Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the needle this Thursday.
J.P. Morgan is sounding an early warning on crude supplies, telling clients that the buffer the oil market has leaned on through Middle East disruptions could start to crack as soon as early June. If the Iran situation extends into summer, strategists say the market has little cushion left to absorb another shock, and that has real implications for energy prices heading into the second half.
Shifting to Washington, the Senate voted unanimously Thursday to ban its own members from trading on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. The resolution also urged the House, the executive branch, and the judiciary to follow suit. This comes as Democratic lawmakers had already pressed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to restrict event contracts tied to elections and military actions, so the pressure is clearly building on multiple fronts.
And on the AI cost front, Pinterest is offering a useful case study in how platforms are managing their artificial intelligence spend. The company's VP of product management says blending open-source models from Alibaba with closed-source tools from OpenAI, alongside its own proprietary models, has meaningfully reduced costs. Pinterest backed the strategy with updated cloud infrastructure and a retooled hiring approach.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
