Iran Strikes Trigger Reverberations in The Markets; Oil Rises, Stocks Fall; Brace for A Direct Impact on Your Portfolio

The Strait of Hormuz just went from geopolitical talking point to market-moving choke point spiking oil and insurance costs as traders price the risk of a serious supply shock. U.S. futures were sour in premarket trade (S&P futures off, Dow and Nasdaq weaker), Europe opened lower (FTSE about 1% down) and travel names were hit hard ahead of Monday’s open. At the same time, the White House ordered agencies off Anthropic’s tech, a Guardian report ties Claude to US military use in Iran strikes, and BMW is putting humanoid robots on a German production line. All this and more in today’s Read It and Eat!

Markets Around The World

Markets as of 27th February 2026. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.

MAJOR HEADLINES

• Oil Prices Rise on Iranian Conflict; Set To Rise Further On Potential Hormuz Strait Closure

The Strait of Hormuz is tiny in geography but huge in economic clout: roughly one-fifth (about 20%) of the world’s seaborne oil and a similar share of LNG transit the passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, so any disruption quickly removes a material slice of global supply. The U.S., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar all rely on the route to reach export markets mainly in Asia which makes any Tehran-related disruption an immediate shock to flows and prices.

Practically, when tanker traffic stalls you see three fast-moving cost channels: (1) spot crude prices spike as traders price scarcity, (2) shipping and insurance premiums surge (tankers re-route, take longer voyages and pay more for war-risk cover), and (3) refinery and jet-fuel chains feel the squeeze hitting airlines and adding near-term inflationary pressure to transportation and consumer goods. In the last 24 hours data showed hundreds of ships anchoring outside the strait and markets pricing a meaningful risk premium into Brent.

Models and banks warn how bad it could get: analysts and consultancies say a prolonged closure or sustained disruption could push Brent well into triple digits, with knock-on effects for inflation, central-bank policy calculations, and growth which is why traders moved fast to reprice risk as the crisis escalated. In short: the Strait isn’t just geography, it’s an economic fuse. Yahoo Finance

• Markets Are Going To Open Downwards; Stay The Course and Don’t Sell

Risk-off hit premarket futures: S&P 500 futures were down and U.S. index futures slid as investors braced for the fallout from the Iran strikes and renewed AI worries the setup the market saw in Sunday night trading was a clear risk pivot into Monday. On top of that, the FTSE 100 opened down roughly ~1%, reflecting the Europe-wide repricing of travel, banks and cyclicals as oil and risk premia rose. Those moves show how geopolitics can flip a soft, AI-driven market narrative into a classic oil-driven risk event almost overnight.

Travel and leisure got hit first: pre-market reads flagged big plunges in airline and tour operators for example, Lufthansa and TUI were indicated to open sharply lower (reports showed near-double-digit declines in premarket trade), as flight cancellations, airspace closures and rising jet-fuel costs translate into immediate revenue and margin pain. That’s why you saw travel, leisure and parts of financials under pressure before bell.

What to watch at the open: (1) volatility expect VIX and other risk gauges to spike, (2) sector dispersion energy and defence may rally while airlines, leisure and cyclical industrials fall, and (3) central bank chatter if oil keeps rising, inflation calculations and rate expectations will reprice quickly. This is a classic risk-off morning where headlines steer flows stay tactical. Economic Times

• US Government Ordered To Unwind From Anthropic’s AI; Not Before Being Used To Fire On Iran

The White House ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI technology a direct policy action that removes a slice of government demand and signals real leverage over safety posture and procurement eligibility. The move came as the company faced government pressure linked to its guardrail stance; compliance with procurement expectations is now a hard business constraint, not just an ethical choice.

Add to the mix a damaging report that the US military reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude in the Iran strikes context a link that dramatically complicates Anthropic’s public safety narrative and underscores how AI tools can be dual-use in theatre. The Guardian’s reporting on Claude’s military use injects a political and reputational vector into software procurement that will force companies and agencies to rethink both contracts and guardrails.

Bottom line: the Anthropic episode shows how procurement power can quickly reshape product promises. Losing federal business over safety stances is not hypothetical it’s an immediate revenue and strategic risk. For the broader AI ecosystem, the episode raises a thorny trade-off: firms must balance public safety commitments with the pragmatics of government contracts and strategic market access and regulators now have a direct lever to change corporate behaviour.  CBSnews

• BMW Is Deploying Humanoid Robots To Build Its Cars

BMW announced it will deploy humanoid robots on a German production line a first for the group joining a small but growing set of automakers experimenting with humanoid and bipedal automation to handle tasks that are unsafe, ergonomically hard, or variable in nature. BMW frames the move as focused, safety-first automation to boost quality and flexibility on specific tasks, not wholesale replacement of human workers.

Why it matters: humanoid robots promise flexibility that fixed automation can’t match they can move across stations, handle irregular parts, and perform human-scale interactions without retooling the whole line. For automakers facing labour shortages and high labour costs in Europe, that flexibility is attractive but the tech still needs maturity on reliability, speed and total-cost-of-ownership before it becomes mainstream. Expect pilots first, scale later.

The broader picture: robots at scale will shift factory economics, raise questions about retraining, and accelerate debates about industrial policy and worker protections in high-wage countries. BMW’s step is both symbolic and practical a test case for whether humanoid automation can deliver production gains without unacceptable social or operational trade-offs. Financial Times

Minor Headlines

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his successors have all been killed NYtimes

• Anthropic’s Claude rises to No. 1 in the App Store following Pentagon dispute Techcrunch

• Polymarket Iran volume topped $530M with insiders winning big Bloomberg

• Retail investors shun private credit funds after Blue Owl gating Financial Times 

• Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham Faces Financial Hit From Collapsed Broker Bloomberg

• China traders sell Hong Kong stocks on earnings frustration Bloomberg

• Pentagon partnered with OpenAI after Anthropic fallout Techcrunch

• Blackstone CEO Schwarzman took home a record $1.24B in 2025 Business standard