Trump Vows to Hit Iran 'Extremely Hard' 🛢️

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Markets whipsawed Thursday as Trump's primetime address on the Iran war landed somewhere between "we're almost done" and "we're about to escalate." Oil surged past $111, Asian markets plunged overnight, and U.S. stocks clawed back from steep morning losses after Iran signaled a potential path forward for the Strait of Hormuz.

Buckle up 👇️ 

🚀 SpaceX confidentially filed for what could be the largest IPO in history on Wednesday, seeking a valuation north of $1.75 trillion and looking to raise up to $75 billion - more than three times the biggest U.S. IPO ever. The company was valued at $1.25 trillion after recently merging with Elon Musk's xAI. A June listing would put SpaceX ahead of anticipated mega-IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic. (CNBC)

🎤 Asian markets plunged overnight after Trump's address, with South Korea's KOSPI leading the selloff at -4.47%. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 2.38%, Australia's ASX 200 dropped 1.06%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost about 1%. The damage was concentrated in energy-importing economies, where rising oil costs threaten to squeeze margins and reignite inflation. (CNBC)

🛢️ Oil surged Thursday as Trump's speech stoked fears of further escalation, with WTI spiking more than 10% past $111 a barrel and Brent climbing above $106. WTI briefly traded above Brent during the session - an unusual inversion driven by the Hormuz blockade reshaping which barrels are actually accessible to the market. Prices have more than doubled since February's pre-war levels. (CNBC)

🔼 Gold is holding firm above $4,600 per ounce this week as safe-haven demand continued to draw capital away from risk assets. The metal has rebounded sharply from its four-month low near $4,100 in late March, with J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank maintaining year-end targets above $6,000. The structural bull case - sovereign debt, central bank buying, and geopolitical hedging - remains intact even after the pullback from record highs above $5,000 earlier this year. (FinancialContent)

🔻 Bitcoin dropped as Trump's hawkish tone pushed investors further into defensive positions. Ethereum fell 4.4% to about $1,998. The crypto Fear and Greed Index plunged to 8 out of 100 - its lowest reading since June 2022 and the deepest point in what is now the longest sustained extreme-fear streak since the 2022 bear market. (Yahoo Finance)

💼 The March jobs report drops Friday morning at 8:30 AM ET - on Good Friday, when stock and bond markets are closed. That means the reaction gets bottled up until Monday. Economists expect 57,000 jobs added after February's 92,000 loss, with the end of the Kaiser Permanente strike returning roughly 30,000 workers to payrolls. This is the first full employment snapshot of the war economy, and a weak print could tip the recession narrative from "elevated risk" to "imminent." (Investing.com)

📈 European markets rallied hard yesterday. Germany's DAX jumped 2.7%, Spain's IBEX surged 3.1%, and the pan-European STOXX 600 gained 2.5% - as traders bet Trump's address would signal a wind-down. When the speech delivered escalation instead, the rally unwound Thursday: the Euro Stoxx 50 fell 1.78% as energy-dependent economies like Germany and Italy faced renewed stagflation fears. (Euronews)

✅ The S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all remain in or near correction territory as Q2 begins. The Dow entered correction in late March after falling more than 10% from its February high. The Nasdaq is down about 13% from its October record. The S&P 500 is just percentage points away from joining them - and with oil above $111, recession odds rising, and the Fed on hold, there is no obvious policy lever to pull this time. (The Motley Fool)

On Wednesday evening, President Trump delivered a 19-minute primetime address on the Iran war - his first since the conflict began five weeks ago.

The buildup had markets hopeful: earlier in the day, the S&P 500 gained 0.72% and the Nasdaq climbed 1.16% on speculation that Trump would announce a clear path to ending the war. He didn't.

Instead, Trump said U.S. military objectives were "nearly completed" but vowed to hit Iran "extremely hard" over the next two to three weeks, warning he would bomb the country "back to the Stone Age" if a deal wasn't reached.

He announced the deployment of a third aircraft carrier to the region and offered no timeline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz - the chokepoint that handles roughly 20% of the world's oil supply and has been effectively closed since the conflict began.

The reaction was immediate:

• Oil surged past $108 on both benchmarks overnight, with WTI spiking more than 10% to above $111 and Brent climbing more than 5% past $106. 

• South Korea's KOSPI plunged 4.47%, Japan's Nikkei fell 2.38%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped about 1%.

• When U.S. markets opened Thursday, the Dow plunged more than 600 points and the S&P 500 fell 1.5% at the lows.

But a midday headline changed the picture.

Iranian state media reported that Tehran is working with Oman on a protocol to "monitor" ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz after the war ends.

That injected enough optimism to trigger a sharp recovery - the Dow trimmed its loss to about 216 points (-0.5%), while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished down just 0.3% and 0.4%.

What to watch: Whether the Oman-brokered Hormuz monitoring protocol gains any real traction - or whether it's just the latest headline in a war that has whipsawed markets for five straight weeks.

Trump said the conflict would wrap up in two to three weeks, but he's also sending more military hardware to the region. Oil traders aren't buying the "almost over" narrative yet, and with WTI above $111 and gas nationally at $4.08 a gallon, every day this drags on is a day closer to real consumer pain showing up in economic data.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.