Midday Mashup
Published
The surge in long-term borrowing costs that knocked stocks lower this morning has only intensified into the afternoon, with the 10-year Treasury yield near 5.32% ahead of a $39 billion auction that cleared at 5.300%, and the 30-year holding above its 2002 high. The UK 30-year gilt yield has pushed to 6.03%, the highest since 1998, while French yields stay elevated on political uncertainty even as the Finance Ministry insists there is no change to its issuance strategy. Germany's 2-year yield is the exception, falling as France and Italy's rise.
Energy security has moved from rhetoric to policy response. The IEA says member governments back accelerating the March stock-release program, with roughly 100 million barrels still pledged and diesel prioritized given members hold over 200 million barrels of it. France will release 10 million barrels of diesel from its own reserves, and the EU Energy Task Force is set to discuss further oil and diesel releases this afternoon. Iraq is meanwhile routing crude through Syria via truck convoys as Gulf shipping stays constrained, with Iran's ports chief noting 90% of the country's trade moves by sea.
Markets are showing a clear split rather than broad risk-off. Memory and storage names are among the day's strongest, with Sandisk up 3.9%, NetApp up 3.9% and Micron up 3.8%, while Corteva gains 3.6% and NRG Energy rises 4.9%. On the other side, space and defense-linked names are sharply lower: Voyager Technologies falls 8.9%, Curtiss-Wright drops 7.5%, Strategy and AST SpaceMobile are each down 6.7%, and Karman Holdings slides 6.5%.
Policy noise is adding to the cross-currents. Trump says the Federal Reserve "wants to see the country do badly" and that rates should fall, while Treasury Secretary Bessent argues mortgage rates and energy prices will ease once the Iran conflict ends. Trump also has a Putin call scheduled and says the US will soon "not need anything from anybody." Separately, the White House is rolling out automatic enrollment for Trump Accounts this afternoon, and the EU is working to get Beijing to accept a unilateral cap on Chinese hybrid imports after China rejected a voluntary-curb request.
With yields climbing across most of the developed world and energy supply responses accelerating in parallel, the market's attention is split between a financing shock and a physical-supply fix, and neither has yet resolved.