The first rule of buses is something we're all familiar with: you wait ages for one, only to have two come along at once.

Stock markets have waited a long time to shift focus from the artificial intelligence trade, which dominated headlines since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, and they're now faced with a growing list of concerns that threaten the market's monthslong resilience.

Oil prices powered higher again last night, despite the International Energy Agency's plan to release around 400 million barrels of strategic crude reserves, which should have typically taken the heat out of the market. It was a response to the U.S. war with Iran spreading wider through the Persian Gulf region.

On the home front, Morgan Stanley added to worries in the $2 trillion world of private credit as it limited redemptions to a key fund. The bank said it wanted to avoid selling assets in "periods of market dislocation."

Bond markets are also pricing in a much longer time frame for both the inflationary effects of the war and its likely impact on growth forecasts for the world's biggest economy.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields hit the highest levels in more than a month overnight, and traders are swiftly paring bets on a Federal Reserve rate cut later in the spring.

Still, with all the arriving stresses, the stock market's levees haven't broken as yet, and U.S. benchmarks continue to trade within a few percentage points of both their January highs and their late October levels.

But with oil returning to the $100 precipice, private credit markets beset by liquidity concerns, and bond investors back on inflation watch, it may not be long before the metaphorical dams start leaking.

Whether they burst or not is likely to depend on how policy makers, many of whom aren't willing to admit there's a problem in the first place, ultimately respond.

-- Martin Baccardax

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Oil Prices Rise Amid Complex Task to Unblock the Strait

Unblocking the Strait of Hormuz is shaping up as a remarkably complex task, but that is top of mind for the Trump administration as it battles affordability issues. Oil prices continued to rise even after 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency agreed to release 400 million from reserves.

   -- The fate of the global oil markets and the economy rests on whether ships 
      can traverse the 22-mile-wide waterway from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf 
      of Oman. It's been effectively shut down since the U.S. and Israel 
      attacked Iran with no clear plan for making it open again. 
 
   -- Commercial ships near the strait have reported being hit by projectiles, 
      and Iran has been placing mines in the strait, according to reports. The 
      disruptions have removed 20 million barrels of daily oil supplies off the 
      market, sending prices 30% higher, with analysts giving worst-case 
      estimates for $150 a barrel oil. 
 
   -- Reopening the strait is such a complex task that even a force with 
      overwhelming power like the U.S. has no easy solution, and could be stuck 
      cobbling one together for weeks or months. A Wall Street Journal report 
      said officials believed Iran had placed fewer than 10 mines in recent 
      days. 
 
   -- Iran doesn't need large attack ships to scare commercial vessels away 
      from the region. Its weapons include mines, fast attack boats, missiles, 
      and drones. Layered on top of each other, they become exceptionally 
      difficult to remove, said Jonathan Schroden, chief research officer at 
      the nonprofit Center for Naval Analyses. 

What's Next: President Donald Trump has said that the U.S. could send naval ships to escort tankers through the strait. Several days after announcing a $20 billion backstop aimed at encouraging private insurers to underwrite ships there Chubb has signed up to be the lead insurer for the program.

-- Avi Salzman and Anita Hamilton

February Inflation Report Won't Help Fed's Next Decision

February's inflation reading proved relatively stable, matching January's annual pace and coming in a tad lower than economists expected, but that likely won't be of much help to Federal Reserve officials because the war in Iran threatens to drive energy and other prices even higher.

   -- The consumer price index rose 2.4% last month from a year earlier. 
      Stripping out more volatile food and energy prices, inflation measured 
      2.5% in February. Economists are already moving on from the data as this 
      week's shock to oil prices overshadows the report. 
 
   -- Markets expect Fed officials will keep interest rates steady at their 
      meeting next week. What comes after that, however, is less clear. 
      February's report reflects what happened before the Iran war. There is 
      likely to be stronger headline inflation in March, says Bernard Yaros, 
      lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. 
 
   -- Wednesday's CPI data also point to a firmer print for the personal 
      consumption expenditures index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Citi 
      and Bank of America economists estimate that core PCE inflation rose 0.4% 
      in February from January, up from around 0.3% before the release of the 
      CPI data. 
 
   -- The war could push up grocery prices, which rose 2.4% in February from a 
      year ago. About 25% to 30% of global fertilizer exports move through the 
      Strait of Hormuz, RSM's chief economist Joe Brusuelas notes. And its 
      spring planting time in the Northern Hemisphere. 

What's Next: February's PCE reading won't be released until April 9. Markets will first get January's PCE inflation data on Friday. Economists are calling for a 2.9% increase in both core and headline PCE inflation on an annual basis.

-- Megan Leonhardt and Janet H. Cho

Kevin Warsh's Fed Nomination Is Stuck. What Happens Next.

President Donald Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve has landed in the Senate. What happens next is less clear.

   -- Warsh, a former Fed governor, is expected to face a tough confirmation 
      process even with Republicans controlling the chamber. The immediate 
      obstacle isn't opposition to Warsh himself. Instead, it's an 
      investigation into current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which has created a 
      standoff inside the Senate Banking Committee. 
 
   -- Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican on the panel, has said 
      he wouldn't support moving any Fed nominations forward until the Justice 
      Department resolves its probe into Powell. The investigation centers on 
      Powell's testimony to Congress last year about cost overruns tied to 
      renovations at the Fed's Washington headquarters. 
 
   -- Republicans hold a narrow majority on the panel, but without Tillis they 
      likely don't have the votes to move the nomination forward. 
 
   -- Before reaching the Senate floor, Warsh must first clear the Banking 
      Committee. That means the fate of the investigation into Powell could 
      determine the pace of Warsh's confirmation. 

What's Next: If the investigation drags on, lawmakers may face a choice between moving ahead despite the dispute, or risking a scenario in which Powell's term expires without a Senate-approved replacement. Powell's term as Fed chair ends on May 15.

-- Nicole Goodkind and Alex Kozul-Wright

Berkshire's Deal for OxyChem Looks Like a Winner for CEO

Berkshire Hathaway's $9.7 billion cash purchase of Occidental Petroleum's chemical business is looking like a win for CEO Greg Abel, who played a key role in the transaction before taking the helm. The OxyChem deal, reached in October and completed in January, occurred because Occidental Petroleum wanted to cut debt.

   -- A report by the FT described Abel as the transaction's mastermind. 
      Berkshire paid a reasonable price for the business based on what could 
      have been trough earnings in 2025 with profit upside from a capital 
      spending plan by Occidental. Occidental retained $1.7 billion of 
      environmental liabilities. 
 
   -- The purchase price amounted to about eight times 2025 earnings before 
      interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. U.S.-oriented chemicals 
      companies are benefiting from advantaged pricing on feedstocks like 
      natural gas amid international energy dislocations caused by the Middle 
      East conflict. 
 
   -- Barron's estimates that Berkshire probably has a 30%-plus gain in the 
      value of OxyChem, or more than $3 billion, since the deal closed. OxyChem 
      operates 23 manufacturing plants almost entirely in the U.S. and is a 
      leading producer of caustic potash, chlor-alkali and polyvinyl chloride. 
 
   -- Occidental used the after-tax proceeds to cut its debt to below $15 
      billion, reduce interest expense and allow it to reallocate capital to 
      high-return projects in its core oil and gas business. JP Morgan analyst 
      Arun Jayaram has written about Occidental's rationale, citing concern 
      about growth in Chinese chemical capacity. 

What's Next: Lukasz Thieme, a financial planner and partner at Waypoint Financial, wrote on Substack that Berkshire will benefit from a $1 billion upgrade to an OxyChem plant in Texas due to be completed this year that could add $300 million to annual Ebitda off an estimated 2025 base of $1.2 billion of Ebitda.

-- Andrew Bary

Nvidia Invests $2 Billion in Nebius Amid Surging AI Demand

Cloud-computing company Nebius is getting a $2 billion investment from AI chip maker Nvidia that will enable Nebius to deploy more than five gigawatts of computing capacity by the end of 2030. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it was another instance of working with a company to meet surging global demand.

   -- Nebius, one of a number of smaller cloud-computing companies called 
      "neoclouds" that provide capacity for artificial intelligence. It had a 
      market value of just over $24 billion as of Tuesday's close. 
 
   -- The market is still digesting Oracle's news that it has secured more than 
      10 gigawatts of power and data center capacity, expected to come online 
      over the next three years. Oracle has a roughly $300 billion 
      cloud-computing contract with ChatGPT-developer OpenAI. 
 
   -- Amsterdam-based Nebius, spun out from Russian technology group Yandex's 
      international operations, secured a major win in September when Microsoft 
      agreed to buy $17.4 billion of capacity over five years. Meta Platforms 
      followed with its own $3 billion contract. 
 
   -- Nebius has said it is on track to reach between 800 megawatts and one 
      gigawatt of connected power by the end of 2026, with more than three 
      gigawatts of contracted power. It expects to end the year with annual 
      recurring revenue of $7 billion to $9 billion. 

What's Next: Barron's has argued that Nvidia's investments in companies that buy or rent its hardware could be a smart use of its surplus cash, making it less reliant on a few big chip customers and locking in demand for future generations of its AI processors.

-- Adam Clark and Janet H. Cho

-- Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Patrick O'Donnell, Rupert Steiner

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 12, 2026 06:26 ET (10:26 GMT)

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