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>> Show, say it. >> Welcome to Prof. Markets. I'm Ed Nelson. It is March 3rd. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals.
>> The major indices wrote out a volatile session to the US Israel strikes on Iran more on that in a moment,
“still the indices ended the day in the green.”
Meanwhile, the yield on tenure treasury surged the most since April, oil spike, the dollar rose, and gold climbed about $5,300. [MUSIC] >> Okay.
What else is happening? The United States is at war with Iran. The US and Israel struck the country on Saturday, killing Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Hamani. Iran responded with retaliatory strikes across the region.
Including attacks on US military base. The president said the military operation will last around four to five weeks, but could continue for quote as long as it takes. Markets opened in the red on Monday,
but by midday, the major indices had recovered. Meanwhile, Brent Crude, the global price gauge for oil, jumped 7% to just over $77 per barrel. Oil prices were already up 17% this year in anticipation of a possible attack.
Joining us to discuss what this war means for us, what it means for markets, was speaking with Matt Smith, oil analyst at energy consulting firm Kepler. Matt, welcome to the show. Let's get right into it.
Obviously, quite rattling news for all of us for many reasons. When you look at what's happened in the markets here, what is jumping out to you, what are the markets telling us about what is unfolding in Iran right now?
Yeah, sure. So there's been sort of some undulations that would say across the various different commodities. So you know, everyone has been focused on crude and breathing a bit of a sigh of relief to be honest,
because there was the expectation we could open up 15%, 20%, and we only opened up 12%. As you just mentioned, we closed up about 7, something like that. So not the worst case scenario. And the reason there's such a concern about crude
is because you had that reflected straight through into prices at the pump. So in the US, even though it's very much insulated from the supply shocks, you still get affected because crude is a global benchmark.
And that's the input price to refine for that gasoline. But some other things that we saw across the energy complex was with natural gas. So we've seen a difference this time around to the 12-day war of last year where Iran
just retaliated against Israel. This time it's sending missiles, drone strikes to many different countries and attacking energy infrastructure. So while everyone was watching that crude price, you've actually seen diesel prices up 15%,
because you saw the rest to know a refinery in Saudi Arabia get hit and then with natural gas prices in Europe. We're actually up as netty as much as 50% today, because we saw Qatar, an LNG terminal struck there as well. And so there's ripple across all of these very different
energy commodities. And actually beyond that as well, in terms of fertilizer,
a third of fertilizer in the world,
exported on sea-borne basis, comes out of the middle. So lots of ramifications here. - Why is it that oil didn't rise as much as everyone thought
“word? I mean, I remember a week ago, perhaps a few days ago,”
and the consensus was if this happens, oil is going to absolutely rip. It went up, but it didn't go up nearly as much as people seems to think, yeah, why is that?
- It's interesting actually because we've kind of got
the worst case scenario in terms of the straitful moves here.
“So there's a room that heading right now that Iran is closed,”
has closed the straitful moves regardless of if that's true or not. The threat of them hitting a tanker with a missile or a drone strike has stopped that flow of crude and products in every other tanker going through there. And so we are kind of hitting that worst case scenario here now.
And so you would perhaps expect prices to rally more. Maybe it's just because with President Trump he's saying that the strikes are going to be persistent. We've just had Marco Rubio talking about how the strikes are going to get even worse.
And so there's going to be this absolutely pummeling of Iran in the near term here. And so perhaps people are thinking this is going to be a short-term event and we're going to get over this in a few days. - That is interesting because we're going to be,
it is presumed that we will be harsher perhaps on Iran, hit them harder than at most analysts thought that that will mean that there will be more oil flow, essentially that oil will continue to move freely through the straight of hormones which I'm sure we're going to be hearing
a lot of the next few weeks and months. Why is that exactly?
And I know that I'm now asking you to basically play military
analysts, but it's interesting as an energy analyst you kind of have to. Why is hitting Iran hard necessarily mean for the analysts
“that oil will be good and that oil will make its way out of the region?”
- Yes, sure. And so whether it's that the US is going after a regime change, which there's some doubt whether that's the case, but whether it's just simply they're trying to obliterate any nuclear ambitions in Iran that or whether it's just attacking the military side of things wiping them out there.
Once you get past that, then there is the situation whether the uncertainty is lifted and the likes of Iranian barrels could even flow stronger. So it's really important to bear in mind what happened last year in terms of that 12-day war.
As soon as those nuclear sites were hit, you had President Trump come out on the presser and he was like, "Okay, now that this has happened, we've got what we wanted. Now China started buying that Iranian oil again. And so you went straight to getting those oil prices down.
And so it's like, what's these ambitions and goals are achieved? Then the potential flow of prices afterwards is perhaps a much more likely proposition. But maybe it's that, well, maybe it's just the fact that we just didn't get a bunch of tankers on fire
in the around the straight-a-haul most today. - Is there an outcome that energy investors and energy analysts, those who work with oil and gas? Is there an outcome that most want? I mean, when an oil consultant firm or even an oil investment firm
sees what's happening in Iran. I mean, obviously this is a political issue. Some people support what's happening, some people don't support what's happening. But say you're an investor in this stuff. What do you think when America strikes Iran?
- Yeah, I think it's a stability thing, right? So OPEC has a whole this group of oil producers. They want stability of price. I think oil investors wants stability in terms of the geopolitical backdrop, right? And so I think if Iran is addressed here in the same ways
we've had Venezuela addressed, it's one more hot potato that the market doesn't have to think about or deal with. And so that's taken out of it gives way less uncertainty and so that's a positive thing for investment.
“So I think that's perhaps the best way to look at it.”
- Yeah, certainty, understanding what the path forward is. And it sounds like what the analyst seemed to say, well, maybe the price is telling us is that people believe that Trump is going to conclude this. Or at least that this will be far less uncertain.
Now that it was, I suppose, a year ago. - Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And that's the thing here as well, right? You've got this really interesting situation with sanctioned barrels in the global market here where you've got,
you know, Russia is pushing out three and a half million barrels a day.
That is a massive discount. That isn't open to all of the world. You've got India that is buying that. You've got China that is buying that. So you've essentially got a two-tier market here.
It's the same thing for Iranian crude, where all of that crude is basically going to China because nobody else will buy it. And it's the same thing with Venezuela. Or it wasn't till there was the incursion there.
Now that Venezuela's well-encrewed is not at a steep discount and only going to China, it's now going to the broader market at a more fair market price. So you're essentially going to be doing the same thing in theory where the Iranian crude, if that situation,
the situation gets resolved there, sanctions are eased.
Those barrels that were only previously going to China
at a big discount could be making its way into the market
at a market price which all prices down essentially. So that's maybe the path we see from here. And then you've only got Ukraine Russia to deal with. Right. Just final question before we let you go.
Are there any blind spots that you think that energy investors perhaps are displaying here something that they're missing? And what I'm getting out with this question is, it seems that there is a sense, not necessarily of certainty among the investment community,
but maybe less uncertainty than we thought. I mean, prices have gone up, but not as much as we thought, which reflects that maybe they're feeling a little less anxious about this situation than perhaps one would have predicted. Is there anything that maybe they are missing?
I as an observer, I'm looking at what's happening in Iran, I feel anxious. Yeah. I feel concerned. Is there perhaps too much certainty or not enough uncertainty?
“I think we just don't know how this is going to play out, right?”
Because it could play out just over the next couple of days. We talked about with an absolutely pummeling of Iran, or it could be the one to four weeks as Trump has talked about. But I think that the one concern from an all investor perspective is that if this issue gets cleared away,
then you essentially have one less uncertainty in the market. And the broader fundamentals for the all market have been fairly soft. We've had this kind of excess in the market in terms of supply. So you could really have this geopolitical premium unwounds
in prices here. We could really head considerably lower from where we are. So that's positive for prices at the pump. It's positive for consumers, not necessarily positive for oil investors.
And it's just the flip side of this is that if this does continue on for weeks and potentially into a month or two, you happen with this golf here where even we're seeing now as tankers are building up there, they're loading crude, they're loading products, but they're sat there
and they can't get out. Eventually, that gets bottle next up, right?
“And you have to see these many sculfe producers”
starting to shut in production, because they simply can't export the stuff. And so that's a consideration to think about too. Lots of interesting stuff here. Matt Smith, oil analyst at Energy Consulting Film Capital, Matt.
Thank you. We really appreciate your time. Thank you. After the break, open AI's record funding round and anthropic gets into a fight with Trump. And for even more, markets insights,
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Open AI just closed the largest private fundraising round in history.
The company set on Friday that it raised $110 billion
that is more than double its record-breaking raise from a year ago. Around Boost's opening, I2A $730 billion pre-money valuation. Nearly double the valuation of its closest rival
andthropic. It's back as include Amazon, who put in 50 billion in Nvidia and Softback, who each contributed 30 billion meanwhile, the ongoing anthropic pentagon dispute
came to a head on Friday. Trump blacklisted the company and directed every federal agency to immediately stop using anthropic's products. That ought to came after unthropic refused to loosen
its AI guardrails for surveillance and lethal strikes. Within 24 hours, opening, I swooped in and signed its own deal with the pentagon. Users then called for a boycott of Open AI, which sent Claude andthropic's chatbot
to number one on the US App Store. Tons of drama,
Tons of developments here in the AI race
here to unpack all of it, was speaking with Alex Heath, author of the sources newsletter and co-host of the access podcast. Alex, good to see you.
I'm going to jump right into it. First, let's just start with what I think is the more boring news,
which is Open AI raising $110 billion.
A month ago, that would have been incredible, but now if Trump is fighting with them through all of it, it sort of disappears into the background. Initial reactions to Open AI's fundraising run.
We knew this round was happening for a while. They've been putting it together. The thing that jumped out to me was that
“it was, I think, about 10 billion over subscribed, right?”
I think they were shooting for 100, and it sounds like there's going to be billions more still contributed by sovereigns and other large firms in the coming weeks and months. The Amazon partnership is a big one.
My read of that is that Open AI knows that it is essentially lost the Apple partnership to Google, which as we know just did that recent Gemini deal. Open AI for, you know, for how well-chatched BT is doing,
they still need more distribution. They need hardware, touchpoints, voice assistant, touchpoints, Amazon provides a lot of that. In addition to the AWS and Trinian benefits,
what they have. So this seems to be like a reshuffling of the strategic alliances, I guess, between the mag seven and Open AI, where if you would have thought maybe two years ago, Open AI is going to be getting closer to Apple.
I think they're hardware work with Johnny Iv and just how that initial Siri partnership went has shown that maybe those two are not meant to be together
“long-term and so I think this is Open AI deciding that Amazon”
is the new horse that's going to attach itself to. Which also seems interesting because Amazon is a very large investor and shareholder and anthropic too. Everyone's invested in everyone at this point. Right.
These two companies need a distinction. Their capital is generators and at this point, I was talking to an investor in both last week and they're just like, yeah, I mean, they just want money.
They just need money and there's finite pools of it left for these size of rounds.
It's also interesting that you said it was $10 billion
over-subscribed suggesting that maybe the price should be even higher than what it is. That seems to stand out as well now. I guess there's just so much phomo and I think because Open AI is not public
and optimistically may be public by the end of this year, I think there's just tremendous investor appetite to get into the name before it's opened up to retail. I mean, had this round been instead an IPO, you know, it may be open AI would have raised more.
Maybe we'd have a two trillion market cap right now. We're kind of in peak bubble froth, mania. So in the same way that people in San Francisco talk about escaping the permanent underclass,
“maybe that's how investors are thinking about”
getting in the open AI right now and getting why you can. So I feel, let's talk about it. I'm the anthropic and the Pentagon Trump has called an anthropic a quote, radical left AI company. Anthropic has been blacklisted as a supply chain risk.
Federal contracts have been cut. He's saying that anyone who the government won't do any business with anyone who does any business with anthropic, which that pot seems really crazy. We talked about this a few weeks ago.
It's amazing how it has developed. What does it say about the AI risk right now? I think it shows how powerful these companies are. It was surprising to me actually. I mean, I knew about anthropic's government work,
but that they were the most fully integrated model in the government behind classified walls up until this point. I wasn't quite fully aware of until this whole blow up. And it's interesting that that has been the case given that anthropic has historically been the, I guess you could say more
doomer of the other AI labs, right?
The one that is always talking about the potential pitfalls
and safety risks happened to be the AI lab that was the close, most closely integrated with the US government before this. It's interesting. It's interesting that open AI swooped in and got a deal that is effectively what Anthropic said that it wanted.
And to me, that suggests, you know, based on what we know about this administration, Egos can run hot and heavy, especially looking at some of the players involved specifically in this. You've got a meal, Michael, the very strong-armed head of growth
and business for Uber back in the day for Travis Calenic. You could one could argue the Sam Alman before Sam Alman in terms of the amount of capital he raised for Uber at the time, which then was record setting. And who understands tech and goes back with all these players
as an Elon loyalist.
Then he heads to death and all the other players involved.
I mean, it really, I think it just speaks to the ego. You know, I don't really know if there's much more. I don't know if like, you know, you see some of the reports about, you know, they were arguing about like theoretical missile strikes and Dario saying, on the day the sea of Anthropics saying,
"Oh, you'd have to call us first if you wanted to use cloud to like defend against a missile strike." And that just suggests a level of like Bravado and chest pumping in these negotiations that I imagined given all the personalities involved did not work out well.
And, you know, this could end up to be catastrophic for Anthropics. My gut says it won't be. There's too much money at stake. There's too many investors in Anthropics who have ties to the White House.
I'm sure that, yeah, Anthropics loses this $200 million contract.
That's not really a factor for them financially. But certainly shows that open-air I can be shrewd. Assam Alman has been known to be and swoop in here and get closer as Anthropics pulls apart from the government. Yeah, it's striking how relevant the politics are becoming
in these tech stories and these AI stories.
“And you mentioned the Bravado there, which I think is probably true,”
but then I think there's another reading of it, which is, you know, maybe Darryu Ahmeday and Anthropics, they just have values. And their values are, we're not going to be used in mass surveillance on Americans. We're not going to be used for autonomous weapons. That's our line.
And then they get pushed by the government and then he just holds the line, which I agree takes a level of confidence and maybe Bravado, but also I kind of respect it as, okay, you're just sticking to your values. And then I think what it's striking is that we're now seeing this play out in the consumer economy, where people are saying we're done with chatGBT,
because chatGBT sold out to the administration. And then people are saying we're going to embrace Claude now, it becomes the number one download it out in the country. And it seems as though the politics of this all is actually shaping and shifting the trajectories of the businesses themselves.
And what I can't quite figure out is, did he make the right business decision by standing up to Trump? And if you look at the App Store and the rankings, the App Store would tell you, yes, he did. But maybe over the long run, if they're losing these contracts to the government,
open a eyes taking them and said, maybe it's not the right business decision. What do you think? From a business viewpoint, who won here? I think it's too early to tell. I mean, on the consumer side, who knows how many people are paying for
those chatGBT subscriptions for the App they're downloading, but certainly seems to be a near term when. You know, hearing you talk, I'm reminded of the delete Uber campaign. I think it was in around 2017. There was a similar thing where it was like,
Uber is caving in and is morally bankrupt. And there was mass protests and delete campaigns. And guess what, Uber is a much, much larger company now than it was then.
“These moments in time, I think, tend to get a lot of attention,”
and then they are looked back at as blips. Whether that's the case here, we're in the middle of it, we can't say.
I do think the reality is often more nuanced than what you're saying
in terms of like, oh, he just held the line and he's more moral, and therefore, open a eyes not. There's a lot of nuance here. But if you read the way that the Department of War has responded, if you read how open a eyes talked about their deal,
it seems to me like anthropic has, in their view, legitimate concerns that extend beyond how the law currently operates today. And maybe that's the difference, is that open a eye was willing to operate in the constraints of how the law and the United States works today. And anthropic was not.
And that's anthropic's right as a private company, and they should exercise that right, and people should want to support that. And if they feel aligned with that.
“But I think suggesting that it's anything more than that,”
at this point it feels premature. I don't know, that's just my read of the situation at this moment, but again, we're getting things in real time every minute here.
What do you think, how will the public view this ultimately,
because, I mean, I agree there's probably some nuance. But I still think that he probably stuck with his values, and they didn't like that because they told him do this, and he said no, and they got upset. But I agree, I'm sure there's some nuance that I don't think this means
that chat, GBT and OpenA are evil. That's not my assumption here. But it does seem that the public opinion will shape things quite significantly here. And it's interesting you bring up to the Uber, it's possible that maybe the public forgets. And they decide, actually, we don't care about this.
I can see that happening too, but how the public views this
is quite essential if they want to be consumer apps,
if they want to be consumer-facing companies, which they do both want to be. Yes, and so I guess my question for you would be, how will the crowd see this at this point? Well, the headlines have been written,
and anthropics done a really good job of coming out and stating how it feels this whole saga went down and what it stands for. And those are admirable versions, right? Not surveilling Americans, not using AI for autonomous weapons.
“And I think they're winning on that front, right?”
I mean, we talked about clogging at the top of the app store. They've shipped a feature where you can quickly import your CHPT memory into cloud, which is really smart. I think they're going to push full hog on this, like, you know, some version of the Super Bowl ad,
you know, I've seen some jokes of like replacing ads
with like autonomous weapons in that banner on the Super Bowl ad, right? It's been like a long time. Hey, it's coming to autonomous weapons and not cloud or something. So I can imagine the lean into it and they should, right? They should take advantage of the moment.
What that does to their long term, you know, relationships with other governments who see this and go, hey, like can we actually rely on you as a partner? You're going to decide that your interpretation of the law is better than ours, who knows?
It'll probably be a blip in time, but for now, you're right. I mean, people are looking for ways to advocate for what they feel are infringements of solo liberties in the United States and a government that they don't see eye to eye with. You're seeing that with, you know, your partner scots,
you know, deleting unsubscribe movement, right?
And so I kind of see that as in the same vein here where this is something people can latch onto to express the beliefs they have. And that's American, and that's awesome. At the end of the day, like, it's good that this can happen. You know, one of the most positive reasons of this that I've seen is like,
at the very least, what Omaday has done is shine a light
“on how we should be thinking about AI used in these context, right?”
What happens when cloud code can be used inside the NSA and not just to help you get your taxes done faster? And so I think that's a good thing that we're thinking about that and that Dario thrusts that into the spotlight, whether it's good for anthropic or not.
All right, Alex Heath, author of the sources newsletter to co-host of the Access Podcast, Alex, thank you. We really appreciate your time. Thanks, Ed. So, the airstrikes have begun from said they will continue
and it appears, although the language has been confusing, that we are at war with Iran. Now, there are plenty of implications that we could spend hours, even days discussing. And the idea of asking how this will affect markets
seems a little bit of a ridiculous question because there are some things like war that are just bigger than markets. Having said that, we will end here with a few thoughts,
“not just on what this will do to markets,”
but also what this will do to your life, what being at war with Iran actually means for our daily experience as Americans. Now, there is the fact that we will be reading about this pretty much every day and that is significant,
but there will also be some more material implications with this war as well. For example, gas prices. As we discussed, oil prices are currently rising, and it's possible they will rise even more.
And that will affect prices of the pump for you. To be more specific, a $5 increase in the price of the barrel of oil translates to a roughly 10 cent increase in the cost per gallon of gas at the pump. So, a $10 or $15 increase in the price of oil
isn't that bad that's kind of what we're seeing, but the question will be if it goes even higher than that. If oil hits say a hundred dollars a barrel, then that will have a real impact on the pump. It will have a real impact on the cost of living at home.
Something else that will be impacted is the price of liquid natural gas or LNG. This is the fuel we use for heating and electrical power and energy storage, et cetera. And also a fifth of the world's liquid natural gas flows
through the straight of homoose. So that means that global LNG supply is now going to be significantly constrained. And while America does have its own liquid natural gas supply, we will likely be exporting more of that over to Europe
who will be in desperate need for LNG. Thus reducing the supply and raising prices here at home. This is exactly what happened during the Russia Ukraine invasion and it's why your heating and electric bills started to go up back then.
A similar scenario could easily play out today.
Finally, for the investors who listen to the podcast,
I think you can safely assume that because of this war,
“your stock portfolio is about to become even more volatile”
than it already was. There are currently around 60 military conflicts ongoing around the world right now. That is the highest level of global violence that we've seen since World War II.
geopolitical uncertainty is rising. AI uncertainty is also rising as we've discussed,
which means that investors now have more reasons to panic today
than at any time in recent memory. And that means they are going to be making some very rash decisions. They might start panic selling. They also might start panic buying.
“Either way, it will translate to a highly erratic market,”
which will make all of us even more anxious than we already were. In other words, the days of metaverse projects and NFTs and
speculative investments such as those are firmly over.
Investors are now looking for one thing and one thing alone. And that is safety. Physical safety, technological safety, personal safety, financial safety, all kinds of safety. As the world becomes more and more dangerous,
the demand for safety is only going to go up.
“And if we were safe last year or even the year before that,”
we'll now, the consensus on Wall Street is pretty clear. We're not so safe anymore. Okay. That's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss.
Added by Joel Passen and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Jelon. Chris now don't hear you and me as well. And our social producer is Jake McPherson.
Thank you for listening to "Proxy Markets" from "Proxy Media." If you like what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Alison, I will see you tomorrow. We're ready. Let's start with "Proxy Markets."
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