April 2 Market Overview: Trump's "Withdraw from Iran in 2-3 Weeks" speech ignites Q2 kickoff, the world awaits that sentence at 9 PM tonight

The deadline set by Trump for attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure is April 6—four days from now.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

U.S. stocks: Continue to rebound

At the start of Q2, it’s up for a second straight day.

The Dow rose 224 points (+0.48%) to close at 46,565. The S&P 500 rose 0.72% to 6,575. The Nasdaq rose 1.16% to 21,840. The Russell 2000 small-cap index rose 0.64% to 2,512. The VIX fear index fell further to 24.54, shrinking by nearly 6 points in total compared with last week’s peak.

The underlying logic behind this rally is no longer just “ceasefire news”—it’s that Trump has, for the first time, provided a specific timeline.

At a White House press conference, he told reporters that U.S. forces would leave Iran “in two to three weeks.” The key wording is that he added “no matter whether there’s an agreement.” It’s the first time since the 35-day war that Washington has unhooked a troop withdrawal from a condition variable of “negotiations reaching an outcome,” turning it into a standalone, time-driven commitment. What the market hears is: the war is entering a countdown—regardless of whether Tehran signs.

Meanwhile, Trump posted another message on Truth Social, claiming that “the Iranian president has requested a ceasefire,” but immediately attached a condition: Hormuz must be “open, free, and accessible,” otherwise the U.S. will not consider it. The coexistence of these two posts forms the core tension in market sentiment for the day—there are expectations of an endgame, but also an anchored set of conditions.

Sector rotation: winners and losers switched places

The most unusual scene from yesterday happened in the energy sector. The S&P 500 Energy sector plunged more than 4% in a single day, becoming the biggest laggard of the day—for the first time since the war began, there was clear evidence of “ceasefire expectations knocking down energy stocks out of the gate.” The logic closes the loop like this: war ends → Hormuz reopens → oil supply rises → oil prices fall → energy companies’ earnings face downward pressure. WTI fell 2.4% yesterday to about $99 per barrel, formally breaking below the $100 mark; Brent slid in tandem to about $101.

Technology stocks took over the lead. Intel was the most eye-catching stock yesterday. The company announced a $14.2 billion share buyback of its main stake in Ireland’s Fab 34 wafer fabrication plant—an industry-interpreted signal of “CPU revival” and a return to financial discipline, and the stock price surged accordingly. The Nasdaq kept up strong momentum for a second consecutive day overall, and technology ETF (XLK) continued to benefit under a “rate-cut narrative revival” logic as ceasefire expectations improved.

Two surprise posts: SpaceX and OpenAI

Yesterday also had two major pieces of news unrelated to the war factors—worth recording separately.

Bloomberg first reported that SpaceX has secretly filed IPO documents with the U.S. SEC. It’s one of the most anticipated IPOs in the crypto and tech markets in years. Details on valuation and offering timing have not been disclosed yet. EchoStar holds about 3% equity in SpaceX, and after the news broke, the stock clearly jumped.

OpenAI announced it has completed $122 billion in funding, with its valuation rising to $852 billion—surpassing the previously teased figure. This round is the largest single-tech-company financing amount in history, and the funds will continue to be injected into AI infrastructure buildout. At the same time, Oracle announced layoffs of several thousand people. Compared side by side, the money for AI is still pouring in frantically—but it’s already entered a stage of “the giants are eating more, and other companies can’t squeeze in.”

Oil prices and gold

Oil prices: Falling below $100, but don’t celebrate too soon

WTI closed yesterday at about $99 per barrel, and Brent at about $101. This is the first time since the war broke out that WTI has closed below the $100 round-number level. On the surface, this is a major psychological breakthrough—the market is starting to price in in advance the expectation that “the war will end within weeks.”

But there’s a detail worth recording: oil prices have never truly returned to pre-war levels. Before the war began (late February), WTI was around $57. Even if it falls back to $99 now, it’s still about 74% higher than pre-war. Even if a ceasefire agreement lands in the next two weeks, the oil market’s supply recovery will still take time: damaged Middle Eastern infrastructure needs repair, renewed operator confidence needs time, and rerouted shipping lanes via the Cape of Good Hope are still operating—cancellations take time as well. The head of the International Energy Agency, Birol, warned yesterday that even with a ceasefire arriving, a full normalization of the energy market “may take months.”

Gold: Inflation expectations fade, easing pressure on gold—but the structural rebound is only just starting

Gold surged yesterday by 2.25% to about $4,783 per ounce, the strongest single-day gain this month.

The logic is clear: oil prices fall → inflation expectations cool → pressure for Fed rate hikes eases → expectations for real interest rates decline → demand for gold, a non-yielding asset, rises. This chain is perfectly symmetrical with the chain that suppressed gold throughout March—only the direction is reversed.

In terms of price levels, gold has rebounded more than 15% from its mid-March corrective low (around $4,100), but it’s still about 15% away from the historical peak at the end of January of $5,600. This room to move is gold’s most core trading range as expectations for the war’s end gradually get realized.

Cryptocurrencies

According to CoinGecko data, Bitcoin rose mildly yesterday with the broader market, moving within the $67,800 to $68,500 range. It tracked market sentiment but with restraint in magnitude.

The real protagonist in the crypto space yesterday was a warning unexpectedly linked to the war narrative: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement naming 18 U.S. tech giants—including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet—as “lawful strike targets,” on the grounds that they provide technical support for U.S.-Israel military actions.

The crypto implication of this message is that if tech infrastructure becomes a target for attacks, the potential risk of disruption to the compute supply chain and global cloud services would increase. And within this narrative framework, Bitcoin’s decentralized nature finds a new “meaning of existence” precisely here. This logic has not yet been fully reflected in prices, but it deserves to be included in the long-term observation outlook.

Morgan Stanley quietly launched a low-fee Bitcoin ETF yesterday, with a fee rate clearly below the market average. This is yet another signal that the traditional Wall Street asset management giant is continuing to “get closer” to Bitcoin. During this window in the market while it waits for an end to the war, the product layout on the institutional side has been moving forward quietly.

Today’s focus: Market aftershocks following Trump’s speech; countdown to April 6

At 9:00 p.m. last night, Trump delivered a televised address to the nation from the White House

In his evening speech, Trump announced that Iranian President Pezeshkian has officially applied to the U.S. for a ceasefire—an overture from Iran that is, so far, the closest to direct diplomatic engagement. The content of the speech is being digested by the market, and today’s trading will be the first window to price in what he said.

There are three key points to watch: first, whether Trump presented a new framework of conditions; second, whether Iran’s IRGC issued a rebuttal statement; third, whether the actual status of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz has changed in any way.

Today’s data calendar

Today (April 2) has a fairly dense schedule of economic data: ISM Manufacturing PMI (March) and ADP private sector employment report (March). These two releases, together with the nonfarm payrolls employment report (March) scheduled for Friday, will collectively sketch the real intensity of the labor market impact on the U.S. under the war shock.

Net nonfarm payroll losses of 92,000 in February were among the worst monthly figures since the pandemic. Whether March data can rebound is a key signal that determines the Fed’s policy path—also an important part of figuring out how much cost this war is truly imposing on the U.S. economy.

April 6 deadline: the final window

The deadline set by Trump for attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure is April 6—four days from now. No matter what the speech content ends up being, this date will become the main axis of market volatility over the next four days.

Right now, the situation is: ceasefire negotiations have a new public signal, but Hormuz still hasn’t been able to operate normally, and the IRGC is still issuing an antagonistic posture outward. This war is standing at a genuine crossroads—neither direction is simply good news or bad news. It’s just that for the market, the cost of one direction will be much smaller than the cost of the other direction.