Markets cheer ceasefire — but hostilities continue

Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

A ceasefire, in theory, is supposed to do one thing: stop the hostilities. The version unfolding in the Middle East is testing that definition.

But shaky ceasefire or not, markets continue their march upward, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting fresh records. 

Separately, CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE event enters its second day in Singapore, with key participants including former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and SGX CEO Loh Boon Chye. 

Enjoy!

However, in the case of the conflict in the Middle East those assumptions stand challenged. Is it really a ceasefire if Iran is firing at ships, seizing them in the Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. still maintains a military blockade and has targeted Iranian vessels?

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, said “reopening the Strait of Hormuz is impossible” as long as the U.S. blockade is in place.

One might say it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat, where the ceasefire seems to be both dead and alive. 

Oil prices jumped in response to the developments, with international benchmark Brent crude rising more than 3% to close at $101.91 per barrel on Wednesday, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced more than 3% to settle at $92.96 per barrel. Both were trading slightly higher early Thursday.

U.S. stock market shrugged off the struggles in the strait, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hitting new records amid a slew of earnings reports. In Asia, South Korea and Japanese benchmark indexes hit record highs in early Thursday trading.

South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix posted another quarter of record profit and revenue on Thursday, as prices for its products continue to surge amid strong AI demand. 

— Lim Hui Jie 

Kevin Warsh gave his preferred way for measuring inflation. It could come back to bite him 

Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump‘s nominee for Federal Reserve chair, told lawmakers that he would like the central bank to change its strategy for measuring inflation.

The Fed has long favored the core price index for personal consumption expenditures, known in short as the core PCE, because it excludes volatile food and energy prices.

But Warsh wants to go a step further, by rooting out extreme price shocks when calculating overall inflation.

“The measures I prefer are looking at things that are called trimmed averages,” Warsh added. “We take out all of the tail-risks, all of the one-off items, and we ask ourselves whether the generalized change in prices is having second-order effects on the economy.”

— Alex Harring