2026-04-13 22:25
publication
2026-04-13 22:25
Monday's session brought a continuation of gains on the New York stock exchanges. Investors appear to have shrugged off President Trump's new threats and assumed another TACO was on the way. The tone for the gains was set by the recently heavily depreciated IT sector.
If anyone expected a nervous reaction of the markets to the fiasco of the weekend negotiations between the US and Iran, they were very disappointed. Not only did the American delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, leave Islamabad empty-handed, but President Donald Trump also threatened to block Iranian ports and suspend oil exports from that country. Initially, oil prices increased by over 7%, but later the scale of the increase decreased to “only” 3% and managed to go below the psychological level of USD 100 per barrel.
But for about two weeks, Wall Street investors seem not to be concerned at all about the situation in the Middle East or the threat of stagflation resulting from the worst oil crisis in history. The market is apparently convinced that they will give us TACO (Trump Always Chickens-Out) again – that is, the US president will again “go soft” and quickly de-escalate the conflict in the Persian Gulf. Just like he did a year ago with customs duties, which ultimately turned out to be much lower than he initially announced.
These calculations have been driving up stock prices on Wall Street for two weeks now. On Monday, the S&P500 increased by 1.00% and reached 6,886.24 points. The Nasdaq Composite increased by 1.23%, reaching 23,183.74 points. Dow Joesn added 0.63% and reached 48,218.25 points.
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Officially, Monday's increase was explained by another statement by the American president. Donald Trump decided that Iran “really wants” to conclude a deal (and that's why he left the table – logical). So we have a classic “Trumpian pattern” – two steps of escalation and one step back. However, time is on Tehran's side. There are no tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz (or at least about 90% fewer of them than before March '26), the world is facing fuel shortages, and the midterm elections are inevitably approaching in the USA.
And investors seem to think that there is no problem as long as oil costs less than USD 100 per barrel (at least on stock exchange displays, because prices on the physical market tend to be much higher, exceeding USD 130 per barrel before the weekend). Time will tell whether this optimism will not turn out to be greatly exaggerated.
Meanwhile, Wall Street's attention in the coming days may focus on corporate financial reports for the first quarter. Goldman Sachs started the earnings season. And although its results (as usual) exceeded the market consensus, Goldman's shares still fell by almost 2%. – We don't see the market paying much attention to good results. That's because of the prospects for higher inflation, weaker economic growth and the fact that the Fed may have to keep rates on hold for a long, long time, said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities, quoted by Reuters.
The highlight of Monday's session were strong increases in the prices of shares of IT companies. Oracle's stock went up by over 12%, and Salesforce, Adobe and Accenture's stock increased by 6-7% each. This is a rebound after weeks of strong declines caused by concerns about the future of the traditional IT industry in the era of AI algorithms that can write increasingly advanced code themselves.
K.K
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