TQ Morning Briefing

The US sent Iran a peace plan. Iran's military said no. Oil fell anyway. The market's pricing the chance of peace, not the fact of it. That gap is what today resolves.

MARKET STATE

Futures are up. Oil is down. Tehran said no.

The US sent Iran a peace plan overnight. Iran's military said no. Oil fell anyway.

That's not confusion. That's the market repricing the tail. A fully shut Hormuz was one price. A Hormuz with a real shot at reopening is cheaper. A formal plan exists now. That's new. Whether Tehran signs on is a separate question.

Asia jumped. Bonds rallied. The dollar slipped. US futures pushed higher.

Tuesday held the downside. The S&P gave back most of Monday's gains. The Nasdaq fell harder. Salesforce dropped sharply. Energy was the only S&P sector in the green for March. A weak 2-year auction sent short rates sharply higher.

Today tests whether that overnight move holds when cash opens.

Market Implication

WTI and rate-sensitive names are moving in opposite directions right now. The thing keeping them apart is a single variable: whether Tehran engages. That answer may come today.

WHAT ACTUALLY MOVED MARKETS

Oil priced the plan. Not the outcome.

The NYT broke the peace plan story late Tuesday. Oil fell hard. The plan covers Hormuz, Iran's nuclear stockpile, missiles, and proxy forces. Sources said several points would be nearly impossible for Tehran to take.

Attacks kept coming. Kuwait airport burned. Iran's military said the US had no right to talk terms.

But oil kept falling.

See, the market wasn't waiting for a deal. It was cutting tail risk. A fully shut Hormuz was one price. A Hormuz with a real shot at reopening is a cheaper price. The plan moved the odds. The rejection didn't reverse the move.

The second force is rates. Tuesday's 2-year auction was weak. Outside demand was thin. Short rates spiked. That's inflation fear. Not recession fear. High oil. Fed on hold. That's the lid on rate-sensitive names right now.

Structural Setup

WTI is the peace gauge today. The plan moved the odds one direction. The quick no doesn’t close the diplomatic back channels. 

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TAPE & FLOW

Software's selloff has nothing to do with Iran.

Tuesday showed the split. Energy held. Software didn't. IGV fell hard and is now down sharply for 2026. Salesforce led the drop. ServiceNow followed.

This isn't a war trade. It's a re-rating. AI hurts software margins before it builds new software sales. That view has been in place for weeks. When the Iran war started, all stocks fell. Now energy is up. Software is still down. That split is the signal.

The expected rotation hasn’t happened. Money that should've moved from energy back into rate-sensitive names hasn't shown up. The weak 2-year auction told you why. The market doesn't think inflation falls fast enough.

Sector Read

Energy and software are being driven by two separate forces. Energy trades on Hormuz. Software trades on the AI re-rating. One of those forces has a clear catalyst to resolve. The other doesn't.

POWER & POLICY

Iran isn't blocking the strait. It's tolling it.

Iran moved from blocking ships to charging them. Ships are now paying fees of several million dollars per trip. That's not giving in. It's a revenue play.

Here's why it matters. A blockade is yes or no. Open or shut. A toll system is different. Iran can let ships through and still look like it didn't back down. That's a way out. A full closure doesn't give them one.

Witkoff and Kushner want a month-long pause. Israel is skeptical. Netanyahu's worry is that Trump takes a deal that falls short of Israel's goals. That gap is the constraint on any timeline.

Watch Signal

Iran built a toll system, not a blockade. That distinction matters. A toll can be eased quietly. A blockade has to be lifted publicly. The market hasn't fully priced the difference yet.

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ONE LEVEL DEEPER

Chewy reports this morning. The number that matters isn't revenue.

Chewy is down roughly a third this year and sitting near its lows heading into the print. Wall Street wants flat sales growth. Amazon and Walmart have been squeezing the pet space for months. That's in the price.

What isn't is Autoship. That's Chewy's sub service. It's the margin driver. If Autoship share holds, the business works even with slow sales. If pet owners trade down to Amazon, the story breaks.

Pet spending tends to hold up in hard times. If Chewy is hurting, it's not because people quit buying pet food. It's because they switched. That's a share loss. Not a demand drop. Those are different signals for the consumer space.

Paychex also prints before the bell. Payroll firms are a clean read on small business hiring. If labor holds there, it pushes back on the recession story.

The Read

Chewy and Paychex are the first consumer prints of the morning. The gap between what Wall Street expects and what the macro backdrop implies is wide. The results will start closing it.

MARKET CALENDAR

Economic Data: Current Account, Import/Export Prices

Fed Speakers: Miran

Earnings: PDD Holdings (PDD), Cintas (CTAS)

Overnight: Nikkei -3.48% | Shanghai -3.63% | FTSE +0.16% | DAX +1.87%

US PRE-MARKET

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THE CLOSE

The US has a plan. Iran has a rejection. Kuwait airport has a fire. Oil has a selloff.

All four are true right now.

That's what a market pricing odds looks like. The plan cuts the worst case. The rejection keeps the risk alive. Both can coexist. They will, until Tehran decides.

Chewy and Paychex add a second story. First consumer prints of the morning. One tells you if pet owners are still paying up. The other tells you if small firms are still hiring. Neither has anything to do with Hormuz. Two separate things are breaking at once today.

Come back tomorrow, one of them will have resolved.

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