Stocks, Oil Whipsaw With Iran Deadline in Focus

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific.

Financial markets swung amid uncertainty ahead of President Donald Trump's Iran deadline, with tentative ceasefire signals offset by the risk of an escalation in the conflict. Brent crude trimmed its opening gains to trade just under $110 a barrel as markets remained volatile before Trump's Tuesday 8 p.m. Eastern Time cutoff. US equity-index futures erased initial losses to trade little changed. We speak to Paul Dobson, Bloomberg's Executive Editor for Asia Markets.

Plus - President Donald Trump insisted that freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz be part of any deal to end the Middle East war and escalated threats to obliterate key Iranian infrastructure if his terms aren't met before a Tuesday deadline. Trump said Monday that talks with Iran are "going well" and that reopening the strait as "a very big priority." The president in recent weeks has said an agreement on the strait wasn't among his core prerequisites for ending the conflict. "We have to have a deal that's acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil and everything," he said at a White House news conference. For more, we heard from Elisa Ewers, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She spoke to Bloomberg's Paul Allen and Shery Ahn on the Asia Trade. 

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