An update on the latest news, insights, and market views shaping global wealth management and investment trends.

Weekly Snapshot

This section highlights weekly performance, notable volatility, and significant currency moves shaping investor sentiment.

• In the week we narrowly avoided a civilisation-ending moment,  the S&P is up 3.6% and the Nasdaq is up 4.5% Europe was up 4.2% The Nikkei was up 7.2% China’s mainland market was up 4.4%
• US Treasuries whipsawed with the war. The 10-year yield opened the week above 4.35%, carrying five weeks of inflation premium, built up over five weeks of triple-digit Brent crude and growing market chatter about the Fed's next move being a hike. The 2-week ceasefire announcement, just ahead of the 8pm Tuesday deadline flipped that logic: with oil collapsing, the inflation trade unwound and the 10-year yield dropped sharply to an intraday low of 4.22%. By Thursday the truce was fraying, oil was back above $95, and the inflation premium started creeping back in,  the 10-year drifted to 4.30%
• Brent opened the week above $110, hit $111.89 on Tuesday as Trump's ultimatum deadline approached and optimism around the Strait reopening faded, then collapsed to a weekly low of $90.40 on Wednesday following the 2-week ceasefire announcement. The relief was short-lived. Persistent tensions, Israel's operations in Lebanon and the unresolved dispute over uranium enrichment, pushed Brent back toward $100. It is printing at $97 in Friday trade,flat on the day
• Spot gold reached $4’856 per troy ounce on Wednesday, its highest level in two weeks. The drivers were straightforward: renewed Strait of Hormuz uncertainty, a weaker dollar and the fragility of the ceasefire all boosted demand simultaneously
• Cautious optimism ahead of the US-Iran talks and Friday's CPI print lifted Bitcoin above $73’000. Bitcoin needs to clear $75’000 to confirm a genuine breakout. Until the Strait is open and oil is sustainably below $90, that ceiling will probably hold

Geopolitical Landscape

A summary of key political and geopolitical developments during the week that may influence global markets and impact portfolio positioning.

• The week opened with President Trump threatening Iran with civilisational destruction unless Tehran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. US forces struck military targets on Kharg Island, Iran's principal oil export hub, which handles roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports and has a loading capacity of approximately 7 million barrels per day
• Iran alleged the US pilot rescue operation served as cover for extracting enriched uranium, a claim Washington rejected
• Tuesday evening brought a surprise diplomatic breakthrough via Pakistan. Trump agreed to a two-week pause in hostilities, conditional on Iran immediately and fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, framed as a window for negotiating a durable settlement
• By Wednesday, the US Vice President was already describing the arrangement as a "fragile truce."
• Iran demanded Lebanon be included in the ceasefire framework; Washington said this was never part of the agreement. Iran also cited a drone entering its airspace and Israel's ongoing strikes in Lebanon as violations. The US rejected all claims
• The UAE and Kuwait reported attempted Iranian attacks on their territory during the ceasefire period. Israel simultaneously carried out what it described as its largest coordinated strike against Hezbollah, killing senior Hezbollah figure Ali Youssouf Harchi in Beirut
• Negotiations expected in Islamabad this weekend have yet to materialise. Iran has suspended talks pending a Lebanon ceasefire; Israel continues operations there and Hezbollah is responding. A glimmer of hope: Netanyahu has ordered direct talks with Lebanon, expected in Washington next week
• Shipping has begun recovering marginally, with nine tankers transiting during the ceasefire week, though this remains far below the pre-war norm of roughly 20 million barrels per day. The IMF estimates global oil supply has fallen 13%
• Iran is preparing new navigation conditions requiring vessels to coordinate passage with its military, specifically targeting ships linked to Israel or the US. The US and EU firmly oppose any tolling mechanism. Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution aimed at reopening the Strait
• Bahrain's Foreign Minister warned that Gulf states' patience with Iranian attacks has limits

Macroeconomic Developments

Key macroeconomic data releases and economic indicators across major regions and individual countries, providing insight into growth trends, and the broader economic outlook.

• US CPI rose 3.3% year-on-year in March, the highest reading since May 2024, driven by the largest one-month surge in fuel costs since at least 1957. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, came in at 2.6%, softer than feared. Oxford Economics had warned that the war's impact on energy prices would push headline CPI above 4% by April, today's print suggests that trajectory is intact but not yet at its worst
• The March FOMC minutes were out this week, they confirmed an 11-1 vote to hold at 3.5%–3.75%, with S. Miran dissenting for a cut. The report was instantly eclipsed by Wednesday's oil price collapse; CME FedWatch showed the probability of a rate cut by the end-2026 jumping from 14% to 45% in a single session, with the first cut expected for October. Core PCE sits at 3.1%. If crude stays down, the inflation case weakens and the cutting path reopens. If the Strait closes again, so does that window
• Growth in the American services sector slowed in March, while input prices paid by businesses rose at their fastest pace in over 13 years, a sign that the prolonged war with Iran is feeding through to inflation. Services employment fell to its lowest level since late 2023, though recent government data points to a rebound
• Japanese households cut spending for a third consecutive month in February (down 1.8% year-on-year), despite real wages rising. Consumption remains weak, with economists citing consumer fatigue and inflationary pressure
• India's central bank held rates steady at 5.25% while flagging the Iran conflict as a compounding risk to both inflation and growth. GDP growth forecasts for the April-June quarter were trimmed to 6.8% from 6.9%, and for July-September to 6.7% from 7.0%, reflecting the combined drag of elevated energy costs and supply disruptions. Consumer inflation rose for a fourth consecutive month to 3.21% in February, up from 2.75%,  still contained, but directionally concerning
• With Gulf tensions escalating and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, Saudi Aramco has raised the price of Arab Light crude to a record premium for Asian buyers, at $19.50 above regional benchmarks

Corporate & Sector Highlights

Insights into notable developments among major global companies and sectors, including earnings results, strategic initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory developments, and trends influencing corporate performance.

• Broadcom agreed to produce Google's next-generation AI chips at scale (3.5 gigawatts of compute capacity, roughly tripling the 1 GW previously cited. This is custom TPU manufacturing, and the volume visibility stretches well into the next decade. It also struck a separate compute agreement with Anthropic to support Claude's infrastructure
• Anthropic launched ‘Managed Agents’, a hosted service for autonomous AI tasks, and it  triggered a broad SaaS selloff on Thursday. Michael Burry piled on, posting that Anthropic is eating Palantir's lunch before deleting the note, but the damage was done. PLTR fell 7.3%, and the sector followed: ZS, Crowdstrike, ServiceNow, Intuit, Shopify, all dropped 6–11% on no individual news. The SaaS ETF IGV is now down over 20% YTD
• Intel is joining Elon Musk's Terafab project, a vertically integrated semiconductor facility in Austin Texas targeting 1 terawatt per year of AI and robotics compute. The chips will serve SpaceX, xAI and Tesla across humanoid robots, robo-taxis and orbital data centres. Initial stages cost tens of billions and focus on 2nm nodes (the size of transistors on a chip; smaller means faster and more efficient, with 2nm representing the current state of the art); Intel provides the manufacturing expertise that Terafab needs to actually produce them. The US government holds 8.4% of Intel, adding a political dimension to the partnership. The strategic logic is straightforward: Musk believes chip supply will become the binding constraint on AI development, and wants to own the bottleneck rather than queue for it
• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy used his annual shareholder letter to flatly dismiss AI bubble concerns, committing to $200bn in AI investment this year. AWS AI revenue is already at $15bn annually; the in-house chip business is on track for $20bn annually, and Jassy estimates it could generate $50bn if sold externally, putting it in line with Broadcom's custom AI chip business.  Amazon is also deepening its OpenAI relationship, pledging $50bn in exchange for OpenAI committing to buy Amazon chips

• Bill Ackman's Pershing Square has bid €55bn for Universal Music Group ( UMG, home to Taylor Swift, Drake…) at €30.40/share, a 78% premium to Monday's close. The structure: UMG merges with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, redomiciles to Nevada, and relists in New York. Ackman, a former UMG board member, argues the Amsterdam listing has been a structural drag on a fundamentally strong business. UMG hasn't commented. The timing is notable, Pershing Square is simultaneously pursuing its own NYSE dual IPO
• Artemis II broke the human distance record Monday, 407’000 km from Earth past Apollo 13's 1970 mark, and became the first crewed mission to see the dark side of the moon. The market noticed. Virgin Galactic jumped 21% on the sentiment lift, with additional momentum from last week's announcement of resuming commercial suborbital flights: 50 tickets at $750k each, up from $600k, with further price increases signalled. The backlog now stands at 700 prospective astronauts

• Delta kicked off airline earnings season with a strong beat on Wednesday, record Q1 revenue of $14.2bn (vs. $13.9bn expected, +9% year-over-year), adjusted EPS of $0.64 ahead of the $0.61 forecast, $1.2bn in free cash flow and a 12% ROIC. The stock surged 11% in premarket, then gave most of it back during regular trade. The flag for the current quarter: a $2bn fuel headwind, which management expects to offset with double-digit revenue growth in June. A credible offset given the ceasefire-driven oil pullback this week, but one worth watching if the Strait re-closes

Chart of the Week

Crack is Back

The crack spread is the difference between the price of crude oil and the refined products made from it, jet fuel in the chart below. It represents the refinery's profit margin.It is called a crack spread because the refining process literally cracks hydrocarbon molecules into lighter products.

From 2015 through early 2020, the relationship was stable and unremarkable. Brent and jet fuel tracked each other closely, with crack spreads thin and relatively flat, reflecting a well-supplied, low-volatility energy market. Covid shattered the picture. In 2020, crude and jet fuel collapsed together as demand evaporated, and crack spreads compressed to near zero as refiners had nothing worth processing demand for. The recovery from 2021 onward was violent. Jet fuel demand rebounded faster than refining capacity could respond, sending crack spreads surging to historic highs through 2022, the widest in the chart's entire history. Refiners were printing money.

Then comes 2026, and the chart ends on its most dramatic data point. Jet fuel has spiked to over $200/bbl, Brent has surged, and the crack spread has exploded to levels that dwarf even 2022. The Iran conflict and Strait of Hormuz disruption have simultaneously pushed crude higher and created acute jet fuel scarcity, a double shock for airlines. Delta's reported $2bn fuel headwind this quarter is visible in this chart.

Source: IATA, S&P Global Energy/Platts