Stocks slump as Trump’s Iran strike delay fails to lift mood

Oil may hit a record $200 a barrel if the Iran war drags on till June, with the Strait of Hormuz staying shut, Macquarie Group Ltd. said.

Bloomberg reports:

A conflict that stretches through the second quarter would result in historically high real prices, analysts including Vikas Dwivedi said in a note, outlining a scenario with odds of 40%. An alternative outlook, with probability of 60%, suggested the war may finish at the end of this month, they said.

Brent crude is on pace for a record monthly gain in March, as the war between the US, Israel and Iran has rocked the oil-rich Middle East. The conflict has seen Tehran oversee a near-complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, severely restricting flows of energy vital to the global economy.

“If the strait were to stay closed for an extended period, prices would need to move high enough to destroy an historically large amount of global oil demand,” the analysts said in the March 27 report. “The timing of the re-opening of the straits, and physical damage to energy infrastructure, is the main determinant of the longer-term impact on commodities.”

Brent was last near $110 a barrel on Friday, after touching a crisis-high of $119.50 earlier this month. The benchmark set a nominal peak of $147.50 a barrel in 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

On Thursday, US president Donald Trump pushed back a deadline for striking Iran’s energy sites by 10 days, with the second pause to that threat stretching the timeline on potential attacks to 6 April. Iran had allowed 10 oil tankers to sail through the strait as a goodwill gesture, he said.

The closure of the strait “has sent both crude and refined-product prices soaring due to the magnitude of the disruption,” the analysts said. In pre-conflict times, the waterway saw daily transits of about 15 million barrels of crude, as well as 5 million barrels of refined-products, they said.

The pound lost ground against the dollar and euro on Friday morning, dipping following a lacklustre set of retail sales data and mounting fears about the impact of energy price inflation on the UK economy.

Retail sales rose by 0.7% in the three months to February, compared with the three months to November 2025, the Office for National Statistics said.

The rise was mainly due to better sales for non-store retailers in the three months to February 2026, following a weaker November 2025, as well as strong artwork sales volumes in January 2026.

“Poor weather may have played a role in February’s weaker retail sales, but the bigger issue is that underlying demand still looks fragile,” said Sergey Kondratyuk, partner at McKinsey & Company. “Our latest consumer research * shows 52% of UK consumers continue to cite inflation as a top concern, and only 23% are optimistic about economic conditions.”

“The pressure is also clear in planned spending. In the UK, 50% of consumers say they expect to spend less on furniture over the next three months, versus just 15% who expect to spend more, with similar patterns across apparel and home electronics.

“That suggests this is about more than a one-month weather effect, but instead a broad-based volume recovery still has not emerged.”

Traders have also been on edge as bets ramp up for Bank of England interest rate rises, while uncertainty prevails around what might happen next in the conflict between the US and Iran. President Donald Trump said he would postpone plans to start destroying Iranian energy plants by another 10 days, after claiming talks with Tehran were “going very well”.

Iran hasn’t publicly reacted to Trump’s decision, having previously denied talks, but Tehran earlier said it was waiting for Washington to respond to its conditions for a ceasefire.

The pound fell 0.2% against the dollar to the below the $1.33 mark.

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) has paid out compensation after nearly half a million people were impacted by an IT glitch exposing the personal data of customers earlier this month.

The company said up to 447,936 Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers saw other people’s transactions or had their data shared with others due to IT issues on 12 March.

Jasjyot Singh, consumer relations boss at Lloyds, apologised for the incident on behalf of the bank in a letter disclosing the scope of the issue to Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee.

The banking firm confirmed 114,182 people clicked on other people’s transactions when they became visible.

It added they therefore may have been shown more detailed information such as account details, national insurance numbers and payment references.

The bank has so far paid out £139,000 in compensation to 3,625 customers for distress and inconvenience linked to the incident.

It said no customers have so far been identified as suffering financial losses as a result.

The letter highlighted the personal data of individuals who were not Lloyds group customers had also been visible.

Lloyds said the incident was caused by a “software defect” from an overnight IT update.

Chair of the Treasury Committee, Dame Meg Hillier, said:

A Lloyds spokesman said:

Traders are betting thousands of dollars on SpaceX’s ticker and speculating over its entry into ‌the most elite club of US companies, giving the world’s most valuable startup a level of social media buzz that only a few companies enjoy, ​especially when they are yet to file their IPO paperwork.

Reuters has the details…

On Polymarket, users were betting on topics including the company’s targeted valuation, the exchange it will list on and the ticker its shares would trade under. The combined trading volume of such bets exceeded more than $15.2 million, as of Friday.

Odds on the prediction markets platform put a 25% chance on SpaceX choosing the letter “X” ‌as its ticker, a sharp drop from ⁠60% a month ago.

The single-letter ticker is up for grabs after U.S. Steel, which reportedly held it for over a century, delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after being bought ⁠by Japan’s Nippon Steel last year.

Musk’s social media platform is also called X after a rebrand from Twitter in 2023.

Tuttle Capital Management CEO Matthew Tuttle said a better alternative would be “SPCX” – also the ticker of an exchange traded fund his company manages.

Tuttle has indicated ​openness ​to selling the SPCX symbol to SpaceX.

“I’ve not heard from Elon, ​but my phone line is still open and ‌I’m holding out hope that I get a call,” he said.

Average UK mortgage rates have hit a 19-month high as the confllict in the Middle East continues to drives up borrowing costs. Data provider Moneyfacts said on Friday:

• Average 2-year fix has risen from 4.83% at the start of March to 5.75% today. It’s highest since August 2024, and up from 5.67% yesterday.

• Average 5-year fix has risen from 4.95% at the start of March to 5.69% today. It’s highest since December 2023, and up from 5.62% yesterday

Money markets are now predicting that the Bank of England (BoE) will hike interest rates three times by the end of 2026, from 3.75% to 4.5%.

Adam French, head of consumer finance at Moneyfacts, said:

Saverio Berlinzana, analyst at ActivTrades, said:

UK vehicle production fell 17.2% year-on-year in February as weak ‌export demand and plant restructuring hit output.

Total UK vehicle production fell to 68,061 units in February as weak ​demand in ​markets outside Europe and ​plant restructuring hit commercial ‌vehicle and car output.

The “extremely worrying” decline came as the sector faced mounting pressure from conflict in the Middle East and European Union proposals that, it said, could discriminate against ‌UK-made vehicles in a ⁠trading relationship worth almost £70bn a year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers ⁠and Traders (SMMT) said.

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “Another decline for UK vehicle production and exports is extremely worrying, given these figures pre-date the crisis in the Middle East.”

• Car output declined 10.7% to 65,885 units, while ​commercial vehicle production plunged 74% to ​2,176 units.

• Exports, which ​account for 80% of total UK vehicle ‌production, fell 11.5% to 53,140 ​cars and ​65.1% to 1,306 commercial vehicles.

• Production of battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid cars also fell 2.8% to ​26,629 units, though ‌they accounted for 40.4% of total car output.

Pharma giant Novartis (NVS) said on Friday it has agreed to buy biotech company Excellergy in a deal worth up to $2bn.

The deal — expected to close in the second half of the year — will mean Novartis pays $2bn in upfront and milestone payments. It is still subject to regulatory signoff.

Excellergy will deepen Novartis’s bench in food allergy treatments and immunology, the company said.

It’s the second deal announcement for Novartis in as many weeks, having also snapped up a breast cancer drug candidate for up to $3bn from US biotech Synnovation Therapeutics.

The company’s stock moved modestly higher in premarket.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched five new consumer law investigations as part of a crackdown on fake and misleading reviews – opening cases across sectors including funerals, food delivery and car sales.

The watchdog is investigating five businesses to determine whether they have infringed consumer law:

• Autotrader and Feefo – Treatment of negative reviews: Whether a number of 1‑star reviews – which were moderated by Feefo – were not published on Autotrader’s platform, and were not counted towards star ratings, therefore denying consumers a fully rounded picture of other customers’ experiences.

• Dignity – Misleading reviews: Whether Dignity asked staff to write positive reviews about the company’s crematoria services – giving people a potentially inaccurate picture of genuine customers’ feedback.

• Just Eat – Star ratings: Whether Just Eat’s ratings system has inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings – giving consumers a potentially misleading picture of quality when choosing where to order.

• Pasta Evangelists – Discounts for reviews: Whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for leaving 5-star reviews on delivery apps, without this being disclosed – meaning people may not have known how reliable or representative those ratings were.

The CMA said that, while it is investigating these five businesses, it has not reached any conclusions about whether consumer law has been broken.

It is looking at the key stages in the online reviews ecosystem – from how reviews are obtained, to the way they are moderated and displayed, to the star ratings people so often rely on.

Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, said:

GfK revealed on Friday that the UK confidence index fell two points to -21 in March – the weakest level since Donald Trump announced sweeping import tariffs in April last year. At the time, the index sank to -23.

Neil Bellamy, the firm’s consumer insights director, said the survey showed people are concerned about the prospects for inflation and the economy.

The group said the sharp rise in energy prices caused by the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz and attacks on infrastructure in the region “has led to fears of higher inflation and weaker growth across oil-importing countries”.

A majority of respondents said the economy had improved modestly over the last year, but was about to decline significantly. They said they were likely to save more and spend less on big ticket items over the next 12 months as a result.

UK retail sales decreased in February as supermarket sales slipped and demand for household goods was impacted by wet weather, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the total volume of retail sales, which measures the quantity bought, fell by 0.4% last month.

It compared with a 2% rise in January, which was revised up from a previous estimate of 1.8%.

The monthly decline in February was nevertheless shallower than expected, with analysts having predicted a drop of 0.7% for the month.

A fall in supermarket sales partly contributed to the fresh monthly decline, falling by 0.6%.

All food stores, which includes convenience stores and specialist retailers, reported a 0.7% decline in sales volumes, marking the weakest level since August last year.

Elsewhere, the data showed that household goods stores saw weaker demand, dropping by 2.6%, with retailers partly blaming “wet weather” for reduced demand.

Met Office data indicated that the UK, had above average rainfall in February 2026, more so than in either January this year or the previous February.

Non-store retailers also reported a slight dip over the month, with retailers suggesting that consumers brought forward spending to January to make the most of post-Christmas discounts.

Matt Dalton, consumer sector leader at Forvis Mazars, said:

Stocks in Asia were mixed overnight, stuck in a wait and see mode, with the Nikkei (^N225) fell 0.4% on the day in Japan, while the Hang Seng (^HSI) rose 0.4% in Hong Kong.

The Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) was 0.6% up by the end of the session and in South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) lost 0.4% on the day. Part of the Kospi’s weakness was also due to the ongoing sell-off in South Korean chipmaker stocks from Google’s memory chip announcement.

Across the pond, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) slipped 1.7%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) was 2.4% down, both seeing their biggest declines since the start of the war and fell back to their lowest levels since September. The Dow Jones (^DJI) ended 1% lower, while the VIX index rose 2.11 points to 27.44pts, its highest since 6 March.

Part of the Wall Street selloff was also driven by the ongoing rout from Tuesday’s announcement that Google had found a new algorithm that could reduce the memory chip amount needed in AI models.

Good morning, and welcome back to our markets live blog. As usual we will be taking a deep dive into what’s moving markets and what’s happening across the global economy.

To the day ahead we’ll get the US March Kansas City Fed services activity, UK February retail sales. Central bank events include the ECB consumer expectations survey, and the Fed’s Daly and Paulson will speak.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the agenda today:

• 7am: UK retail sales for February

• 9am: ECB Consumer Inflation Expectations survey

• 2pm: University of Michigan consumer confidence report