A commercial ship is seen off the coast of Dubai on April 20, 2026.
– | AFP | getty images
Hello, I am Hui Ji writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
In theory, the ceasefire is supposed to do one thing: stop hostilities. The variant emerging in the Middle East is testing that definition.
But shaky ceasefire or not, the market continues to rise, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq setting new records.
separately, cnbc’s convergence live The event has entered its second day in Singapore, with prominent participants including former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and SGX CEO Loh Boon Chye.
enjoy!
What you need to know today
The ceasefire is generally interpreted as a halt to all military action by the two warring parties.
However, those assumptions have been challenged in the case of the conflict in the Middle East. Is this really a ceasefire if Iran is firing on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, seizing them, while the US still continues the military blockade and targeting Iranian ships?
Mohammad Bagher GhalibafIran’s parliament speaker said, “It is impossible to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as long as the US blockade remains in place”.
One might say it’s a bit like Schrödinger’s Cat, where Armistice appears to be both dead and alive.
Oil prices jumped in response to the developments, with international benchmark Brent crude rising more than 3% to close at $101.91 a barrel on Wednesday, while US West Texas Intermediate futures rose more than 3% to close at $92.96 a barrel. Both were trading slightly higher early Thursday.
The US stock market ignored its struggle in the crisis as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hit new records amid a string of earnings reports. In Asia, South Korean and Japanese benchmark indexes hit record highs in early trading Thursday.
South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix on Thursday reported another quarter of record profit and revenue, as prices for its products continued to rise amid strong AI demand.
– Lim Hui Ji
And finally…
Kevin Warsh explains his favorite way to measure inflation. This may come back to bite him
Kevin Wersh, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve chairman, told lawmakers he would like the central bank to change its strategy for measuring inflation.
The Fed has long favored the core price index for personal consumption expenditures, known as core PCE for short, because it does not include volatile food and energy prices.
But Warsh wants to go a step further by removing extreme price shocks when calculating overall inflation.
“The measures I like are looking at things called trimmed averages,” Warsh said. “We remove all the terminal risks, all the one-time items, and we ask ourselves whether the generalized change in prices is having a second-order effect on the economy.”
– Alex Haring
