Wall Street treads cautiously ahead of Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline for Tehran, while weak services data and private credit jitters add to investor unease.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. stock futures drifted lower on Tuesday as investors kept a close eye on the approaching deadline set by President Donald Trump for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a flashpoint that has kept global markets on edge for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Futures Point to a Cautious Open<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n By 06:33 ET, Dow futures were broadly flat, S&P 500 futures had slipped 6 points, or 0.1%, and Nasdaq 100 futures edged down 43 points, or 0.2%. The moves came after all three major Wall Street indices closed higher in the prior session, as traders found some comfort in early diplomatic signals from the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weak Services Data Adds to Growth Concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the geopolitical noise, a fresh set of economic data offered little reassurance. U.S. services sector activity expanded at a slower-than-expected pace in March \u2014 a period overlapping with much of the ongoing conflict \u2014 while employment in the sector contracted outright. Prices paid, a closely watched inflation gauge, jumped to their highest level since October 2022, underscoring concerns that elevated energy costs are beginning to filter through to the broader economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Private Credit Markets Under Strain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anxiety also lingered around the $1.8 trillion private credit market. Shares of Blue Owl Capital, which has emerged as a bellwether for stress in the sector, tumbled to an all-time closing low after the firm announced it would restrict redemptions from two of its funds in response to a surge in withdrawal requests \u2014 a development that rattled confidence in an already fragile corner of financial markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oil Holds Firm Near $110<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Crude prices remained stubbornly elevated, with shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz still barely moving. Brent crude futures rose 0.4% to $110.11 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate climbed 1.3% to $113.82 \u2014 both well above the roughly $70 per barrel seen before hostilities began. The strait, through which approximately one-fifth of global oil supply flows, has been effectively closed to tanker traffic for weeks, squeezing supplies to energy-hungry economies across Asia and Europe alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump reiterated at a Monday press conference that any ceasefire agreement must explicitly include Iran’s commitment to reopen the waterway, vowing to strike bridges and power plants across the country should Tehran miss his 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline. The president nonetheless left room for diplomacy, suggesting Iran “would like to make a deal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Broadcom Jumps on Major Google AI Partnership<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all the headlines were defined by conflict. Shares of Broadcom rose in premarket trading after the chipmaker announced a long-term agreement with Google to develop and support custom next-generation artificial intelligence processors. The deal also includes the supply of networking components for Google’s AI infrastructure racks through 2031. In a separate but related development, Broadcom will provide AI startup Anthropic with access to approximately 3.5 gigawatts of AI computing capacity drawing on Google’s processors, starting next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analysts at Vital Knowledge told clients the agreements signal meaningful upside to Broadcom’s prior guidance of more than $100 billion in AI revenue by 2027 \u2014 a figure that now looks increasingly conservative given the scale of the commitments unveiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Trump’s deadline hours away and diplomatic channels still open, Wall Street’s next move may hinge as much on events in Tehran as on anything happening on the trading floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wall Street treads cautiously ahead of Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline for Tehran, while weak services data and private credit jitters add to investor unease. U.S. stock futures drifted lower on Tuesday as investors kept a close eye on the approaching deadline set by President Donald Trump for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":82387,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6827,49,37,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-daily-economic-reports","category-economic-reports","category-forex-markets","category-market-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125428,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125427\/revisions\/125428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}