Trump Talks, Stocks Rally, Oil Skids - Heard on the Street Recap -- WSJ

Dow Jones03-24

By Heard Editors

What Happened in Markets Today

Oil prices dropped, and stocks rallied after President Trump said the U.S. will postpone strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days. Brent crude futures fell sharply, trading below $100 a barrel for the first time in days. All three major U.S. stock indexes pushed higher.

Trump and Iran sent conflicting signals on discussions to end the war. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the two countries had "very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East." He later said Iran wants to "settle" the war. Iran's Foreign Ministry denied Tehran was in talks with the U.S., according to state media, but said countries in the region were trying to get diplomacy going.

Economists scrambled to revise their U.S. outlooks. EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco sees a 40% probability of a recession and said "those odds could rapidly rise in the event of a more prolonged or severe Middle East conflict." Goldman Sachs sees a 30% probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months, up 5 percentage points from earlier estimates.

Two U.S. senators introduced a bipartisan bill to ban prediction-market exchanges from listing contracts related to sporting events. The legislation targets Kalshi and Polymarket's U.S. platform, now regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It also seeks to prohibit "casino-style games" from being listed on the platforms. Shares of betting site DraftKings and FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment rose 1% and 4%, respectively.

David Simon died Sunday after a cancer diagnosis in 2024. The longtime Simon Property Group chief executive turned his family's real-estate business into the country's largest mall owner. He was 64 years old. Effective Monday, the company's board named his son Eli Simon as CEO

This analysis comes from the Journal's Heard on the Street team. Subscribe to their free daily afternoon newsletter here.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 23, 2026 17:25 ET (21:25 GMT)

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