Crude’s “Crash Diet,” Tariff Tiff, and Hold off on a Hike? 9/8/26

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Kelly Evans (1:02)

Thank you very much, Scott. Soaring fuel prices and the cholesterol drug headwind are hitting the markets today, but AI stocks, especially open AI stocks, are boosting the NASDAQ 100 I'm Kelly Evans and welcome to The Exchange. WTI Oil, I don't have to tell you, $93 a barrel today after we already saw the highest gasoline prices ever for Labor Day, and diesel nearing $6 a gallon for the first time. It's putting some pressure on stocks, so treasury yields are actually lower today. That's interesting. We'll come back to that. You can see the S&P is down 4 tenths of a percent right now. The Dow is down more than 1 percent, and this is partly why. A big setback for a cholesterol drug weighing on the health stocks. A Novartis drug did reduce harmful LP little a cholesterol. Remember, we did that story on the show a few months back. But it didn't reduce cardiovascular events as a result in a late stage trial. That has Novartis down 14 percent, Amgen down almost 10 That's weighing on the Dow today.

Plus, some wild action in the AI trade. The release of OpenAI's super powerful Astra model is reshuffling the leadership decks and has Jensen Wong declaring that artificial general intelligence has arrived. We'll speak to a leading AI safety researcher about what happens when we can't turn off the bots. But let's begin with the action in Iran driving oil and fuel prices higher again today. Eamon Javers is in Washington with the latest. Eamon.

Eamon Javers (2:21)

Hey there, Kelly. The US military over the weekend struck three Iranian crude oil tankers in the Persian Gulf region. The US said this was in response to Iranian Revolutionary Guard launching ballistic missiles toward two US. Navy warships. The military said that the aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer targeted in that attack evaded the attacks and no Americans were harmed. CENTCOM issued a statement last night saying at least one of those Iranian vessels sank. They said, thanks to the precision and professionalism of American service members, the motor tanker Kylo sank in the Gulf of Oman today and joined Iran's Navy at the bottom of the sea.

Meanwhile, Houthi rebels in Yemen who are closely aligned with the Iranian government launched attacks against Saudi Arabia today, hitting oil infrastructure and utility targets and wounding as many as 70 people, according to local authorities. The Saudi Energy Ministry said that operations at oil facilities and utilities in the southern region of Saudi Arabia have been temporarily suspended as firefighters work to extinguish those blazes. And here in Washington, Kelly, the US. Treasury announced additional sanctions targeting the Iranian aviation industry this morning. I asked officials on a briefing call today if they are seeing any impact on Iranian decision making as a result of this stepped up economic pressure. One official said the US is seeing what he called anecdotal evidence that the campaign has been effective, but declined to share any details of that evidence. Kelly, back over to you.

Kelly Evans (3:51)

And so we have even a situation where our oil price is going up, but Iran's money is running out. In fact, I mean, that's what I read this morning, is that they might have only a couple months left. So it's this it's kind of a war of attrition, I guess. Who's going to blink first?

Eamon Javers (4:04)

Yeah, absolutely. It's eyeball to eyeball economically in both countries have enormous economic stakes on the line. What President Trump is betting is that the United States has a larger capacity to absorb the economic challenges. And he's doing that ahead of these midterm elections, which are crucial for his Republican Party. So he is gambling here, but so is the Iranian regime. And the question is, who's making the bigger gamble? We just don't know how long this is going to take to play out.