WS #13414

The dominant market narrative remains the potential US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Treasury Secretary Bessent reiterating that a deal could be reached 'today or tomorrow' (multiple sources: CNBC, IANS, ET, GDELT). This has driven oil prices down sharply (Brent -5% to $79.57, WTI -5.8% to $75.98) and pushed US equities to record highs (S&P 500 +1.9%, Dow +1.9%, Nasdaq +2.7%). However, counter-signals persist: Iran denies direct talks with the US, insists on tolls, and has launched drone attacks on a US base in Kuwait. The deal structure reportedly involves ships entering via Iran's territorial waters and exiting via Oman, with no tolls, but Iran demands tolls and sanctions relief. This is a high-stakes negotiation with significant market impact. The AI infrastructure theme is also strong: Anthropic signed a $10B compute deal with Volta (Nvidia-backed), and Blackstone is exploring $36B in additional debt financing for Anthropic's use of Google TPUs, reinforcing the AI capex supercycle. SpaceX is partnering with Nvidia on 'Starmind' space datacenter satellites, and SpaceX stock surged +10% ahead of its first earnings report. Bezos filed to sell 15M Amazon shares (~$4.1B), a potential overhang on AMZN. Palantir surged 29% on blowout earnings, and Caterpillar hit record sales. The overall theme is ESCALATING in deal optimism but with significant caveats.