The FT’s oil story is the most market-moving item of the morning. Brent has dropped back below $72.48 a barrel, the level it traded at before the Iran conflict erupted in late February. Gulf flows are picking up and the war premium has essentially been priced out. For anyone still holding energy positions built on the assumption of a prolonged supply disruption, that thesis is now looking threadbare.

On Iran, there’s a related signal worth watching. Tehran has issued warnings against unauthorised crossings of the Strait of Hormuz, with Revolutionary Guard threats against tankers not clearing passage first. One tanker was reported hugging the western coast to avoid the main shipping lane. The ceasefire may be holding but Iran is clearly not done using the strait as leverage.

Trump has asked Congress for additional billions to fund the Iran campaign, but the request faces resistance from within the Republican Party. The internal friction matters more than the headline number — if the White House can’t hold its own caucus on war funding, it complicates the administration’s ability to sustain any further military posture in the Gulf.

On UK politics, Rachel Reeves has publicly backed Andy Burnham for the Labour leadership, despite reporting that Burnham would consider demoting her as Chancellor if he became PM. The endorsement is either a calculated hedge or a sign Reeves believes the succession is closer than the current Downing Street line suggests. Trump, asked for a reaction, called Burnham “the mayor of a town” and “extremely liberal” — which, given the audience Burnham is playing to, probably helps him more than it hurts.

Cerebras, the AI chipmaker that listed recently, saw its stock fall sharply after its first earnings report as a public company. The CEO said investors had misread the gross margin guidance for its core business, but the market wasn’t convinced. Separately, OpenAI and Broadcom have announced a chip designed specifically for large language model inference at scale. The silicon race is accelerating — every major AI lab is now moving to reduce dependence on Nvidia for inference workloads specifically.

On the chip export front, European pressure on Washington’s controls is building. ASML’s CEO has previously flagged that what China can currently access is older deep ultraviolet kit from roughly a decade ago — and proposed US legislation would now put even that off-limits. Brussels is pushing back. If the MATCH Act moves forward in its current form, expect a sharp diplomatic response from the EU.

The twin earthquakes in Venezuela — at least 32 dead, 700 injured, buildings collapsed in central Caracas — are a humanitarian story for now, but worth monitoring for energy market implications given Venezuela’s oil production infrastructure.

US PCE data for May is due Friday morning, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure. Given the recent repricing in rate expectations, any upside surprise will move markets.

Sources

Guardian, Al Jazeera, BBC News, The Economist, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Politico — 2026-06-25