Good morning, you're tuned in to Markets Desk, let's get you caught up on the stories moving markets right now.
Wise Group shares are under serious pressure this session, falling as much as eleven percent after U.S. regulators denied the U.K.-based fintech's application for a national bank charter. That rejection closes a critical door for Wise's ambitions to operate as a fully licensed domestic bank, raising real questions about its long-term growth strategy in the American market.
Shifting to the macro picture, JPMorgan is sounding a structural alarm on interest rates. Strategist Joyce Chang and her team are warning that the demographic dividend of the past forty years is unwinding fast. With global debt sitting at two hundred fifty one trillion dollars and working-age populations shrinking, the bank sees rates staying elevated well into two thousand twenty six and beyond.
And geopolitical risk is back on traders' radar. President Trump told Axios he is considering a, quote, bigger than ever before military operation against Iran. That kind of language immediately tightens the risk premium on oil and puts the Strait of Hormuz back at the center of energy market conversations, with downstream consequences for inflation and Fed expectations.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
