An unpredictable ceasefire means unpredictable prices

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charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at Fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. An unpredictable ceasefire means unpredictable prices. From Marketplace. I'm Sabri Benishore, in for Kimberly Adams. So just to recap where things stand, the U.S. says Iran violated a memorandum of understanding when it attacked three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and so the U.S. says it launched

airstrikes against 80 targets in Iran and canceled a waiver allowing Iran to sell oil. Iran says that and Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon were violated. and Iran targeted 85 U.S. military sites around the Persian Gulf. President Trump says the ceasefire is, quote, over, but the talks can continue. So that is where we are at. Oil prices are up 6 percent so far this morning, and we've got Dan Coatsworth here to talk about the economic ripple effects of it all. He's head of markets at the UK-based investment platform, A.J. Bell. Hi, Dan.

Are ships going through at all right now? So what's been happening is there has been some traffic, but part of the reason why Donner's, Trump has sort of said that seats fire over is because there were some attacks on commercial ships going through the straightforward moves a couple of days ago. So I think that the idea that, you know, the traffic is flowing freely, it was never going to return to normal at the click of a finger. There's been some traffic going through, but now, of course, the question mark is, is anything going to go through now? Consumers had been getting some relief at the gas pump. The average price of gas has fallen in recent.

weeks in the US down to $3.80 a gallon. How quickly does an escalation like what we're seeing take to show up at the gas pump? The normal trend is for as soon as oil prices to go up, you'd see immediately at the gas pump for those prices to go up. What you typically see is a lag for when oil prices fall. It still costs motorists a lot more before they can see those savings. So, yeah, unfortunately, you'll probably feel it in your pocket very soon. If you go up to fill up today, you'll see it. Of course, the other thing is that, you know, all prices having come back in recent weeks, that should have been positive for consumer sentiment,

for people's sort of feeling a bit more perhaps willing to go and spend money in the shops. It might be good for businesses thinking about investing in the future, because now these sort of oil prices are going back up again, And that sort of puts question mark as like, do I need to sort of worry, perhaps spend a little less when I go to shops and businesses are going, well, you know, we're back to uncertainty. Do I pause on any sort of major investment plans or any hiring plans? So this is quite a significant event.

And I think markets will be watching to see if this is just a one-day knee-jerk reaction or actually are we now back into the territory where we can see multiple days in a row where cost pressures go up again. Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at the UK-based investment platform, A.J. Bell. Dan, thank you so much. You're welcome.

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Limited time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await you at Dell.com slash deals. That's Dell.com slash deals. Chaos in the Strait of Hormuz is threatening. a new round of inflation pressure, and it turns out consumers have kind of been bracing for it. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has this survey where they ask people what they expect inflation to do, and yeah, they expect it to be bad, 3.7% over the next year. And that was when consumers were mildly optimistic about gas prices. Marketplaces, Henry Ep, reports on why we think prices might keep climbing and why it matters. Typically, if gas prices fall, consumers

temper their expectations for inflation in the near term. But that's not a lot of the market. But that's happening right now, says Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo, because we've just gotten so used to seeing one price increase after another. If it wasn't media headlines about tariff-related cost increases, then it was gasoline. If it wasn't egg prices, it's beef prices. And that's giving us the sense that prices are just going to keep rising, which is a big deal, because if we think prices are going to go up, that can cause them to go up. So inflation expectations are one of those places where belief can create its own reality. Justin Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

For example, consumers might go buy cars or appliances now if they think those things will get more expensive. That can drive up demand and push prices higher. Or workers will ask for raises to handle higher prices. My boss gives me the raise and all of a sudden my boss has to raise his or her prices. One difference between this current bout of inflation and the one we went through after the pandemic, there aren't as many open jobs, says Omer Sharif at Inflation Insights. This is not the kind of labor market where you can really kind of push wage demands like you were able to do in 2022 or 2021. And that could hold inflation back, Sharif says, though it's not an ideal situation for workers.

I'm Henry App for Marketplace. And in New York, I'm Sabree Benishore with the Marketplace Morning Report. From APM, American Public Media. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast about the messy business of climate solutions. To a lot of people, geoengineering might seem like a dangerous, outlandish way to play God. But some are embracing this sci-fi-inspired approach as a solution to the climate crisis. We're going to launch some balloons and send them into this strategy. A constellation of sunshades would cast an even dimming of shade across the entire Earth.

Investing that much in building anything in space creates a whole space economy. Listen to how we survive on your favorite podcast app.