S&P 500 futures ticked up 0.18% this morning and were rising steadily on news that the U.S. war with Iran may be approaching an end. The index closed up 0.26% yesterday for a second straight record high at 7,041.28.
Surprisingly, global markets did not react with universal joy. Indexes were mixed in Europe and down in Asia. The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.18% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was flat before lunch. China’s CSI 300 declined 0.17%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 0.55%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 1.75%. The only exception in the East was India’s Nifty 50, up 0.46%.
- Traders may have already taken their gains and are selling on the news. After all, “European equities [are] up just over 10% from the March 23rd low,” Bank of America’s Sebastian Raedler told clients in a note this morning.
- “Markets have been unwilling to price in [Trump’s] assertion in the absence of confirmation from alternative sources,” UBS’s Paul Donovan warned.
- “There has been a little bit of derisking globally over the last 24 hours, but markets remain broadly optimistic about the direction of travel,” Jim Reid and the folks at Deutsche Bank said in their morning email.
ONE BIG THING
United + American? The merger that just might fly
American Airlines already ranks as the world’s largest carrier by passengers flown, and United stands fourth; at their current sizes, the combo would be twice the size of both second-place Delta and number-three Ryanair on the global stage. The new behemoth would be by far the most dominant in the annals of U.S. air travel. Although that would present a seemingly straightforward antitrust challenge, industry insiders who talked to Fortune’s Shawn Tully say the tie-up is by no means impossible. The reason: The Trump Administration’s attraction to grand gestures that remake wide swaths of the economy.
IRAN
Trump says he has a deal to end the war
President Trump said Iran has agreed to hand over its uranium and stop its nuclear enrichment program, presaging an end to the war if a peace deal can be reached, the BBC says. Iran did not comment. The war was going “swimmingly” and “should be ending pretty soon,” Trump said. A new round of U.S.-Iran talks is expected this weekend.
The unanswered question right now is how much of this is Trump’s wishful thinking and how much is real. Pakistani diplomats are actively shuttling messages between Washington and Tehran, Al Jazeera reports: “The signs are all there.”
- Bonus peace deal: Lebanon and Israel reached a 10-day ceasefire starting today. This “may have been a historic day for Lebanon. Good things are happening!!!” Trump said on Truth Social.
- Strait talk: The U.K. and France will host a meeting of 40 countries to discuss ways to reopen the Strait of Hormuz today.
- Iran has demanded stablecoins to allow ships to exit the Gulf, according to Chainalysis.
- The Rich Starry—a sanctioned oil tanker Fortune has been tracking in the Strait that was turned back by the U.S. Navy—is in the same spot it was yesterday, off the coast of Iran. Follow its progress here.
AAAAND … SCENE!
Reed Hastings exits Netflix — and Sarandos swats down palace-intrigue theory
Reed Hastings, the 65-year-old cofounder and former CEO of Netflix, said on Thursday he won’t stand for reelection to the board in June, ending a 29-year run at the company he created in 1997. He gave shoutouts to co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos, who took full control of Hastings’s executive role in January 2023. The stock fell 9% on the news. So is Hastings’ departure related to Netflix’s failed attempt to buy Warner Bros? Absolutely not, said Sarandos: “Sorry for anyone who was looking for some palace intrigue here, not so.” Fortune’s Amanda Gerut has the details.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
A secretive tycoon known as the ‘French Murdoch’ holds the key to Bill Ackman’s $64 billion bid for Universal Music Group – Amanda Gerut
Switzerland’s former ambassador to Iran: here’s how to end this war — and why Pakistan isn’t enough – Philippe Welti
Food companies are finally cutting prices. PepsiCo shows it’s worth it – Phil Wahba
Meet Joe McCann: the high-flying crypto trader held in Tanzania after sudden death of his influencer fiancée Ashly Robinson – Jack Kubinec
Teen boys are dating their AI chatbots—and experts warn opting out of real relationships could hurt their careers in the future – Orianna Rosa Royle
Manycore, the first of the Hangzhou ‘Little Dragons’ to go public, pushes ‘spatial intelligence’ as the next wave of AI development – Nicholas Gordon
“I DON’T THINK IT’S SYSTEMIC”
Dimon’s latest private-credit warning: worry, but don’t panic
J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon issued another one of his warnings about private credit. On his Q1 2026 earnings call he said, “I think there’s been some weakening in underwriting, and not just by private credit, elsewhere. There will be a credit cycle one day. I think when there’s a credit cycle, losses will be worse than people expect relative to the scenario.” But, “I don’t think it’s systemic,” he said because the size of the market is “like $1.7 trillion” and therefore not big enough to be threatening in the way the collapse of mortgage lending was in 2008.
PIKs not showing pain: Over at Goldman Sachs, analyst Amanda Lynam and her team say PIK rates — “payment-in-kind” made by borrowers in financial distress — are essentially the same today as they have been for the last few years. “We find a largely range-bound picture,” she told clients in a recent note. “PIK activity has represented, on average, 7.4% of total income since 3Q2021. And as of December 31, 2025, this metric was below the 8%+ levels seen at various points over the past few years.”
CHART OF THE DAY
The jobs number economists can’t quite believe
About 207,000 filed for unemployment in the U.S. in the most recent week, below expectations. The rate remains low. Almost mysteriously low, according to Jefferies analysts Thomas Simons and Michael Bacolas. “It is somewhat hard to believe given the ongoing war in Iran, the rise in gasoline prices, the low level of hiring for the last 18 months, and the general decline in consumer sentiment, but the data suggest that the payroll data is going to be solid once again this month,” they told clients in a recent note. While the global supply chain risks remain, “for better or worse, the U.S. economy is likely going to be the most insulated in the world.”
NUMBER OF THE DAY
$8,000
The “bull case” target price for gold per troy ounce at the end of 2027, as forecast by Wells Fargo’s Ohsung Kwon and his team, in a note seen by Fortune. His bear case is $4,000.
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
OnlyFans tops $3bn valuation in stake sale after death of owner – FT
Spain touts energy resilience to Iran war as Trump tensions cast shadow over trade – CNBC
Trump officials negotiating access to Anthropic’s Mythos despite blacklist – Axios
Trump Bets Economic Pain Will Finally Force Iran to Reopen Strait – WSJ
How One Football Team Embraced Moneyball to Challenge Big Money Rivals – Bloomberg
European Airlines Face Fuel Shortages Within Weeks – NYT
ONE MORE THING
New ‘Misery Index’ ranks the worst countries to live in
Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, has published his annual “misery index,” which ranks countries by “the sum of the year-end unemployment (multiplied by two), inflation, and bank-lending rates, minus the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita,” to create a single-figure ranking of the worst economies on Earth. Look up your country on the list here. Here are the top five places you don’t want to be:
- Venezuela
- Sudan
- Turkey
- Iran
- Argentina
The U.K. ranked 103rd and was beaten by the U.S. at No.119. The bottom (and therefore best) slot goes to … Taiwan.