Brent Below $100. Records Continue. The Jobs Report Decides.

Brent crude fell to $98.50 Thursday morning, its first move below $100 since February 28. WTI dropped toward $93 after Trump said talks with Iran had shown “very good progress” and Tehran confirmed it was evaluating the U.S. framework proposal.

The bond market rallied with oil.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.33%. The dollar hit a two-month low. Gold climbed above $4,750 as markets reduced expectations for further Fed tightening.

Equities stayed near records rather than accelerating higher.

S&P 500 futures gained 0.1%. Nasdaq futures rose 0.2%. Japan’s Nikkei crossed 62,000 for the first time as investors caught up with the global AI rally after the Golden Week holiday.

SoftBank surged 18% on its exposure to OpenAI and Arm(ARM).

Arm(ARM) itself delivered mixed signals. Revenue rose 20% year over year to $1.49 billion and adjusted EPS beat estimates, but shares fell 5% in premarket after management kept annual guidance unchanged because of supply chain uncertainty.

The Signal

Markets are pricing a world where the war ends and AI growth continues uninterrupted. Friday’s jobs report tests whether the macro economy can support both assumptions simultaneously.

Maersk(MAERSK) said the Iran war added roughly $473 million per month to fuel costs as bunker fuel surged from $600 to nearly $1,000 per metric ton.

The company beat profit estimates but warned that disruption will continue even if peace arrives soon. CEO Vincent Clerc said oil executives expect elevated energy costs for “several more months, possibly many more months.”

The airline industry is already absorbing the shock.

U.S. carriers spent $5.06 billion on jet fuel in March, up 56% from February and 30% above March 2025. Spirit Airlines collapsed while smaller budget carriers are seeking government support.

Domestic airfares rose 21% year over year to $570 in March.

Meanwhile, U.S. shale producers remain cautious despite high prices. Diamondback Energy(FANG), EOG Resources(EOG), and Chord Energy(CHRD) announced modest production increases totaling only 20,000 to 30,000 barrels per day.

That is insignificant against the roughly 13 million barrels per day disrupted by the Strait closure.

Energy Signal

Financial markets are pricing peace quickly. Shipping companies and energy producers are still preparing for months of disruption.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee warned that sustained energy costs risk creating supply chain disruptions similar to the COVID inflation cycle.

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said a rate hike is now a plausible scenario rather than a distant tail risk.

Both officials pointed toward energy-driven inflation persistence rather than temporary pressure.

The macro picture became more complicated after the ADP payrolls report came in stronger than expected ahead of Friday’s jobs data.

Consensus for nonfarm payrolls now sits near 62,000.

A print above 120,000 would strengthen the higher-for-longer rate case. A weak number below 40,000 would revive stagflation concerns.

One important bond market risk faded Wednesday.

The Treasury maintained its forward guidance language and did not signal larger long-term debt issuance, contrary to expectations from JPMorgan Chase(JPM) and Deutsche Bank(DB).

Macro Signal

The Fed’s center is moving toward inflation concern just as oil falls sharply. Friday’s jobs report decides whether growth or stagflation becomes the dominant narrative.

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Anthropic secured exclusive access to all compute capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. The deal adds more than 220,000 NVIDIA(NVDA) GPUs and 300 megawatts of compute capacity.

CEO Dario Amodei said Anthropic’s revenue expanded 80-fold in Q1 on an annualized basis, far above internal projections.

At the same time, Elon Musk’s planned Terafab facility in Texas is emerging as one of the largest AI manufacturing projects ever proposed.

Public filings show the first phase could cost at least $55 billion, with the full project reaching $119 billion. Intel(INTC) is expected to help co-design and manufacture chips for the facility.

The AI trade is also becoming geopolitical.

The European Union is considering rules that would restrict U.S. cloud providers from handling sensitive government data, creating the first major formal challenge to American cloud dominance.

Infrastructure spending continues spreading outward.

NVIDIA(NVDA) invested $500 million into Corning(GLW) to expand U.S. fiber-optic manufacturing capacity tenfold.

The AI buildout now includes chips, optics, cooling, glass, power systems, and heavy industry simultaneously.

Capital Signal

AI demand is no longer constrained to software and semiconductors. The infrastructure race is becoming industrial, sovereign, and geopolitical at the same time.

Spot bitcoin ETFs posted a fifth consecutive day of inflows Wednesday, bringing the five-day total to $1.69 billion. BlackRock’s IBIT led again with $134.6 million.

ETF demand remains the core support underneath the rally.

The White House also accelerated the crypto policy timeline.

Digital assets adviser Patrick Witt said the administration is targeting July 4 for passage of the Clarity Act, with Senate markup expected this month.

The remaining disagreement centers on conflict-of-interest provisions tied to elected officials.

Institutional adoption is also expanding into lending.

Eric Trump said JPMorgan Chase(JPM) is now allowing home mortgages backed by bitcoin holdings. The shift marks a move beyond ETFs into credit products tied directly to crypto collateral.

The tokenization market meanwhile reached $321 billion, though Pantera Capital argued most onchain assets are still wrappers around traditional systems rather than truly native blockchain finance.

The Verdict

Bitcoin is consolidating near $81,000 with ETF inflows still strong and the regulatory framework moving closer to completion. Institutional adoption is shifting from trading products toward credit and financial infrastructure.

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Brent below $100 changed the market narrative faster than any Fed statement could.

Oil is falling. Yields are falling. Stocks are holding records. Markets are behaving as though the war is ending.

But the physical system still tells a slower story.

Shipping costs remain elevated. Airlines are absorbing fuel shocks. Inventory rebuilding could take months even after peace.

That is why Friday’s jobs report matters so much.

A strong labor print validates the soft-landing narrative markets are pricing today. A weak print revives the stagflation fears that dominated the market only two weeks ago.

Coinbase Global and CoreWeave report after the close.

Both are direct reads on the two strongest themes driving markets right now: crypto adoption and AI infrastructure demand.