Good morning. Andrew here. The price of oil is headed up again as the U.S. appears to be getting closer to putting boots on the ground. Anxiety is also up about private credit amid a new report that firms are more exposed to slumping software companies than previously disclosed. And the value of this guy just went up: Congrats to UConn’s Braylon Mullins on his game-winning three-pointer over Duke that everyone is still talking about. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Oil climbs amid the fog of warEnergy prices are surging again as the war in the Middle East enters a second month, with no apparent end in sight. Market pros are issuing increasingly pessimistic forecasts. That comes as President Trump sends mixed messages about possible negotiations to end the fighting, particularly as the U.S. sends more troops to the region. The latest:
Investors are bracing for a lengthy war. Trump told journalists yesterday that a deal could come “soon.” But he also told The Financial Times that he would like to “take the oil in Iran,” musing about seizing Kharg island, Iran’s key export hub. Adding more confusion, Trump said Iran had agreed to allow 20 oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but it was unclear where they might be headed. The president is also said to be weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of Iran’s uranium, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report comes as several hundred U.S. Special Operations forces were said to have arrived in the Middle East. The fighting is continuing to spread. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed militia in Yemen, entered the war over the weekend by firing a missile at Israel. Oil analysts are closely watching to see if the Houthis begin disrupting shipments in the Red Sea — an increasingly vital waterway for Saudi oil exports — as they did in 2023 and 2024 during the war in Gaza. A wider war could have worldwide repercussions. BlackRock’s Larry Fink warned last week that oil hitting $150 a barrel, and staying there, could put the global economy into recession. That’s not the base case for many economists, at least for the U.S. But some, including those at Goldman Sachs, are beginning to raise the odds for an economic slowdown.
Apollo Global Management weighs a southern state for its second headquarters. The investment giant is considering picking Texas or Florida for its next big hub, which is expected to account for a majority of its future hires, the firm told The Financial Times. Apollo would be the latest financial giant to pursue expansion in the Sun Belt, but most other firms to date have maintained the New York City area as the focal point of their businesses. A new political group prepares a costly push to promote President Trump’s A.I. agenda. The organization, Innovation Council Action, said it expected to spend at least $100 million this year on initiatives including efforts by the White House to stymie state regulations on artificial intelligence. The effort comes despite Americans suggesting in polls that they were wary of several aspects of the A.I. boom, including potential job losses and the proliferation of data centers. Mistral, a French A.I. start-up, raises $830 million in debt financing. The move is meant to help Mistral build data centers across Europe. The start-up, which has become the continent’s biggest homegrown A.I. champion with a valuation of nearly €12 billion (about $13.8 billion), has sought to capitalize on European wariness of American technology companies in the Trump era.
Protecting Main Street from private credit’s troublesWall Street’s worries about private credit show few signs of abating. In fact, new reports about the health of the industry may only compound investor anxiety. But concerns are growing at a time when the Trump administration may allow individual Americans to add private credit and other so-called alternative assets to their retirement funds, creating a potential political liability for policymakers in Washington. The hits keep coming for private credit. An analysis by The Wall Street Journal suggests that several big private credit funds — run by Blue Owl Capital, Blackstone, Ares Management and Apollo Global Management — are more exposed to software companies than they have disclosed. (Private credit funds have been hammered over questions about their exposure to software companies at risk of being disrupted by artificial intelligence.) From The Journal: The Blue Owl Credit Income Corp. fund had nearly twice as much exposure to software as it reported, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found, while the discrepancies for the other funds were smaller. On average, the four funds classified about 19% of their investments as software, while the Journal found their average software exposure to be about 25%. Private-credit funds provide an industry breakdown of their loans to companies each quarter. Software is the biggest category for most of them. Methodologies for categorizing loans vary. Ares said in a filing that it adheres to the independent Global Industry Classification Standard, while others use different methods. Remember that last week, funds run by Apollo and Ares limited investor requests to withdraw money from funds, while Moody’s downgraded a fund run by KKR. All eyes are on Washington. The Labor Department is expected to introduce as soon as this week a proposal that would let 401(k) plans — a roughly $12 trillion market — invest in higher-risk assets like private equity and private credit funds. The idea is that giving ordinary Americans access to alternative assets could bolster their investment returns for retirement, as part of a broader deregulation push by the Trump administration. But administration officials appear mindful of the political risks, particularly of potentially exposing Main Street investors to toxic Wall Street assets. Alluding to private credit in a speech in February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he didn’t want investors exposed to “something rotten.” Not everyone is panicking. Some investment firms — don’t call them “vulture funds” — are searching for bargains in the private credit sell-off, with one hedge fund executive telling The Financial Times, “This is the greatest opportunity I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” An antitrust win for the statesOne of the big debates that dominated the ABA Antitrust Spring Meeting, the annual gathering of antitrust leaders in Washington, last week is whether efforts by state attorneys general to stop deals cleared by the U.S. government will get traction, Lauren Hirsch reports. (The other: Has a Wall Street Journal profile of the competition lobbyist Mike Davis encouraged some companies to hire him — or scared them away?) States can point to one win they scored late Friday: A federal judge imposed a 14-day pause for Nexstar’s merger with its rival TV station owner Tegna, a week after Nexstar announced the deal’s closing. The Nexstar-Tegna deal has been caught up in political cross hairs. President Trump has thrown his support over the agreement, writing on social media in February that it would “help knock out the Fake News” and to “get that deal done!” Brendan Carr, the chair of the F.C.C., approved the deal this month, after waiving a cap on national station ownership. Carr’s approval came a day after California and New York participated in a lawsuit to block the measure. States have targeted other antitrust matters, including Paramount’s planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery and the unexpected settlement of the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Live Nation. But while state attorneys general have helped halt deals before, including Kroger’s takeover of Albertsons, challenging the federal government can be tough, given their more limited resources. The ruling in the Nexstar-Tegna case shows that even if states can’t block a deal, they can at least create uncertainty. That creates an interesting dynamic. Could companies offer significant enough concessions to avoid pressure from state attorneys general? (That tactic wasn’t used in the Live Nation settlement.) The Justice Department has begun to send out subpoenas to Paramount competitors to study the competitive impact of the Warner Bros. Discovery deal. Would the impression of a robust investigation, and perhaps even a mild remedy like some kind of behavioral decree, from the department reduce the prospects of a successful challenge from the states? Vinyl gets its groove backWe may be living in a digital world, but the old-school LP continues its remarkable comeback. And if the turntable trend holds, vinyl record sales in the U.S. could top $1 billion in 2026 for a second year in a row, Christine Zhang reports. Last year, U.S. vinyl revenue reached nearly $1.1 billion, the 19th straight year of growth for the format, according to the Recording Industry Association of America’s year-end report. That’s a small slice of the pie compared with streaming, and a far cry from vinyl’s heyday when adjusted for inflation. But vinyl continues its resurgence as the leading source of physical-media music sales.
A look at the top-selling vinyl records over time offers two takeaways. First, the scale of the market has expanded hugely. In 2015, the No. 1 record, Adele’s “25,” sold some 115,000 copies, according to the entertainment data provider Luminate. In 2025, Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” was No. 1, with more than 1.6 million copies sold.
The second takeaway will be familiar to superfans of all stripes: The emergence of vinyl as a collectible. The album “25” had just one primary vinyl edition in 2015, while “The Life of a Showgirl” released eight vinyl variants in its first week. Will vinyl’s comeback — whether driven by nostalgia, fandom or simply a desire to own physical things — continue? Early signs look promising. Sales so far this year are slightly higher than over the same period in 2025, according to Luminate. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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