Markets are trading strongly this week on hopes the Iran war might soon be coming to an end. A fragile ceasefire has held despite peace talks collapsing, but President Trump overnight suggested conversations could resume this week.
Investors are ready to hear some good news—in fact, some economists are worried that they’re so keen to hear about an end to the war they will trade on optimism rather than concrete facts. Tickers across Asia are up this morning; S&P futures are hovering in hopeful territory; and markets in Europe are relatively flat (perhaps less inclined to trade on the promises of the White House).
Ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning, the S&P 500 closed “just shy of a record high,” Deutsche Bank’s Henry Allen told clients this morning. This means the index is now up 9.8% over the past 10 sessions, he added: “For reference, that’s now even faster than the bounce-back after Liberation Day last year, and we haven’t seen a run of gains that quick over 10 sessions since the post-COVID bounce-back in April 2020.”
For markets, the sooner the peace talks are finished, the better. That’s when the real test begins. The consternation about Iran, after all, stems from its hold over global oil and energy supplies. Oil prices have increased because Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf through which exports from the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq all flow. Some 20 million barrels of oil typically flowed through the strait every day, about 20% of global supply. Between a U.S. blockade of the strait and threats from Iran that it has mined the area, ship captains have been unable to enter the waterway, choking off supply and sending prices spiraling.
Prices have spiked in turn. U.S. energy commodities rose 21.3% in the latest consumer price index report, up 19.4% over the past 12 months—the majority from gasoline prices, which consumers can see clearly on every gas station forecourt.
Despite the headwinds, investors have behaved unusually in Trump’s second term, with volatility now an accepted part of the day-to-day.
“It’s an interesting thought exercise to go through the last 15 months of market history,” Jack Manley, a global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told Fortune in an exclusive interview earlier this month. Speaking ahead of the agreed ceasefire with Iran, and subsequent breakdown in talks, Manley noted the market has had to navigate Liberation Day; the longest government shutdown in U.S. history; 100% reciprocal tariffs on China; dropping bombs on Iran at the end of last year; regime change in Venezuela; threats to Greenland; the Japanese government bond market implosion; the Citrini Research report; AI software stocks; precious metals; and private credit. “And all of that is just in what, 14 months?” Manley said.
“In every instance when you’ve had a headline like this, you’ve gotten a jolt, and the market’s been off two or five or 10 or 15, almost 20% in a relatively contained period of time; it has demonstrated its resilience, which we’ve seen for a very long time, and bounced back.”
Investor behavior
Speaking only a matter of weeks ago, Manley’s comments came at a time when oil prices were surging as Trump vowed to continue hitting Iran. But the uncertainty of that week, followed by a near-record rally a short time later, underscores the rapid fluctuations investors and analysts are wading through.
The volatility arising from the Iran conflict is just another “notch on the belt” for investors, Manley said, adding to an embedded sentiment of “This too shall pass.”
“It’s very, very easy to pull the plug when it feels like things are falling apart; it is almost impossible to figure out where the actual bottom is,” Manley said. “You speak to investors, and they can be professional investors like our clients, they can be amateur investors like my buddies, and the answer is always the same. It’s like, ‘We’re down this much, but we should be down more.’ Anything you see between now and the mythical point that you think we’re heading to is just noise.”
And while few people would presume to predict the wills of the world’s governments and regimes, Manley highlighted what many on Wall Street are aware of: The Iranian conflict is not popular in D.C. It’s not hugely popular with the public either: A report from Pew Research last month found six in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran.
There could be space for the rally to spin even further if a reduction in oil prices is evidenced by a de-escalation, before markets return to the issues they were wrangling with before the conflict. Manley added: “I don’t think this is going to last very long. It might, I don’t know, but I know it’s going to end at some point. I know energy prices will move lower, and I know stocks are going to go back to focus again on the other big existential questions that they were asking before all this stuff kicked off, and I think you can maintain a risk-on bias even against this haziness by kind of seeing through all the [volatility].”
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