Good morning. On Fortune’s radar today:
- Markets: Back in black!
- Man who attacked Sam Altman’s house had CEO kill list, police say.
- The world is watching a Chinese tanker that is trying to run through the Hormuz blockade.
- Progress? Tehran and Washington are still talking.
- Trump continues to criticize the pope.
- U.S. house prices seem to be cooling off.
THE MARKETS
Peace whispers send stocks higher
Oil was just under $99 per barrel this morning. S&P 500 futures were up 0.17% before the open in New York. The index closed up 1.02% yesterday and is now up marginally for the year. Asia and European markets were up across the board this morning, with the sole exception of India’s Nifty 50 (down 0.86%). Even Bitcoin, which has been moribund all year, perked up to $74.5K.
- Wall Street is the biggest winner of the Iran war—and the S&P 500 just turned positive for the year - Eva Roytburg
Oil price chart via TradingEconomics.com:
ONE BIG THING
Man who attacked Sam Altman’s house had AI CEO kill list
A 20-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder and arson after a Molotov cocktail attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house last week, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. After the assault on Altman’s San Francisco house, Daniel Moreno-Gama attacked OpenAI’s HQ and tried to break the glass doors with a chair.
“When San Francisco Police Department (‘SFPD’) officers arrived on scene, they found Moreno-Gama in possession of incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene, a blue lighter, and a document. The first part of the document, entitled ‘Your Last Warning’ by Daniel Moreno-Gama, advocated against AI and for the killing and commission of other crimes against CEOs of AI companies and their investors, listing names and addresses that purported to belong to multiple CEOs and investors,” the DOJ said. Read the full complaint here.
- Corporate security context: The attack follows the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who was shot in New York, on December 4, 2024.
The DOJ published this photo of the attack on OpenAI's offices:
IRAN
A Chinese ship is making a run for it through the Hormuz blockade
A sanctioned oil tanker, the Rich Starry, appears to have successfully sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, testing the U.S. blockade of the oil export route. You can follow the ship’s progress via the MarineTraffic.com live tracker here. The Rich Starry has gotten through the narrowest part of the strait and appears to be headed south to Sohar in Oman. “Shipowners, energy traders, and investors across financial markets have been keenly following its route,” Bloomberg reports, to see whether the U.S. Navy will block it or board it.
Yesterday, President Trump said on social media, “If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea.”
- Only 14 ships per day are making it through the strait right now.
- BP said its Q1 results are likely to be “exceptional” due to the high oil prices driven by the war. Its stock fell 0.53% in early trading today after rising 4.9% over the last five days—traders likely bought the rumor and are now selling on the news.
Map via MarineTraffic.com:
The talking isn’t over
The U.S. and Iran may still reach a peace deal before the ceasefire officially expires next week, according to President Trump. “We’ve been called this morning by the right people, the appropriate people, and they want to work a deal,” he said on Monday. Vice President JD Vance also said progress had been made despite a lack of agreement. Communications between Tehran and Washington appear to be ongoing, per Bloomberg.
The Saudis are especially keen for the U.S. to return to the negotiating table and drop the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—they are afraid that Iran could escalate its chokehold on the strait by striking ships in the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandeb, the other narrow sea lane through which Saudi Arabia exports oil. (Bonus fact: Bab al-Mandeb translates into English as “Gate of Tears.”)
Trump deletes ‘Jesus’ post but continues criticism of the Pope
Trump deleted that Truth Social post featuring himself dressed as Jesus Christ, claiming he believed it portrayed him as a doctor. “I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross,” Trump said. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.” The image had caused widespread offence among Christians, including members of the religious right who normally back the president.
The “Jesus” post had come on the same day Trump launched a broadside against the pope for being “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” The pope pushed back yesterday, saying “I have no fear of the Trump administration.” The pope has urged peace in the Middle East—and Trump wants him to stay out of politics.
VP Vance took that line yesterday, also. The pope should “stick to matters of, you know, what's going on in the Catholic Church,” he told Fox News.
- The context: White House officials had previously approached the Vatican to ask the pope to ease off his criticism of the war with Iran. The meeting took a disastrous turn when one U.S. official reportedly said the U.S. could set up an alternative papacy if the Catholic Church did not come to heel.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
He was coding at 12 and became one of Google’s youngest ever CMOs—but now says Gen Z are better off ice skating than learning to code - Orianna Rosa Royle
United CEO has pitched possible combination with rival American - Bloomberg
Anthropic is facing a wave of user backlash over reports of performance issues with its Claude AI chatbot - Beatrice Nolan
CHART OF THE DAY
U.S. house prices seem to be cooling off
The median existing home price in the U.S. ticked up 2.7% in March to $408,800, but the overall growth trend is down. “Annual growth over the past few years has decelerated notably from the prior post-pandemic spike and is now below what was seen just prior to the onset of COVID,” Lawrence Werther and Brendan Stuart of Daiwa Capital Markets said in a recent note.
NUMBER OF THE DAY
One-third
The amount of oil needed to produce the same amount of GDP today compared to the 1970s. The world today uses oil more efficiently and productively, and we need less of it to do everything we need to do, according to Bank of America analyst Antonio Gabriel. That’s why inflation is milder this time around, and why GDP growth is less affected by the war.
“While a 10% oil price shock had an inflationary impact of 90 basis points in the 1970s, that impact appears to be about 25bp today,” he told clients in a recent note. And, “the cost in terms of lower growth [has] diminished from over 70bp in the earlier period to about 5bp today.”
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
OpenAI rips Anthropic, distances itself from Microsoft - Axios
LVMH stock drops as analysts flag luxury recovery ‘party postponed’ amid Iran war - CNBC
JD Vance takes on ‘poisoned chalice’ of Donald Trump’s foreign policy missions - FT
Eric Swalwell, Tony Gonzales to Resign From Congress After Threat of Expulsion Votes - WSJ
Colombia to cull dozens of Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’ - NY Post
ONE MORE THING
Most CEOs expect Trump’s tariffs to outlast his administration, PwC survey finds
CEOs have accepted President Trump’s tariffs as a permanent feature of business life and are preparing to weather the levies even after he leaves office, according to consultancy PwC. In a survey of 633 U.S. executives, PwC found 86% treated tariffs as a permanent planning assumption. “CEOs aren’t planning around short-term tariffs anymore,” Kristin Bohl, PwC U.S. partner in Customs and International Trade Practice, told Fortune’s Sasha Rogelberg. “They’re treating tariffs as part of the new normal for doing business, with the expectation they’ll be in place for years.”
