Oil Gains as Middle East Tensions Rise; Apple Watch Update
On today's podcast:
1) The US launched more strikes on Yemen’s Houthis overnight as the Iran-backed militant group continues to roil global shipping markets with attacks around the Red Sea.
2) Oil nudged higher as twin incidents in the Middle East underlined the region’s rapidly escalating tensions, which have already snarled global shipping and carry the potential for interruptions to crude production.
3) Apple Inc. will begin selling versions of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches without a blood oxygen feature in the US, following a legal setback in its patent dispute with Masimo Corp.
Full Transcript:
Good morning. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Here are the stories we're following today. We begin with rising tensions in the Middle East. The US carried out more strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen overnight, as the Iran backed militant group continues to go after red Sea shipping. This is at least the fourth US led attack on the Houthis in the past week. Major General pat Ryder speaks for the Pentagon. The objective here was to disrupt and degrade Hoothy capabilities to conduct attacks, and we believe that overall, in terms of the scope and the number of strikes that we took, we have degraded their ability to attack. Pentagon spokesman pat Ryder says the US targeted fourteen Hoothi missiles that were primed for launch. Meanwhile, Nathan Pakistan's military has carried out strikes against what it describes as terrorist hideouts in Iran. The move came after Iran attacked a separatist group in a Pakistani province along its border. Bloomberg's Middle East Economics and Government editor Paul Wallace says the escalator is very unusual. The two have a complicated but normally quite cordial relationship. This is pretty much unprecedented what we're seeing now with both of them striking each other's territory. Of course, they're not going for the other government as it were, They are going for what they call our terrorists in each other's territory. But I think what we're seeing is this is just the latest arena opening up in the wider Milesian conflict that began in early October when Hamas attack Israel, and Bloomberg's Paul Wallace says Pakistan is recalling it's envoy from Tehran. Well here in these latest incidents in the Middle East have oil on the rise. This morning, checking Nimax crewed, it's up eight tens of one percent. It's seventy three dollars fifteen cents per barrel. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency says global oil markets are likely to remain reasonably well supplied this year, provided there are no major disruptions. Well, Nathan and the political front at home, the long awaited conversation between President Biden and congressional leaders over Ukraine AID did not yield results in Bloomberg said. Baxter has the story the GOP issue going in border border border at House Speaker Mike Johnson says that's what he talked about. I told the President what I have been saying for many months, and that is that we must have change at the border, substantive policy shame and says that was not in the offing. Different picture from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. If we don't come to Ukraine's aid that the consequences for America around the globe would be nothing short of devastating, and President Biden says he told congressional leaders that they must act now on the border. At Baxter Bloomberg Radio, all right, ed, thanks. Secretary of Saint Anthony Blincoln has been representing the US at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. He left Switzerland yesterday, but not before a delay on the tarmac. There was an oxygen leak on his Boeing jet and it couldn't be fixed, so a smaller jet had to be flown in from Brussels to take b Lincoln back to Washington. Many of his aides and members of the press pool had to fly commercially well. Speaking of DeVos, Nathan Bloomberg News has been speaking all week to executives and politicians from around the world at the World Economic Forum This morning, we caught up with the CEO of Barclays Csvakata Krishnan defended his firm's investment banking division. We are the leading investment bank domicide outside of the United States, and what I find in my travels, especially in the world and the geopolitical world in which we live, is people are looking for a partner in a counterpart who's not just a US bank. Cs Venkata Krishnan ed of that Barclays has been reviewing its strategy for months. He spoke with Bloomberg's franc In Laqua at the World Economic Forum in Davos. All turning to Wall Street, Karen investors are waiting for another key economic report as doubt grows on when the Fed will start cutting rates. Let's get the latest with Bloomberg's John Tucker. John and Nathan Jobless claims could be particularly telling now that seasonal layoffs around the holidays are largely complete. Bloomberg Economics says there have been plenty of signs the labor market is weakening fast. This data comes as traders have recalibrated their wagers and the timing and extent of indust rate cuts. The swaps pricing shows the chances of a FED rate cut at March. Slip blows sixty percent for the first time since the middle of December. That's down from eighty percent just on Friday. The poly see sensitive two year yield jump fourteen basis points on Wednesday, its biggest one day gain since June. I'm John Tucker, Bloomberg Radio. All right, John, thanks. In corporate news, Apple we'll sell it smartwatches without a blood oxygen feature in the United States after it lost a legal dispute with the health technology company Massimo. The new models will still include the blood oxygen monitoring tool, but it won't function. And in another blow to Apple, Karen Netflix says it's not planning to launch an app for the Vision Pro headset. This is a sizeable omission for the thirty five hundred dollars technology, which debuts next month. Apple's banking on entertainment content to help market the Vision Pro. Netflix is a must have streaming service for many consumers, and staying in the tech sector here Nathan Cheryl's sen Berg, we'll step down from the board of Meta Platforms this year. We get more from Bloomberg's Doug Prisner. Sandberg joined Facebook in two thousand and eight as second to co founder Mark Zuckerberg, and she served as chief operating officer, helping to grow Facebook from a promising internet startup into a digital advertising powerhouse. Sandberg often served as the public face of the company, particularly among policymakers and regulators. She left the COO roll in twenty twenty two, but remained a director. At the same time, Sandberg began spending more time on philanthropic efforts. Now she'll serve as an advisor to Meta. It's unclear if Meta plans to replace Sandberg on the board. In New York Time, Doug Prisoner, Bloomberg Radio Hall, Ry Nathan, Thanks, it's time now for a look at some of the other stories making news around the world. For that, we're joined by Bloomberg's Amy Morris. Amy, good morning, Good morning, Karen. The Senate is set to hold a series of votes on the final passage of that stockgap funding bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shutmer says it's next up to the House. We hope that the House will take up this bill before the Friday deadline, with bipartisan support. The stopgap funding bill is expected to easily pass the Senate today. The funding deadlines tomorrow night. The New Hampshire primary only days away. Nikki haley 'ron de Santa's trying to push ahead after Donald Trump's commanding performance in Iowa. Bloomberg Senior national political correspondent Nancy Cook tells us Donald Trump has turned his focus now to Nicki Haley. Trump is sending out missives about Nikki Hilly. They're advertising against her. He's doing rallies and what he's going to and he and his team are going to spend the week doing is really calling out Nikki Hilly on a bunch of policy positions past date means she's made on raising the retirement age, what she has said on China, and it's really going to be vicious for the next week. Bloomberg Senior national political correspondent Nancy Cook says Haley does need a strong showing in New Hampshire before moving on to her home state of South Carolina, which Cook says is Trump Country. The anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade comes up on Monday. Senate Democrats held a briefing on the state of abortion rights in the US, and they were joined by doctor Austin Dennard, an obgyn in Texas. We no longer have the basic human rights for freedom and self determination that my mother and her generation relied on for nearly fifty years. The lawmakers suggested the vast majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and that it should be women making decisions about their pregnancies, not politicians or judges. Fourteen Democrats are joining House Republicans and denouncing President Biden's border policies. A GOP resolution passed in the House yesterday with full Republican support, urging Biden to end what they call his administration's open border policy. Former President Trump says he is the one who should be seeing a payday from the Egene to Carrol defamation trial. A judge overseeing Carroll's defamation trial against Trump threatened to toss him out after Carroll's lawyers complained that he was making comments that the jury could hear global news twenty four hours a day and whenever you want it with Bloomberg News. Now. I'm Amy Morris, and this is Bloomberg. Karen, All right, Amy, thank you. What we do bring you news throughout the day right here on Bloomberg Radio. But now, as Amy said, you can get the latest news on demand. That means whenever you want it, to subscribe to Bloomberg News Now, and you can get the latest headlines right at the click of a button. Get informed on your schedule. You can listen and subscribe to Bloomberg News Now on the Bloomberg Business app, Bloomberg dot Com plus apples, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. So nice time. Now for the Bloomberg Sports Update, here's John stash Hour. John Karny can forget about the idea of Bill Belichay coaching the Dallas Cowboys. Mike McCarthy is keeping his job. I'll be back for a fifth season. He's certainly had regular season success in Dallas, not so much in the postseason, where he's one to three, and of course the Cowboys were just upset at home by Green Bay. As for Belichick's old job in New England and now belongs to Gerard and Mayo, he was a former Patriots player and assistant coach. He actually had it written into his contract that he will replace fellowchick. I'm not trying to be Bill. I think that Bill is his own man. If you can't sell by now, I'm a little bit different even up here. But what I will say is, you know, the more I think about, the more I think about, like the lessons side I've taken from Bill hard work works. Mayo gets the job at the age of thirty seven. Trade the NBA Toronto, who made a big trade with the Knicks, recently made another one with Indiana. Sidney two time All star in Pascal Siakam to the Pacers for Bruce Brown and three first round draft picks. The Raptors then won by twenty four over Miami. The Celtics won easily over San Antonio once seventeen to ninety eight, and the Celtics are now twenty to zero at home. Lakers beat Dallas, Knicks beat Houston, Portland a two point win over Brooklyn College Basketball Yukon number one in the country now sixteen and two with a win over Creighton at the Australian Open. The top seat on the women's side, Aschiantek had some troubles but got by Danielle collins Ken's fish. There were bloomberg sport from coast to coast, from New York to San Francisco, Boston to Washington, DC, nationwide on Syria's Exam, the Bloomberg Business app, and Bloomberg dot Com. This is Bloomberg Daybreak. Good morning. I'm Nathan Hager. Geopolitical risk has certainly not gone away for markets, but now it's getting even more attention following the latest US strikes on Hoothy targets in Yemen. There was another round overnight. Now Pakistan is engaged in tit for tit attacks with the Hoothy's main backer, Iran. All this as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on in Gaza. So for the very latest, we are joined by Bloomberg News Senior editor Bill Ferries. Bill start us off with the latest on these US strikes against the Houthies. What's the latest, Hi, Thanks for having me, Nathan ut overnight. It's just been a busy past several hours. Overnight, the US launched strikes on what it said were fourteen Houtie missiles and Yemen that they said presented an imminent threat to vessels in the region. They said these missiles were basically loaded and ready to be fired off, and that the US was acting preemptively to target them and destroy them before they could do more damage. It's the fourth round of US strikes or US led strikes on Yemen over really about the last week or so, and it came just hours after the UTIES managed to launch another attack on a commercial vessel, a US owned vessel in the Red Sea. So I think what we've seen is that these multiple rounds of attacks have not prevented the HUTIES from being able to still get some strikes in against ships in the Red Sea, and that of course has been a big disruption for global trade. You've got a lot of shipping companies trying to re route around the around the Tip of Africa or find other ways to get their goods to market, and we're seeing modest movement in the oil market in light of these latest attacks. Is there a risk now that the US could be drawn even further into action in Yemen, given that we are still seeing the HOO, the THEES managing to carry out strikes in the Red Sea. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's nobody really at this point talking about some kind of a ground invasion or anything, but there are you know, the US and its allies have a lot of firepower based in the Red Sea. At this point there aren't nearly as many commercial vessels going through there, but they're still unable to stop these kind of attacks, and you have to start wondering how long can this go on? How long will global trade be disrupted, When will that really start to emerge in the prices that consumers pay for a whole range of goods, and what of course will be the human cost on all this. But it's certainly seems at this point that this could drag on for weeks, if not months, and this raises a question as well about whether Iran can bring any influence to bear here. But now we're seeing Iran engaged in attacks with Pakistan, and of course it continues to back has Balan of course Hamas in Gaza exactly, and they're actually even on top of all that, there was an Iranian attack on a facility in northern Iraq just a day or so ago. But yeah, the latest we found that Pakistan had a reprisal attack against Iran overnight responding to attacks from Iran. On Wednesday, they hit targeted strikes on what they said were militant hideouts in Iran. And this is not something that really anyone was really predicting. Even a weaker or so ago, you'd have Pakistan and Iran involved in some kind of a conflict. It does look like now that both sides are trying to find a way to talk each other down. You even have the Pakistan Army saying that it's a time for dialogue. It was a similar message coming out of Pakistan's Foreign ministry today. But it is a very unsettled situation, and of course both sides have to play to their domestic political constituencies. So while there is some expectation that maybe there's been a proportionate response and things will start to ease, there's no certainty of that at this point. And of course a Pakistan and Iran both have the support and alliance with China. Is there a role for China here in trying to bring some of these tensions in the Middle East down from a boil. Yeah. Publicly, China is not saying very much other than that it's tracking the developments and they said they want both sides to exercise restraint and calmness. But I would think you would think behind the scenes, China does not want to see two of its kind of key allies in that region fighting with each other. That's a big distress for it, I think. I think so far China has been happy to see the US taking the lead in places like the Red Sea. It has not engaged with the Israel Hamas conflict very much at all. But it doesn't want to see its partners starting to fight, you know, and militarily start to go after each other in such a critical part of the world. This is Bloomberg day Break Today, your morning brief on the stories making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond. Look for us on your podcast feed at six am Eastern each morning, on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also listen live each morning starting at five am Wall Street time on Bloomberg eleven three to zero in New York, Bloomberg ninety nine to one in Washington, Bloomberg one oh six to one in Boston, and Bloomberg ninety sixty in San Francisco. Our flagship New York station is also available on your Amazon Alexa devices. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty plus listen coast to coast on the Bloomberg Business app. Serious XMVI iHeartRadio app and on Bloomberg dot Com. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Join us again tomorrow morning for all the news you need to start your day right here on Bloomberg Daybreak
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