Early Look

Friday, June 13, 2025

Global stocks markets decline overnight after Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, sending U.S. futures lower and both gold and oil prices higher. Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, in a major escalation in the standoff over Tehran’s atomic program that risks sparking a new war in the Middle East. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is not involved in Israel’s attacks against Iran, while President Trump urged Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program, saying that there was still time for the country to prevent further conflict with Israel. Oil prices are spiking, with WTI crude rising over 9% to $74.17 (off overnight high $77.62), while gold futures rise over 1% to $3,430 an ounce. Brent futures soar as much as 13% to above $78 a barrel before paring some the move as Iran reports no damage to energy facilities. Energy, defense, shipping and precious metal stocks are rising, while airline, hotel and booking firm stocks slide after the strikes. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index declined -338 points to 37,834, the Shanghai Index fell -25 points to 3,377, and the Hang Seng Index dropped -142 points to 23,892. In Europe, the German DAX is down -360 points to 23,410, while the FTSE 100 is down about -40 points to 8,845. The U.S. dollar bounces off multi-year lows vs. most rival currencies. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) spikes about 16% to 20.89, but off the overnight highs 22.00.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 101.85 points, or 0.24%, to 42,967.62
• The Nasdaq Composite gained 46.61 points, or 0.24%, to 19,662.49
• The Russell 2000 Index declined -8.14 points, or 0.38% to 2,140.10

• 10:00 AM ET                University of Michigan 1-yr and 5-yr inflation expectations, June-P
• 1:00 PM ET                   Baker Hughes Weekly rig count data

• At least 20 senior Iranian commanders including the head of the revolutionary guards, Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, were killed in Israel’s strikes on Iran on Friday, – Reuters.
• US stock funds suffered the biggest outflows in almost three months, according to data published by Bank of America Corp. citing EPFR Global data.
• Late yesterday, the first round of DOGE cuts officially passed the House by 214-212 vote and now head to the Senate; $9.4 BILLION of taxpayer dollars will be pulled from USAID, NPR, and PBS.

• Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN) are exploring issuing their own stable coins, the WSJ reported. Corporate coins could take payments activity away from banks and the traditional financial system, potentially shifting the high volumes of cash and card transactions that they handle outside the traditional financial system and saving them billions of dollars in fees.
• Tesla (TSLA) upgraded its Model S and Model X cars in the U.S. and raised the prices of all configurations of the two models by $5,000. The all-wheel drive version of Model X costs $89,990, while its plaid variant is priced at $104,990. The model S all-wheel drive now costs $84,990 and its plaid variant is $99,990.
• Host Hotels & Resorts Inc (HST) files for debt shelf of up to $2B.

• France’s BPCE has agreed a 6.4 billion euros ($7.39 billion) deal to acquire Portugal’s Novo Banco, including a 75% stake held by U.S. private equity firm Lone Star, BPCE and Lone Star said.

• Merck (MRK) announced that the U.S. FDA has approved Keytruda, Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, for the treatment of adult patients with resectable locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma whose tumors express PD-L1 as determined by an FDA-approved test.

• Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone sales rose to the top spot in China in May, with global sales growing 15% year-on-year during April and May in the tech giant’s strongest performance for the two-month period since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from Counterpoint Research showed. Calculations based on data from the government-affiliated China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that April shipments of foreign-branded phones in China rose to 3.52 million units from 3.50 million a year earlier.
• China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has postponed its approval of the proposed deal between Synopsys (SNPS) and Ansys (ANSS), The Financial Times reported.
• Midday on Thursday, large portions of the Internet went down, affecting a range of services, from global cloud platform Cloudflare to popular apps like Spotify. Reports indicated that a Google Cloud outage was at the root of these other service disruptions. Google Cloud (GOOGL) said it started investigating service issues affecting its customers at 11:46am PT, while Cloudflare (NET) also said it was investigating service disruptions affecting its customers, according to its status page