France reiterates that the country will cooperate with the US in the Strait of Hormuz, only when things deescalate. In an exclusive interview with CNBC, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said: “we are ready to do something to liberate the Strait of Hormuz, as long as this is no longer a war situation.”
🏢 On a corporate level, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted a fast-rising AI project called OpenClaw as a major step forward in how people interact with artificial intelligence. He described it as “the largest, most popular, the most successful open-sourced project in the history of humanity” and “the next ChatGPT.”
🤖 OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI agent platform that can complete tasks, make decisions, and take actions with minimal input from users, going beyond traditional chatbots. Nvidia has moved quickly to build around OpenClaw’s momentum, announcing NemoClaw – an enterprise-grade version that layers Nvidia’s software stack and tools on top of the platform to make these powerful AI agents secure, scalable, and ready for real-world use.
🏭 Huang also announced that the company has received purchase orders from China and is in the process of restarting manufacturing to sell its H200 processors to customers in China. Nvidia now has clearance from both the U.S. and Chinese sides to resume these sales.
📦 While the U.S. did eventually allow Nvidia to ship the more advanced H200 chip to China, provided the U.S. got a 25% cut of sales, there had been virtually no movement on this until now.
🇨🇳 Chinese’s AI: Tencent is leveraging its dominant WeChat “super-app” ecosystem to rapidly develop and integrate agentic AI capabilities, allowing users to trigger real-world services directly within the WeChat platform.
🔥 Both Tencent and Alibaba, along with other Chinese tech giants like ByteDance and Baidu, are heavily promoting and subsidizing agentic AI apps, fueling an “agent fever” in the Chinese market.
🛢️ Oil market:
🤝 Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have reached an agreement to resume crude exports through the northern pipeline that runs via Kurdistan to Türkiye’s Ceyhan port.
📉 The Baghdad-Kurdistan pipeline deal implies more oil supply returning to the market, which is contributing to the recent drop in oil prices.
📊 In Asian trading after the announcement, Brent futures dropped around 1.5–2% and WTI around 2–2.5%, reflecting expectations of extra barrels hitting seaborne markets just as agencies warn of a possible surplus into 2026.
🇹🇷 Ankara’s separate statement that the 1973 Iraq–Türkiye pipeline framework expires in 2026 adds another layer, as markets are watching whether this new Baghdad–Erbil alignment leads to a more durable tri-party framework with Türkiye or just another interim patch.
🌍 Political turbulences during the war:
🇺🇸 Trump has mocked Starmer repeatedly since the start of the Iran war, mainly by portraying him as a weak, late and unreliable ally — “no Winston Churchill,” someone who “joins wars after we’ve already won,” and a leader the US “doesn’t need.”
🇬🇧 Kier Starmer hits back at Donald Trump: “No matter what, we are not going to participate in war against Iran. We will not give bases to the US to attack”
🇹🇷 Turkish President Erdogan is suggesting that the ongoing war goes far beyond just Israeli security concerns. He alleges that there is a broader agenda at play: Erdogan states that “we all know their purpose is not just security” – implying the war has ulterior motives beyond Israel’s stated reasons.
📜 He refers to “the delusions of the ‘Promised Land'” and “doomsday scenarios” being brought up, saying these “absurdities” are “certainly no coincidence.”
⚠️ Erdogan accuses “a network that has seized power, that sees itself as superior to other human beings” of “dragging our region step by step into catastrophe.”
🚪 Trump’s National Counterterrorism Director, Joseph Kent, Resigns.
📝 Kent, a veteran who has deployed to combat 11 times and a Gold Star husband, is urging the President to reconsider the war with Iran:
💬 “I cannot, in good conscience, support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran did not pose an imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby.”
🕵️ He alleges that high-ranking Israeli officials and influential American media deployed a misinformation campaign to deceive the President into believing Iran posed an imminent threat, in order to encourage war.
⚰️ Kent states this is the same tactic used to draw the U.S. into the disastrous Iraq war, which cost thousands of American lives. He cannot support sending the next generation to fight and die in another war that serves no benefit to the American people.
🇨🇳 China is also taking a strategic position in the US-Israel conflict against Iran.
📰 Accroding to The Cradle, China is taking two clear positions. Diplomatically, China is developing a steady moral and ethical criticism of the U.S. war, positioning it as an illegal attack against a sovereign country.
🛰️ Militarily, China has helped Iran upgrade its capabilities by connecting the Iranian grid to the BeiDou satellite system, providing long-range radars, and helping Iran apply lessons from Russia’s experience in Ukraine.
💱 Iran is now only allowing oil tankers whose cargo has been settled in petroyuan to transit the Strait of Hormuz, effectively weaponizing the strait and the yuan against the petrodollar system.
📰 The Western press’s view of a Chinese economy that is highly dependent on international trade does not match the current reality, as asserted by The Global Times in an article.
🏭 The article explains that while foreign trade has played an important role, domestic demand has become a significantly stronger pillar of China’s economic development. The country’s foreign trade dependence has declined, and final consumption expenditure now accounts for over 50% of GDP.
📦 Despite external pressures like US tariffs, China’s exports have remained resilient, stabilizing and then picking up growth. In the first two months of 2026, exports surged 19.2% year-over-year.
🇰🇵 An unexpected result comes from North Korea: the Workers’ Party of Korea, led by Kim Jong Un, won the parliamentary elections with 99.93% of the vote.
Market View.
📈 Markets appear to be regaining optimism, with S&P 500 futures returning to the 6,800 area — fingers crossed.
💻 Nasdaq 100 futures have moved back above 25,000, currently trading at around 25,160.
💵 The US dollar index (DXY) weakened during yesterday’s session but has formed a base above 99.50, now trading near 99.62. This has provided some relief to pairs such as EUR/USD, which rebounded towards the 1.1550 area, where it encountered resistance, and is currently hovering around 1.1530.
🇪🇺 In Europe, DAX 40 futures approached 24,000 before pulling back to around 23,850.
📉 Euro Stoxx 50 futures briefly broke above 5,800 in recent hours and are now attempting to hold that level as support.
🛢️ Crude oil appears to be stabilising, with Brent trading above $100 per barrel, currently around $102.20.
🥇 Gold futures continue to trade sideways, consolidating around the $5,000 per ounce level.
₿ Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains anchored near $74,000, after reaching $76,000 in the early hours of Tuesday.
