A commercial vessel is seen off the coast of Dubai on April 20, 2026. <\/p>\n
– | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire, in theory, is supposed to do one thing: stop the hostilities. The version unfolding in the Middle East is testing that definition.<\/p>\n
But shaky ceasefire or not, markets continue their march upward, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting fresh records.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Separately, CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE<\/a> event enters its second day in Singapore, with key participants including former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and SGX CEO Loh Boon Chye.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enjoy!<\/p>\n What you need to know today<\/p>\n A ceasefire is generally interpreted as a pause on all military action from two warring sides. <\/p>\n However, in the case of the conflict in the Middle East those assumptions stand challenged. Is it really a ceasefire if <\/a>Iran is firing at ships, seizing them <\/a>in the Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. still maintains a military blockade and has targeted Iranian vessels? <\/p>\n Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf<\/a>, Iran’s parliament speaker, said “reopening the Strait of Hormuz is impossible” as long as the U.S. blockade is in place.<\/p>\n One might say it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat, where the ceasefire seems to be both dead and alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oil prices jumped in response <\/a>to the developments, with international benchmark\u00a0Brent crude<\/a>\u00a0rising more than 3% to close at $101.91 per barrel on Wednesday, while U.S.\u00a0West Texas Intermediate<\/a>\u00a0futures advanced more than 3% to settle at $92.96 per barrel. Both were trading slightly higher early Thursday.<\/p>\n U.S. stock market shrugged off<\/a> the struggles in the strait, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hitting new records amid a slew of earnings reports.\u00a0In Asia, South Korea and Japanese benchmark indexes hit record highs<\/a> in early Thursday trading.<\/p>\n South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix posted another quarter of record profit<\/a> and revenue on Thursday, as prices for its products continue to surge amid strong AI demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Lim Hui Jie\u00a0<\/p>\n And finally…<\/p>\n Kevin Warsh gave his preferred way for measuring inflation. It could come back to bite him<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Kevin Warsh<\/a>, President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>‘s nominee for\u00a0Federal Reserve<\/a>\u00a0chair, told lawmakers that he would like the central bank to change its strategy for measuring inflation.<\/p>\n The Fed has long favored the core price index for personal consumption expenditures, known in short as the\u00a0core PCE<\/a>, because it excludes volatile food and energy prices.<\/p>\n But Warsh wants to go a step further, by rooting out extreme price shocks when calculating overall inflation.<\/p>\n “The measures I prefer are looking at things that are called trimmed averages,” Warsh added. “We take out all of the tail-risks, all of the one-off items, and we ask ourselves whether the generalized change in prices is having second-order effects on the economy.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Alex Harring<\/p>\n