Trump has no good options in Iran—here are 5 of them ahead of his speech to the nation tonight |
Trump has no good options in Iran—here are 5 of them ahead of his speech to the nation tonight
Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:
Trump has no good options in war with Iran.
Markets are pricing in an end to the conflict.
U.S. job market grinds to a halt.
Exclusive: AI will cause 31% dip in phone sales, analyst says.
Anthropic source code leaks.
The Fed’s Powell is not a dove.
Traders want the war to end
Oil fell below $100 this morning. S&P 500 futures were up 0.45% prior to the open in New York after a huge day in the markets yesterday: The index rose 2.9% on Tuesday, recovering about 30% of its drawdown since the war began. The Nasdaq rose 795 points, recovering nearly half of its total decline in a single day. The Dow soared 1,125 points. All three indexes had their biggest single-day gains since May. The joy continued in Asia and Europe today, where markets rose strongly across the board—every single one of them more than a point higher.
Reality check: The S&P is still down 4.63% year-to-date.
The ‘Walmart recession indicator’ just hit its highest point since 2008, Fortune's Jake Angelo reports.
In Q1, almost all asset classes declined aside from oil and oil-linked commodities, according to Deutsche Bank:
U.S. job market is now as bad as it was during COVID
Americans aren’t getting laid off. And they’re not quitting. They’re simply not getting hired. And the numbers haven’t been this bad since the pandemic closed the economy by force, writes Fortune’s Eva Roytburg. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday the hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February, with just 4.8 million hires, the lowest since April 2020. Job openings dropped to 6.9 million, down 358,000 from January. The quit rate held at a low 1.9%. Everyone, it seems, is staying put, whether in their jobs or in unemployment. “It’s a brutal job market,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said. “To see that 3.1% hiring rate, the lowest since April 2020, when the economy was closed down literally during COVID—it just underscores how little hiring is going on.”
Yikes: The job numbers are from February—before the war started.
Trump teases an end to the conflict with Iran
President Trump will give a speech to the nation at 9 p.m. EST this evening “to provide an important update on Iran,” the White House said. The speech will follow a confusing set of messages issued by the Trump administration yesterday on whether it was preparing to wind down its war in the Persian Gulf.
On Tuesday, Trump said the war could end in “two or three weeks” even if it meant leaving without a peace deal and abandoning the Strait of Hormuz to Iran’s control. “Go get........