Stocks Soar, Oil Sinks After Iran Declares the Strait of Hormuz Open

Stocks are up. Oil is down. After Iran says the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping corridor

is now open. So where does that leave the U.S. war with Iran? The senior Trump administration

official says there may be more talks in Pakistan on Monday. And President Trump's feud with

Pope Leo is dividing American Catholics. Trump won with more than 50 percent of the Catholic vote.

It's not a group he can afford to lose and heading into the midterms Republicans don't want to

lose anyone at this point. It's Friday, April 17th. I'm Pierre Bienniume for the Wall Street Journal

filling in for Alex Osula. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business

stories that move the world today. We begin in Iran, whose foreign minister today said the

Strait of Hormuz is now, quote, completely open to commercial ships. But President Trump said

the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports would remain. There's still uncertainty for shippers

in the region. They want clear assurances from Iran that it won't attack ships before

resuming normal traffic through the Strait. Joining me now is National Security Correspondent

Shelby Holiday. Shelby, this is the third time you've joined us this week to talk about this conflicts

where things are developing quickly. Get us up to speed. What's going on now in the waters

around Iran? It's a really fluid situation. Even though Iran's foreign minister said the

Strait of Hormuz is open, ships can transit freely. It's a little bit unclear if anything's actually

changed. Our understanding is that Iran is still asking ships to go through its preferred route

through a corridor that they've established. In some cases, even charged tolls for ships to go

through. And then on the U.S. side, nothing has changed with the respect to the blockade. The U.S.

is still maintaining this economic pressure. President Trump welcomed this announcement by Iran

that the Strait was open. And there was some talk about clearing minds. But so far, shipping

companies are nervous to move through the Strait because they want more of a guarantee that

hostilities have ended and that the threats do not exist. And the ceasefire between the two countries

is set to expire Tuesday. What do we know about negotiations between these two sides?

The highly enriched uranium or HEU seems to be the biggest sticking point. At least when you're

listening to President Trump, that seems to be the one thing that he's very focused on.

And he has said that the U.S. will go in and get what he calls the nuclear dust

Iran's remaining nuclear material so that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And then you also

have these key issues of Iran's missile and drone stockpiles. And also their support for proxy

groups. President Trump has said that he will not lift the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports unless

Iran agrees to all of these things the U.S. is asking. That was Wall Street Journal national security

correspondent Shelby Holliday. Thank you, Shelby. Thank you. Talks between the U.S. and Iran haven't

officially been scheduled. But a senior Trump administration official says they're likely to take

place Monday in Pakistan. What's news in markets host Amani Moeze says hopes for a resolution

to the war again lifted U.S. stocks today. The big news of today is obviously Iran declaring

the state of our moves open. And whether or not ships are actually passing through the waterway,

markets are seeing that as a sign that tensions in the region are thawing and we're perhaps

moving closer to some sort of resolution. Investors are really looking past the war. And once

you start doing that, they start seeing positive signs elsewhere. Thanks reporting that consumers are

strong tech companies saying AI demand remained strong. So there's a lot of really bullish signs for

investors to push the markets higher. The Nasdaq rose for the 13th straight trading day,

the longest winning streak since 1992. It closed up one and a half percent today,

while the S&P closed at a record for the third time this week. The Dow today climbed 1.8 percent

and closed at its highest level since before the war. And oil tumbled with the international

benchmark Brent Crude diving more than 9 percent to about $90 a barrel.

Coming up, the White House and Anthropic might be making up just as the company has a powerful

new AI model on its hands. And we exclusively report that baseball San Diego Padres are nearing a

sale and it could be one for the books. That's after the break.

President Trump has gotten into a fight with Pope Leo, a fellow American. The Pope has publicly

condemned the war in Iran and taken a few digs at the president. Yesterday he had this to say during

a speech in Cameroon. Jesus told us, blessed are the peacemakers, but war to those who manipulate

religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain,

dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.

Trump, meanwhile, has criticized the Pope, saying he's catering to the left and being,

quote, weak on crime. He also shared and later deleted an AI-generated image of himself as a

Christlike figure, which also caused an uproar. The dispute is testing the loyalties of the roughly

53 million Roman Catholics in the US, some of whom spoke to Wall Street Journal reporter Chris

Marr. Chris, what did you hear from some of the Catholics you spoke to? The people I spoke to

and I think this was consistent with the other reporters. We found that some people were continuing

to support President Trump. Others were really confused and even appalled by some of his recent

criticisms of Pope Leo. One person I spoke to here in Pittsburgh was Joyce Rothermel.

She's very focused on social issues within the church and has not been a fan of President

Trump to begin with and this did not change any of her views. She is, however, very supportive of

Pope Leo. I'm so grateful that the Holy Father of Pope Leo has the courage to do his job,

which is to speak up on issues of morality and issues of theology in such a forthright way.

Another person that we spoke to was Joseph Alessandro and he was in the camp where Catholics

feel that the Pope may be overstepping his bounds by getting into politics. They both have did

different views and that's why politics should stay away from their religion.

You can't mix politics with religion. How important are Catholic voters to Trump's coalition?

They're pretty important. Both the President and the Pope have been pretty popular among American

Catholics. Trump won with more than 50% of the Catholic vote. They've complained about his social

media posting sometimes of this AI-generated image that he posted recently. But they've been

willing to look past those things in the past because he made good on some of his campaign pledges

to do things like a point to Supreme Court justices who ended up overturning Roe v. Wade. It's not a

group he can afford to lose and heading into the midterms of Republicans don't want to lose anyone

at this point. That was Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Marr. Chris, thanks so much. Thank you.

The journal has learned that anthropic CEO Dario Amade was scheduled to meet with White House

chief of staff Suzy Wiles today in a high profile effort to ease tensions with the Trump administration.

The Artificial Intelligence Company has been fighting with the administration for months

over guardrails surrounding the Pentagon's use of its clawed AI models. Anthropics latest AI

model Mythos is now providing a reason for peace talks. Anthropics says Mythos is so good at finding

and exploiting software bugs that it could be a cybersecurity risk. So for now Anthropic has

released a preview version to companies and organizations that run critical infrastructure

and Anthropic has been briefing government officials about minimizing harms.

We're exclusively reporting that the Justice Department is preparing to file an

anti-trust lawsuit against some of the country's biggest egg producers, including

Cal main foods over allegations they coordinated pricing. The lawsuit would target companies that

raised egg prices in 2024 and 2025 due to a supply shortage attributed to avian flu.

The egg companies declined to comment on the possible lawsuit. They have argued the price

changes are a classic case of supply and demand where limited supply and higher demand lead to higher

prices. A consortium of French telecom companies has bid $24 billion for all T-scroops French

telecommunications operations. The companies said today that they are an exclusive talks.

The deal would reshape France's telecom sector, cutting the number of major operators from

four to three. And it would dismantle a major part of French Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahis

once sprawling business empire. And Ford is recalling up to 1.4 million F-150 pickups because

the trucks can unexpectedly downshift into second gear, which could cause drivers to lose control

of the vehicle. The recall affects certain 2015 to 2017 trucks.

And finally in sports.

That's from MLB TV's stream of yesterday's game between the San Diego Padres and the Seattle

Mariners. The Padres went on to win that home game. And today we're exclusively reporting that

the team is nearing a deal to sell for a record price. Private equity billionaire Jose Feliciano

and his wife, Kwanza Jones, want the Padres for about $3.9 billion. The deal is expected to be

announced next week. It's the highest ever valuation for a major league baseball team,

including hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen's $2.4 billion purchase of the New York Metz in 2020.

And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up

what's news in markets. That on Sunday we'll be discussing how Democrats and Republicans are

maneuvering for position ahead of the midterms. That's in what's news Sunday. And we'll be back

with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Lewis with supervising

producer Tali Arbel. Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer.

Chris Sinsley is our deputy editor. And I'm PRBNMA. Thanks for listening.