A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., April 16, 2026.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
Markets march on to new records as the warring sides in the Middle East signal a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, but could the ever-shifting winds of geopolitics guided by U.S. President Donald Trump’s mixed messaging blow this fragile peace?
Read on!
What you need to know today
Is peace finally coming to the Middle East?
There are glimmers of hope, as U.S. President Donald Trump said that the war should end soon, while also announcing that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to a 10-day ceasefire on Thursday stateside.
Combine this with the reports that the U.S. and Iran could potentially hold a second round of talks in Pakistan, and an end to the fighting appears in sight.
Israel halting its attacks on Lebanon has been a key condition for U.S.-Iran negotiations to restart, the speaker of Iran’s parliament has said.
But as we all know, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and peace is arguably still fragile. Brent prices are still close to $100, and the critical Strait of Hormuz still remains closed.
Markets are firmly optimistic and investors would hope the stock rally does not be derailed by geopolitics. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose to fresh all-time highs on Thursday, with the tech-heavy index posting its 12th consecutive positive session, notching its longest winning run since 2009.
Asia markets were a bit cautious, with stocks mixed in early trading.
On the corporate front, investors saw shares of chip giants TSMC and ASML fall even as the two companies reported better than expected results, highlighting how high investors’ expectations are for the sector.
A similar story was also seen in Netflix, with its shares dropping despite the company posting revenue that exceeded expectations.
Shares fell 9% in extended trading on Thursday after the streaming giant released its first-quarter earnings report and announced that Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and current chairman, would exit the board in June when his term expires.
And finally…
Retail traders pile into Allbirds after odd AI pivot. History shows it won’t end well
Retail traders stampeded into Allbirds after the troubled shoemaker slapped an artificial intelligence label on its business, a set-up that market history suggests rarely ends well once the initial hype fades.
Shares of the company skyrocketed more than 800% at one point on Wednesday after the firm detailed shocking plans to rebrand as NewBird AI and shift toward compute infrastructure.
“The market is not pricing risk. It is pricing narrative. It is pricing the word ‘AI’ the same way it once priced the word ‘blockchain’ and before that the suffix ‘.com,'” Mark Malek, CIO at Siebert Financial, said in a note.
“This is not analysis. This is pattern-matching on a buzzword by investors who have watched AI-adjacent stocks go parabolic and do not want to miss the next leg. The signal is not subtle.”