The U.S. on Wednesday intercepted Iranian missile attacks in the Gulf and carried out strikes of its own, pushing up Brent crude more than 2% to around $98 per barrel.
Equity markets seemed to take little notice, at least in Asia, where tech-heavy indexes followed Wall Street's example on Wednesday to reach new record highs on the AI theme. Wall Street futures edged down before the bell, however, and European shares dipped in early trading.
Meantime, the yen flirted again with the important 160-per-dollar level as the fresh U.S.-Iran exchanges boosted the greenback. Japanese authorities have spent some $73 billion in yen-buying intervention recently to support the currency after it previously weakened past that point.
Earnings from Broadcom, due out after the bell, will top the tech diary on Wednesday. The chip designer is now a $2 trillion behemoth at the centre of the AI buildout.
IPO excitement continued as more details of SpaceX’s planned blockbuster listing emerged, with the company planning to fix its IPO price at $135 per share to raise a record-setting $75 billion, according to a Reuters exclusive.
Elsewhere, Microsoft claimed it had made a breakthrough in transformative quantum computing with a new quantum chip - redesigned using AI - that aims to make commercially viable quantum machines a possibility within three years.
In the macro world, a big week for jobs data kicked off on Tuesday with an unexpectedly large surge in April job openings. That questions notions of a softening labor market and will keep Fed hawks on watch. ADP’s private sector payrolls for May are due out later, ahead of Friday’s May employment report.
With that, onto today's column.
