Good morning, you're listening to Markets Desk.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is set to announce what he's calling the toughest Iran sanctions in history, a move that's already drawing sharp pushback from Tehran. Iran's top security official warned that any nation supporting the new U.S. economic measures will be treated as committing an act of war, promising retaliation in what he called a seismic manner. Markets will be watching oil closely.
Shifting to tech, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is raising a flag that cuts against his own industry's momentum. Altman said publicly that he fears artificial intelligence could end up concentrated in the hands of just a few powerful players, warning that misplaced safety concerns could lead people to surrender liberty. He's calling instead for AI that empowers individuals and fuels small business growth.
And on the portfolio front, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square has been building positions in Netflix and Uber, two names that have underperformed the broader market by thirty-three and eighteen percent respectively over the past year. Ackman is clearly playing a longer thesis here, betting the market is mispricing both stories while most of Wall Street has been rotating elsewhere.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
