The Morning Brief
Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz collides with Washington's move against Iranian airlines, oil is sinking, and Wall Street heads into the open chasing a Nasdaq record built on Meta's AI shopping win and Bitcoin's breakout above $87,000.
Iran and oil dominate the overnight wire.
Tehran says it can reopen Hormuz within seven days if the U.S. eases military pressure and lifts its port blockade, with an Iranian delegation reportedly in New York carrying full authority to negotiate. The de-escalation talk is doing the work in crude: United States Oil Fund (USO) is off 3.7%. But the détente is fragile. A separate headline has the Trump administration targeting Iranian airlines, which is enough to keep Nasdaq 100 futures in check even as S&P 500 futures push higher.
Europe and Asia add their own threads.
Alibaba (BABA) unveiled its Zhenwu V900 AI chip, promising triple the performance and a 20-gigawatt data-center buildout by 2032, the latest sign China isn't ceding ground in the AI arms race. In Europe, On Holding (ONON) announced a $1 billion buyback alongside 2029 sales targets of at least CHF 5.6 billion, Roche posted positive Phase II data on its obesity drug enicepatide, AbbVie (ABBV) picked up EU approval for Rinvoq in pediatric arthritis, and Morgan Stanley cut Ericsson to Underweight.
Crypto ran hot overnight.
Bitcoin topped $87,000 with Ethereum, XRP and Dogecoin all higher on an "extreme greed" reading, and at least one analyst is calling the bear market over. Treasury yields eased alongside oil, a combination that helped the Nasdaq print a record in Monday's session, though breadth watchers are flagging the rally's narrowness with comparisons to 1929 and 1999.
The AI trade still has a face, and it's Meta.
Meta Platforms (META) is up 11.4%, adding over $200 billion in value after its Muse AI shopping assistant hit No. 1, a surge strong enough to help carry AMD toward the $1 trillion club. The win is already drawing blood: Amazon has blocked Muse from its platform, escalating what one report calls a fight "bigger than anyone anticipated" over the future of AI-driven shopping.
Premarket movers:
Vicor (VICR) is up double digits after raising Q3 revenue guidance to over 20% growth in royalties. CrowdStrike, Equinix and Digital Realty all got price-target bumps overnight. Greenland-linked names, including Critical Metals, remain volatile after the weekend's Trump-Denmark deal.
On the radar today:
AutoZone (AZO) and Thor Industries (THO) report before the bell, KB Home (KBH), Worthington Enterprises (WOR) and MillerKnoll (MLKN) round out a housing- and consumer-heavy earnings slate.
Bottom line: oil is pricing in peace, equities are pricing in AI, and both bets get tested the moment Washington's next move on Iran or the mega-caps' earnings hits the tape.