Morning Brief: Chicago Fed's Goolsbee 'nervous' about impact of oil shock on economy

👋 Good morning! Another Iran-led day in markets as the US bombed Iran's key oil hub on Kharg Island, sending oil prices (CL=F) up once again to around $114.

The stock market, with President Trump's threat to Iran that a "whole civilization will die tonight" at top of mind, still managed to eke out gains as hope remained on Tuesday of a diplomatic resolution.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq (^IXIC) gained 0.1% as the Dow (^DJI) fell 0.2%.

Since the close, the president and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, which includes opening the Strait of Hormuz.

On the agenda this morning:

🛢️ The "s" word is back

🤖 The AI industry knows it has a massive image problem

🔐 Anthropic launches cybersecurity partnership with tech giants

🗣️ What if the "Magnificent Seven" are cheap?

⛽️ Gas prices are hitting households hard

🌎 One really, really cool thing

📆 What we're watching Wednesday: Oil prices cratered immediately following Trump's announcement, and stock market futures jumped on the news on Tuesday night. But the market will paint a fuller picture of its thoughts in today's prices.

The first quarter earnings season kicks off with results from Delta (DAL) primed to give a look at how the oil shock will affect the sector — and prices into the busy summer season.

We'll also get results from Constellation Brands (STZ) and the Fed's minutes from the March meeting, sure to be interesting amid inflation and Iran.

📉 US stock buyers are uniquely vulnerable to Iran war. The recent past has seen investors pour money into stocks, double the share before the last big oil shock.

👟Why the Nike stock sell-off hasn't crossed the finish line yet. One analyst said the "turnaround premium" is "likely to fade."

📊 4 charts Wall Street is watching as Iran war rages on. The political quotient is very much in play.

💰 The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is now at 50-year lows. Here's the biggest problem.

🚀 How to buy SpaceX before the IPO. It's possible, but there are caveats.

📱 Apple's iPhone 17 outpaces iPhone 16 as sales surge. Still, revenue is estimated to be below the firm's projections.

🏥 UnitedHealth and other insurer stocks jump after Medicare agrees to lift payments next year. The larger-than-expected bump of 2.5% amounts to around $13 billion.

📱 Apple's foldable iPhone faces engineering snags and potential shipment delays, Nikkei Asia reports. Would you use a folding iPhone?

🎶 Universal Music stock soars as Bill Ackman plans $64 billion acquisition. Not only that, but he wants to bring it to the NYSE.

🚗 Used car prices hit highest levels since 2023 and could push higher. Inventory is shrinking as people go used.

The "s" word has made a reappearance.

Before the inflationary pressures of Trump's tariffs made their way through the economy, the Iran war complicated the picture, introducing the prospect of stagflation.

Chicago Federal Reserve Bank president Austan Goolsbee said Tuesday he's concerned the oil disruption could push prices up in a "stagflationary way."

"My concern at this immediate time is that we've got to get our heads around an oil shock, which is going to drive up prices in a stagflationary way, potentially before the other one has gone away," Goolsbee said Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club.

He likened the current scenario to 2022, when the supply disruptions of the COVID pandemic were still winding through, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, sending oil prices higher.

"So, how persistent this is going to be, I think, is going to have a major impact on how you view the economy," he said. "I'm cautious-slash-nervous about it in the moment."

Read more.

While the AI transformation is built on the hopes of augmented productivity, the expected downside that comes with it is job displacement on a massive scale.

Corporate profits will swell and stocks will appreciate, but many people who work at US companies will be thrown off the payroll. Or, as attrition does its work, find themselves drifting through un- or underemployment.

The industry knows just how big a problem this could become.

To temper the fallout from the technological tidal wave, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is proposing a slew of policy proposals — a fresh industrial policy agenda, a rebalanced tax base skewed toward capital-based revenues, and expanded access to healthcare and retirement benefits.

Enacting such proposals will be no small feat. The idea of revamping the social safety net and targeting wealth and corporate profits seems far-fetched in a political environment defined by dysfunction. But that may hinge on how inevitable businesses, investors, and voters believe the AI-driven economy to be.

And as far as OpenAI and its AI peers are concerned, it's the industry's job to convince the world of that inevitability.

As OpenAI acknowledges, the coming technological upheaval poses a challenge to households and the governments that rely on tax income from the labor pool.

"As AI reshapes work and production, the composition of economic activity may shift — expanding corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes," the company said.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is thinking about this too.

In his annual letter to shareholders, published Monday, the veteran CEO pitched his own version of an assistance program: "We do believe that business and government can do many things to properly incent retraining, income assistance, reskilling, early retirement and relocation for those whose job might be adversely impacted by AI."

One of his proposals is to double the Earned Income Tax Credit and use the tax code to lift families at the bottom of the economic ladder.

That money will matter. Just think about what powers the economy and what has kept endless recession predictions from being realized. Taking people's income without replacing it would be a recipe for cratering consumer spending and tanking the economy.

Read the rest here.

With the rise of AI comes the rise of AI-powered cyberattacks. Anthropic on Tuesday announced a cybersecurity partnership with Big Tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft to help defend against the new kind of cyberthreat.

Dubbed Project Glasswing, the project uses Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview, a frontier model accessible to only a few dozen companies.

The model is off to a promising start. Anthropic said it has already identified thousands of previously unknown software vulnerabilities. And it has detected flaws in every major operating system and web browser.

Anthropic does not intend to provide Claude Mythos Preview to a broader user base. Although the AI lab is in discussions with the US government to use the model, despite Anthropic's spat with the Pentagon over AI restrictions.

Read more. 

"The underperformance of the technology sector is also starting to generate attractive valuation opportunities for investors as its valuation, relative to expected consensus growth, has fallen below that of the global aggregate market."

—Goldman Sachs strategist Peter Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer and others are noting that the "Magnificent Seven" and other Big Tech stocks are suddenly looking "cheap." On the one hand, there is good reason for these valuations. But on the other hand, the large differences between their current valuations and where they were are starting to grab some attention — in a positive way.

The New York Fed's March consumer survery provided another data point stating the obvious: Gas prices above $4 per gallon are hurting budgets.

Consumer morale is souring, near-term inflation expectations rose, and anxiety and malaise about the current outlook were present throughout the survey, similar to what we saw in the University of Michigan's.

Of course, what people say and do are two completely different things, a lesson the "vibe-cession" underscored in the recent past.

As earnings season kicks off, we'll be on the lookout for this showing up in corporate results.

Read more.

Artemis II sent back some photos from the dark side of the moon. Check them out here.

Space is hot again, folks!

Economic data: MBA mortgage applications, week ended Apr. 3 (-10.4% previously); FOMC meeting minutes, meeting ended Mar. 18

Earnings calendar: Delta Air Lines (DAL), Constellation Brands (STZ), RPM International (RPM), Applied Digital (APLD), PriceSmart (PSMT)

Economic data: Personal income, February (+0.3% expected, +0.4% previously); Personal spending, February (+0.5% expected, +0.4% previously); PCE price index, month-on-month, February (+0.4% expected, +0.3% previously); PCE price index, year-on-year, February (+2.8% expected, +2.8% previously); Core PCE price index, month-on-month, February (+0.4% expected, +0.4% previously); Core PCE price index, year-on-year, February (+3% expected, +3.1% previously); Initial jobless claims, week ended Apr. 4 (+210,000 expected, +202,000 previously); Continuing claims, week ended Mar. 28 (+1.841 million previously); GDP annualized, quarter-on-quarter, fourth quarter (+0.7% expected, +0.7% previously)

Earnings calendar: WD-40 Company (WDFC), Neogen Corporation (NEOG), BlackBerry, (BB) The Simply Good Foods Company (SMPL)

Friday

Economic data: CPI, month-on-month, March (+1% expected, +0.3% previously); Core CPI, month-on-month, March (+0.3% expected, +0.2% previously); CPI, year-on-year, March (+3.4% expected, +2.4% previously); Core CPI, year-on-year, March (+2.7% expected, +2.5% previously); Real average hourly earnings, year-on-year, March (+1.3% previously); Real average weekly earnings, year-on-year, March (+1.6% previously); Factory orders, February (-0.2% expected, +0.1% previously); University of Michigan sentiment, April preliminary reading (52 expected, 53.3 previously); U. Mich. current conditions, April preliminary reading (55.8 previously); U. Mich. expectations, April preliminary reading (51.7 previously); U. Mich. 1-year inflation, April preliminary reading (+3.8% previously); U. Mich. 5-10year inflation, April preliminary reading (+3.2% previously); Durable goods orders, February final reading (+0.0% previously)

Earnings calendar: Lotus Technology (LOT)

Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on X @hshaban.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a Senior Editor at Yahoo Finance, running newsletters. Follow him on X @ewolffmann.

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