Zaid Admani

Now the conversation

is all about the war with Iran and oil prices.

We are now in week four of the war.

The Strait of Hormuz is still mostly closed and energy infrastructure is still being attacked across the Gulf region, causing a supply shock and sending prices to the highest level in years.

International Brent crude closed last week at $112 a barrel and the USWTI was sitting around $98 a barrel.

One of the side effects of oil prices surging is the impact that it's having on rate cuts.

When oil prices go up, everything gets more expensive across the economy, which means that inflation could spike back up again.

And with inflation potentially coming back, we might not get a rate cut this year from the Fed.

In fact, the market is now concerned that we might get a rate

hike from the Fed later this year.

And that fear of a rate hike has sent the 10-year treasury yield to hit 4.5%, the highest level since July.

And when you have the 10-year rising, that causes mortgage rates to spike.

In fact, the average 30-year mortgage has gone from 5.9% to 6.2% in the last three weeks.

Now,

Looking ahead, it looked like we were headed for another week of escalation in the war.

On Saturday night, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was giving Iran 48 hours to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or he would, quote, obliterate their power plants.

Well, Iran didn't back down.

They said that if Trump did attack their power plants, they would attack power plants in countries across the region.

So yeah, it looked like we were headed for more bad news, but we just got some major developments this morning.

As I'm recording this, President Trump just posted on Truth Social that he is delaying the military strikes on Iran's power plants and energy infrastructure, saying that the US and Iran have had good and productive conversations over the last couple of days regarding a resolution to the conflicts.