Article #277795

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Trump claims Iran war ‘nearing completion’ and seeks to justify conflict in prime-time address

• Middle East crisis live: Macron criticises Trump and says opening strait of Hormuz by force ‘unrealistic’

Stock markets are falling across Europe, as investors react to Donald Trump’s special address last night, in which he vowed to send Iran “back to the stone ages”.

Frankfurt’s stock market has started the day with a bump; Germany’s DAX share index is down 1.5%.

“In what might be the most dramatic April Fools’ of recent years, Donald Trump did nothing of what was expected in his speech. Instead of ‘no more war’, we got ‘no, more war!’, with heavier strikes expected and a fresh warning of attacks on power plants.

This leaves markets back where they were last week, and now we have to price in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil that aren’t coming out any time soon. The gloomy predictions of last week would have been perhaps misplaced if Trump had signalled a quick end, but now markets are back to pricing in economic catastrophe.”