SpaceX IPO as it happened

**Charlene Young** (0:09)
Hello and welcome to the AJ Bell Money and Markets podcast. I'm Charlene Young and joining me today is Danni Hewson. Hi Danni.

**Danni Hewson** (0:17)
Hi Charlene, hi everyone. Coming up today, we have the latest on the Middle East peace deal and why it matters for markets, oil prices and your money. The latest UK inflation figures for May are out. Stay tuned to find out if they've changed interest rate expectations for what might happen in the UK throughout the rest of 2026

**Charlene Young** (0:40)
In company news, the Pizza Hut chain has been sold and as promised, we'll review the IPO it feels everyone has been talking about and that is SpaceX. Who bought in, what's happened since and a bit of fun with some trillionaire maths.

**Danni Hewson** (0:54)
Ten years on from the Brexit vote, we will review the impact on people's finances and also reveal why some drivers could be paying more than they need for their car insurance.

**Charlene Young** (1:06)
We've got two interviews for you this week. Well, one full interview and a teaser of another. Danni chats to Emily Whiting, investment specialist at JP Morgan, about why the Korean stock market has been having such a good run this year. We'll also bring you a little teaser of part of Dan Potsworth's recent interview with Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square.
But let's start with the Middle East and news of a peace deal. Details are a little thin on the ground of the time that we're recording the pod, as the deal itself isn't actually set to be signed until Friday. Danni, can you run us through what's happened to markets and obviously, of course, the oil price as well, since we had that announcement sort of late last Sunday night?

**Danni Hewson** (1:50)
I'm going to start with the oil price because I have wanted an oil price klaxon since this all started back in February and nobody has delivered, which makes me very sad indeed. I'm just going to do my own drum roll, please.
Yes, would you believe, I'm just going to bring it up now. Would you believe the oil price now starts with a seven, which has been unheard of since the 28th of February. Just looking now, 79.88 for a barrel of Brent crude. Now, it's really important to note that actually, earlier today, it was much lower than that, and it's actually gone back up by 1% just in the last couple of hours, and that is because, as expected, Donald Trump has thrown another bit of a curveball. He's been talking to G7 leaders, and he has said that the memorandum of understanding with Iran isn't final, and if he doesn't like what's in it, he might start bombing again. So even though markets have been positive, optimistic, excited, I think one thing that we have learned from Donald Trump 2 is you don't believe it until it is signed, sealed, and more importantly, delivered. And even then, he can just rip it all up and start again. So yeah, we've seen the oil price come down, down, down, down, down, up until the last couple of hours, and it has gone up a fraction. Importantly, I think it's really worth stating that we're still way above where we were before this conflict all started to happen.
And as I said, markets, yeah, they have been positive. We have seen a couple of record highs for the Dow Jones. That is with financial institution banks and also industrials doing particularly well.
The FTSE 100 has performed less well than lots of other markets. And that's because, of course, it's made up of an awful lot of oil majors. We've got BP in there, we've got Shell in there, and also defense stocks. They have been sliding at the expectation that obviously, if conflict begins to be resolved, then maybe conflict between Russia and Ukraine, there's a Freudian slip there, Russia and Ukraine might also finally get resolved somehow if the United States maybe starts looking at that rather than just focusing all on Iran. But we've also seen a bit of a mixed picture from the NASDAQ and the S&P because they were weighed down yesterday by tech stocks. Today, we've seen certainly some Asian markets like Korea's KOSPI back up and really running. It looks like the potential that we will see the S&P and the NASDAQ open more strongly today. But in amongst all of this, of course, we have the Federal Reserve meeting, and there'll be an awful lot of attention paid to that. What Kevin Warsh says about the path ahead for interest rates in the United States, and I was just taking a look earlier, and I think it's something like a 44 percent expectation that there will be an interest rate hike in December. Though, with everything that's going on at the moment, inflation might not peak as high as we might have expected. If this is resolved, if ships continue to exit the Strait of Hormuz, because we have seen a bit of movement there. So I think, cautiously optimistic.