Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk.
The dominant story across global markets today is the U.S.-Iran peace deal, and the reaction has been swift and decisive. Asian equities surged overnight, with SoftBank leading the charge, climbing more than twelve percent as investors rushed back into risk assets. The agreement ends hostilities, lifts the U.S. naval blockade, and reopens the Strait of Hormuz — a critical artery for roughly one-fifth of global oil supply. Indian markets opened sharply higher as well, with sentiment broadly buoyant from Tokyo to Mumbai.
That reopening of the Strait carries enormous implications for energy markets. For months, U.S. oil producers and refiners had been the unlikely beneficiaries of the conflict, with crude prices elevated and major oil stocks climbing anywhere from twenty to seventy percent this year. Some of those gains may now face pressure as supply routes normalize, though analysts caution the rally in energy equities may not unwind quickly given how deeply it has been priced into forward earnings.
Shifting to the earnings picture, S&P five hundred companies delivered nearly twenty-nine percent earnings growth in the first quarter of twenty twenty-six, and second quarter estimates currently sitting at twenty-two percent are widely expected to push above thirty percent when results arrive, with technology and energy once again driving the broadest gains.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
