Stocks Rally On Hopes Iran Ceasefire Will Hold

0:00Welcome to Risk Reversals Market Matrix, your AI-generated podcast curated by Guy Adami and Dan Nathan breaking down the day's most impactful stock market and business headlines. I'm your host, Brunson, and all of today's market data is provided by FACSET. It's Thursday, April 9th, and these are your top stories. Stocks rose for a second straight session Thursday, with the S&P 500 up 0.6%. The NASDAQ composite gaining 0.8%, and the Dow Jones industrial average climbing around 275 points, as investors held on to optimism around a fragile U.S. Iran ceasefire. Oil prices also moved higher, with West Texas Intermediate rising 5% to near $100, and Brent Crude topping $97, reflecting ongoing uncertainty around the straight-of-formos. Markets were supported by gains in names like Meta following its latest AI model launch, alongside strength in defensive stocks, including Walmart and utilities like Constellation Energy.

1:04While the ceasefire has improved sentiment, limited traffic through the straight and continued military tensions suggest risks remain, with investors also watching inflation data, labor market stability, and corporate earnings for further direction. More on that Meta and Core Weave deal that had both stocks moving higher today, Meta expanded its AI push, with an additional $21 billion commitment, adding to a prior $14.2 billion deal as demand for compute surges. According to CNBC, Core Weave, which operates data centers powered by NVIDIA GPUs, is becoming a key partner for AI players that still need external capacity, despite building their own infrastructure, while also diversifying away from Microsoft. This as Bloomberg reports that Amazon is exploring selling its in-house chips to external customers, as CEO Andy Jassy says, demand for AI compute continues to outstrip supply. The company's Silicon Unit, which powers Amazon Web Services, is already on pace to generate more than $20 billion annually,

2:06and could reach a $50 billion run rate as a standalone business, highlighting how tight supply is pushing new entrants to compete with NVIDIA in AI chips. Let's get to some other AI headlines catching our attention. That's where the money is going right now. Into chips, data centers, and raw compute. But a financial time's opinion piece by Christian Klein argues that's not where the value ultimately ends up. The SAP CEO says while value may initially shift to infrastructure and models, it tends to move back to the application layer, where software drives real business outcomes, with enterprise software embedding the data, context, and governance AI alone can't replicate. Still, the so-called SaaS apocalypse is hitting the group hard, with the IGV software ETF, down more than 25% year-to-date, and trading at its lowest level since 2024. And that tension is starting to show up elsewhere. Investors are growing increasingly concerned that private credit funds are heavily exposed

3:06to software companies that could face disruption from AI, prompting more than 20 billion dollars in redemption requests in the first quarter across firms like Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, and KKR. Managers have only been able to meet about half of those withdrawals, as concerns build around aging buyouts and rising default risk. The AI buildout is accelerating globally, but Bloomberg reports it's increasingly running into real-world infrastructure constraints. In the US, a surge in data center demand is being slowed by shortages of critical electrical equipment, like transformers and grid components, delaying or canceling projects, despite massive capital commitments. At the same time, open AI is pausing its Stargate Data Center project in the UK, citing high energy costs and regulatory challenges, as barriers to long-term investment. Even as billions flow into AI, scaling the infrastructure depends on physical inputs, power, equipment, and supply chains that are proving harder to secure. Bloomberg reports that Anthropic completed a secondary

4:11share sale, but demand from investors outpaced supply, as employees chose to sell fewer shares than expected. The tender offer was priced at the company's recent $350 billion valuation. Though the total deal size came in below the roughly $6 billion investors had lined up. Many employees appear to be holding onto equity ahead of a potential IPO later this year. Signalling confidence in the company's growth. That optimism is backed by rapid momentum, with Anthropics annualized revenue reportedly jumping from $19 billion to over $30 billion within a month. That's your risk-reversal market matrix. Be sure to follow us to get alerts on new episodes every day. All of the articles mentioned on today's podcast can be found in the show description. To get Guy Adami and Dan Nathan's Market Analysis, on these topics and more, listen to Market Call on Risk Reversals YouTube page Monday through Thursday. Story Curation by Risk Reversal, Scripts by PerplexityPro, Voice by 11 Labs. I'm Brunson. Thanks for listening.