Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the conversation today.
Oil is extending gains for a third straight session as hopes for a US-Iran peace deal continue to fade. Renewed uncertainty around negotiations and the status of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for global energy flows, is keeping Brent crude elevated, with traders pricing in the risk that supply disruptions could persist longer than expected.
Shifting to equities, Goldman Sachs is making a bold call on Asian markets, arguing that Korea and Taiwan's benchmark indices, which have already doubled in two thousand twenty six, have another forty percent of upside ahead. Goldman's thesis centers on earnings, specifically that the market is still underestimating how long the current semiconductor cycle has left to run.
And in a story with real implications for the broader labor market, software engineers are confronting a moment of profound disruption. Following rapid advances from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google late last year, AI coding tools have fundamentally reshaped what the job looks like, with engineers reporting higher productivity but also deep anxiety about where the profession goes from here.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
