The Scoreboard
FCX +23%. SPY +6%. HYG +1%. TLT −1%. WTI round-trips the war premium. The whole report in one picture.
Iran deal by April 30 at 35%. June cut odds at 10.5%. Lebanon ceasefire at 69.5% on $54M volume. Metals led the month.
FCX +23%. SPY +6%. HYG +1%. TLT −1%. WTI round-trips the war premium. The whole report in one picture.
SPY +6.1%, HYG +1.2%. The rally is thin — HY credit never confirmed it.
The ceasefire on the table is for an active war, not political tensions. Middle East oil production fell 27% month-over-month in March per OPEC. Iraq dropped from 4.2M bpd to 1.6M bpd (Bloomberg, Apr 13).
Trump ordered the Navy to block all maritime traffic in and out of Iranian ports starting 10 a.m. ET Monday (Apr 13), enforcing restrictions around the Persian Gulf. Global oil supply dropped 10.1M bpd to 97M bpd in March — the largest disruption in history (IEA).
Venezuela is the other half of the picture. Maduro has been in the Brooklyn MDC since January 3 on narco-terrorism charges; Trump said the US will "run" Venezuela and $3B in sanctioned oil will be turned over (Atlantic Council). The oil rally that peaked at $105 was an active-war + supply-capture premium. Its unwind is not peace — it is a bet on the talks holding.
Islamabad talks ended April 12 after 21 hours with no deal. The US team (VP Vance + Witkoff + Kushner, 300 people) and Iran team (Speaker Ghalibaf + FM Araghchi, 70 people) split on nuclear enrichment and Hormuz (Times of Israel).
This morning (Apr 16) Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir flew to Tehran carrying a US message, per Al Jazeera. Polymarket gives a deal by April 30 a 35.5% probability.
Lebanon already had direct talks. Rubio hosted the first bilateral Israel-Lebanon engagement since 1993 on April 14 in Washington (ambassadors Moawad and Leiter). Netanyahu said Israel will negotiate "as soon as possible"; Trump announced follow-up talks for Friday (CNBC). Polymarket has a Hezbollah ceasefire by April 30 at 69.5% on $54M volume.
Same-horizon comparison. Lebanon ceasefire by April 30: 69.5% at $54M. Iran deal by April 30: 35.5% at $42M.
Ten-year real yields are up 3bp on the month. SPY is up 6% over the same window. A rate-cut trade moves real yields down.
Ten-year breakevens are flat through an 8% oil drop. Supply-relief disinflation would leave breakevens 10 to 20bp lower.
June cut odds sit at 10.5%. The Warsh confirmation hearing is Tuesday April 21 at 10 a.m. in Dirksen 538. Tillis (R-NC) is holding his vote pending the DOJ probe of Powell's Congressional testimony on the Fed's headquarters renovation — that fight can still derail confirmation (Bloomberg, CNN).
Today's Beige Book (released 2 p.m.) prepared from data on or before April 6. Eight of twelve districts saw modest growth, two flat, two declining. The report flagged the Middle East conflict as a "major source of uncertainty" and noted rising energy costs straining low- and moderate-income households (Fed).
HY option-adjusted spread went from 346bp to 285bp in three weeks. Regional banks did 10 to 17% on the month — WAL, ZION, KRE versus SPY +6%.
Private credit isn't confirming. Blue Owl permanently halted quarterly redemptions at OBDC II on February 18, replacing the 5% tender with a mandatory-liquidation model. The firm orchestrated a $1.4B secondary loan sale from OBDC II, OTIC, and public OBDC to finance it (Private Debt Investor, Bloomberg).
Moody's cut the US BDC sector outlook to negative on April 7, citing redemption pressure and rising leverage. The $400B sector booked its first-ever net outflow in early 2026 (Bloomberg, Alternative Credit Investor). Non-traded BDCs are 60% of the sector.
Public canaries: BKLN flat on the month, MAIN down 5.3% intraday today on a green SPY. HYG's tightening is pricing a market that doesn't include gated capital.
Thirty-day leaders: Freeport-McMoRan +22.7%, Teck +18.9%, Vale +18.6%, Century Aluminum +18.1%. Copper curve in 5.2% contango. JPMorgan raised FCX target to $76 (Yahoo Finance).
Uranium names ran in parallel. URA +12.3%, OKLO +12.5%. Spot U3O8 sits around $85 on the futures contract, with the cash-market high of $101.41 hit January 29. Tech firms are signing small-modular-reactor offtake contracts for AI data centers (INN).
The crack showed up in this morning's China release. Q1 GDP beat at 5.0% vs 4.8% consensus. Industrial production +5.7%. But retail sales missed at 1.7% vs 2.8% expected — a six-month low. The NBS publicly acknowledged a widening supply-demand imbalance (FXStreet, China Daily).
FCX +23.1%, SPY +6.1%. Same month, same tape. The copper trade lapped the index almost 4×.
TSMC reported Q1 this morning. Revenue $35.9B above the $34.6-35.8B guide, gross margin 66.2% (guide was 63-65%), net profit +58% YoY. The company raised full-year revenue growth above 30% in dollars and took 2026 CAPEX to the top of the $52-56B range (Quartz, TSMC IR). TSM traded down 3.1%.
ASML reported yesterday. Sales €8.8B (beat), net profit €2.8B (beat), Q2 guide €8.4-9.0B, full-year raised to €36-40B. Stock fell 5% on tightening China export restrictions — system sales to China fell to 19% of the quarter from 36% in December (CNBC).
The pattern is identical across both. Beat + raised guidance + sold. That makes three in a week with Goldman (Apr 13), ASML (Apr 15), TSMC (Apr 16). Priced-for-perfection earnings are clearing and the stocks are giving back beta.
Decompose SPY +2.5% since Friday. Real yields fell 5-8bp in the belly. Nominal yields barely moved. Breakevens did not compress.
The mix lands at roughly 25% rates, 35% dollar, 40% tariff-pause. Gold's Monday spike was two-thirds dollar and fear, one-third real yields. By today, the fear bid is gone and GLD is flat to the real-yield line.
Cross-asset vol has converged. MOVE sits at a one-month low. VIX is down 25% on the month. April 21 carries both the Iran ceasefire expiry and the Warsh confirmation hearing.