Global stocks are in freefall after a fresh surge in oil and gas prices deepened concerns that the war in the Middle East will fuel inflation and hit growth. We saw clear escalation in Iran conflicts yesterday given the South Pars gas field strike and Qatar LNG facilities strike, both of which have effectively shut down all hope for a quick resumption of LNG flows from the Gulf. Bonds also tumbled amid a second day of major central bank meetings, and just to keep everyone on the same pace, gold and bitcoin also tumbled, despite some de-escalation effort (Trump said that Israel will not conduct further attacks on Iran's main natural gas facility), but selloff pressure in global equities remains. Micron gave strong earnings and guidance yesterday after close (almost double the Street's Q3 EPS guidance with companies noting strong AI demand), but the stock has been down 5% amid global risk-off moves overnight and high CapEx concerns. Only oil (and specifically Brent now that the market is pricing in a US oil export ban), LNG and various energy products are soaring, and threatening to send the world into a stagflationary spiral. As of 8:00 am ET, futures for the S&P 500 slipped 0.3% after the US benchmark wiped out gains for the week in the previous session. Nasdaq futures were down 0.5% while European equities were hit especially hard 2.1%, heading for the lowest level this year, as European energy prices exploded. A benchmark for Asian stocks dropped 2.8%.

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are mostly lower (Alphabet -0.5%, Amazon -0.4%, Apple +0.3%, Nvidia -0.4%, Meta Platforms -0.2%, Microsoft +0.1%, Tesla -0.5%).