Oil prices tick up amid doubt on Iran war ceasefire; Chinese factory gate costs increase for first time in four years
The rise in the oil price is strengthening this morning, with Brent crude – the international benchmark – now up 1.9% to $97.79 a barrel.There is a cautious mood this morning in the European stock market, with some small rises across the board.The UK’s blue chip FTSE 100 is up very slightly by 0.
1%, while the French Cac 40 index is practically flat.The German Dax is also up 0.1%.The Stoxx Europe 600, which tracks the biggest companies across the continent, has ticked up 0.2%.
Some investors will be waiting for signs out of planned talks this weekend over US and Iran, says Richard Hunter, of the broker Interactive Investor.double quotation markAhead of planned talks this weekend between the warring parties on a possible permanent solution, there clearly remains much to iron out.Most notably, Iran is maintaining its control of the strait of Hormuz, with reports suggesting that the passage remains effectively closed with only bulk carriers carrying dry cargo, rather than oil, getting through.At the same time, the US military is maintaining its presence in the region, although more positively Israel has opened the door to negotiations with Lebanon, after Iran had called the ongoing attacks a violation of the ceasefire agreement.Nonetheless, this was apparently enough for the bulls to nibble on, despite another tick higher in the oil price.
[Yesterday] the Nasdaq continued with its recovery, helped along by a gain of almost 3% for Meta Platforms as it revealed its new AI model.…The cautious progress has improved the fortunes of the main indices and has tipped the Dow Jones into positive territory, now guarding a cautious gain of 0.3% for the year so far.Meanwhile, the more tech-focused S&P500 and Nasdaq remain in the red but on an improving trend, with losses of 0.3% and 1.
8% respectively in the year to date.The electronics retailer AO World is also reassuring investors that it has some shelter from rising energy costs.It said in a statement this morning:double quotation markThe Group had hedging arrangements in place in advance of recent geopolitical developments, covering approximately 80% of forecast fuel usage and 100% of electricity usage which cover the full FY27 trading period.The company, which sells electronic goods such as fridges as well as laptops and PCs, added that its profit is on track to be at the “top end” of its £45-50m guided range for its year ended in March.Its shares are up by about 7% in early trading.
Closer to home this morning, the student landlord Unite has told investors that it is “well protected” from energy price increases triggered by the war in Iran.The company said in a trading statement:double quotation markOur hedging strategy for utility costs means we are well protected in the near-term from the impact of recent increases in energy prices following the onset of the conflict in Iran.The accommodation provider has also maintained its guidance for occupancy and rental growth, at the lower end of their respective ranges for the 2026/27 academic year.About 74% of Unite’s beds have been reserved for the 2026/27 academic year, compared with a rate of 76% in the year prior.Oli Creasey, head of property research at Quilter Cheviot, says:double quotation markThe company’s portfolio reservation rate for the upcoming academic year is behind the rate observed this time last year, despite last year itself being slow historically.
The company is also continuing to guide to the low end of provided ranges for occupancy and rental growth in the coming year.Also of note is that management is accelerating the rate of disposals of assets as the company looks to shrink the portfolio and focus on the cities with the best opportunities.The ongoing disposal programme is going as planned, but Goldman Sachs has been appointed as an adviser to propose ways that disposals could go further or faster than previous expectations.What exactly this will look like remains to be seen, but the acceleration theme suggests it could be potentially transformative for the portfolio.Asian stock markets rose overnight, with Japan’s Nikkei index and China’s CSI300 index both up by about 1.
8%.The South Korean Kospi rose 1.5%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng nudged up 0.5%.Mohit Kumar, of the broker Jefferies, notes that markets “want to rally”.
double quotation markWe do acknowledge that the ceasefire is fragile and risks of a short term escalation to gain an upper hand in negotiations remain.But the view that is that any dips would be a buying opportunity.We are still keeping the risk profile low given the potential for near term volatility.Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.There has been another small rise in the oil price this morning, as doubt lingers around the US-Iran ceasefire deal.
Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, has ticked up 0.6% to $96.45 a barrel, having plunged by more than 10% earlier in the week to below $100 a barrel after news of the agreement first emerged.But the fragility of the deal is testing investor nerves.US president Donald Trump has warned Iran that charging fees for passage through the strait of Hormuz, the key shipping channel through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply normally passes, is “not the agreement we have”.
He wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social:double quotation markThere are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!A few hours later he wrote:double quotation markIran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz,That is not the agreement we have!However, the president has also told reporters that he was “very optimistic” a peace deal was within reach and that he had asked Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull back on strikes in Lebanon,He told NBC News:double quotation markI spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it,I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key,Meanwhile, the impact of the war in Iran is spreading across the global supply chain: China has recorded its first year-on-year increase in factory gate prices since 2022.
The producer prise index rose 0.5% in March year-on-year, compared with a drop of 0.9% in February.The last time Chinese producer inflation was positive was in September 2022.Kelvin Lam, a senior economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, explains:double quotation markIndustries that are more tied to energy as an input, or with intermediate inputs that have a high energy content, are witnessing higher factory gate prices despite soft domestic demand and the ongoing slump in the property sector.
Earlier industrial profit data point in the same direction, with energy-intensive and metal industries seeing moderate improvements in margins, suggesting modest pass-through to end users.According to the NBS, oil and gas extraction PPI rose 15.8% m/m in March, while petroleum and coal processing PPI increased by 5.8%.Chemical products PPI rose 3.
6%, while non-ferrous metal processing eased to 1.0% from 3.6% in February.Consumer prices however rose 1% year-on-year in March, which marked a deceleration against an annual rate of 1.3% in February.
The agenda1.30pm BST: US CPI inflation rate and real earnings data for March3pm BST: US factory orders3pm BST: University of Michigan’s US consumer sentiment index
British computer scientist denies he is bitcoin developer Satoshi Nakamoto
A British computer scientist has insisted he is not the elusive developer of bitcoin, after a report claimed to unmask him as its creator.A story in the New York Times details a years-long effort to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious author of the bitcoin white paper which laid the theoretical foundations for modern digital currencies.It names Adam Back, a London-born computer scientist and entrepreneur. In a thread on X, Back promptly denied being the mysterious – and presumably ultra-wealthy – technologist.“I also don’t know who satoshi is, and i think it is good for bitcoin that this is the case, as it helps bitcoin be viewed [as] a new asset class, the mathematically scarce digital commodity,” he wrote
Britons warned about Russian hackers targeting internet routers for espionage
Russian hackers are exploiting commonly sold internet routers to harvest information for espionage purposes, the UK’s cybersecurity agency has said.The hack could allow attackers to obtain users’ credentials, redirect them to fake sites, and potentially access other devices on their home network such as phones and PCs, said Alan Woodward, a professor at the University of Surrey.The National Cyber Security Centre said on Tuesday the operations were “believed to be opportunistic in nature, with the actor targeting a wide pool of victims and then likely filtering down for users of potential intelligence value at each stage of the exploitation chain”.It follows a common pattern of cyber-actors targeting edge devices – hardware such as internet routers or internet-connected security cameras – that act as a bridge between users and the cloud.Woodward said: “It’s not the first time that warnings have come out about routers
The life-changing magic of wearing smartglasses | Letters
I read with sympathy the concerns of Elle Hunt in relation to privacy issues around Meta smartglasses (I wore Meta’s smartglasses for a month – and it left me feeling like a creep, 1 April). Clearly there needs to be ongoing development of technology and protocols that protect the public from ill-intentioned users. As the chief executive of a charity supporting people with a visual impairment, however, I would like to emphasise the point touched upon in your article: how transformative this technology is already proving for blind people.We are seeing significant numbers of our visually impaired staff and clients using Meta glasses in conjunction with their mobile phones to improve their ability to perform ordinary functions that most of us take for granted. A visual impairment can be disempowering and isolating
Tell us: do you use AI chatbots to make decisions for you?
AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are now a part of everyday life.More and more people are using them to help make decisions in their lives, like sending text messages, deciding what to cook, or navigating relationships.We want to hear about your experiences of using chatbots. Are you addicted to them? And what type of decisions are you using them for?You can tell us your experiences of using chatbots using this form.Please include as much detail as possible
An AI company with an arsenal of spacecraft: what exactly is SpaceX?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you as I listen to George Handel’s Messiah for Easter.SpaceX filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the US stock market last week at a reportedly astronomical valuation. My colleague Nick Robins-Early reports:Elon Musk’s company, which has become a dominant power in both space travel and satellite communications, could seek a valuation upwards of $1.75tn
Porn, dog poo and social media snaps: the ‘taskers’ scraping the internet for AI firm part-owned by Meta
Tens of thousands of people have been paid by a company part-owned by Meta to train AI by combing Instagram accounts, harvesting copyrighted work and transcribing pornographic soundtracks, the Guardian can reveal.Scale AI, 49%-controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, has recruited experts across fields such as medicine, physics and economics – putatively to refine top-level artificial intelligence systems through a platform called Outlier. “Become the expert that AI learns from,” it says on its site, advertising flexible work for people with strong credentials.However, workers for the platform said they have become involved in scraping an array of other people’s personal data – in what they described as a morally uncomfortable exercise that diverged significantly from refining high-level systems.Outlier is managed by Scale AI, which has contracts with the Pentagon and US defense companies
The daughters of Dominican immigrants achieved the American dream. They’re bringing sweet chocolate success back to the homeland
‘Mental breakdown’: oil tanker workers stuck in Gulf for six weeks are reaching their limit
Amazon upsets ebook lovers by ending support for old Kindle devices
OpenAI shelves Stargate UK in blow to Britain’s AI ambitions
Rory McIlroy holds share of Masters lead after flying start to his title defence
McIlroy attacks Augusta as champion with big grin and hell of a swing | Andy Bull