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Uncertainty over the US-Iran ceasefire deal has triggered a rise in oil prices this morning.

Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose by 2.1% to $96.77 a barrel, while New York light crude rose by almost 3% to $97.23 a barrel. Yesterday, Brent crude dropped by more than 10% after initial news of the ceasefire emerged.

Meanwhile Asian stocks have been choppy overnight: Japan’s Nikkei has slipped by 0.7% and the South Korean Kospi has dropped sharply by 2%. Both countries are highly exposed to the conflict in the Middle East as they rely on oil and gas supplies from the region.

In China, the CSI300 index fell 0.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng also slipped 0.2%.

It comes as investors worry about the ‘fragile’ nature of the US-Iran ceasefire deal announced yesterday, as Israel continues its assaults on Lebanon and the impasse in the strait of Hormuz continues.

Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, says this morning:

Those overnight losses follow several indications that the ceasefire isn’t holding quite as expected on Tuesday night. For instance, both the UAE and Kuwait said yesterday that their air defences had been intercepting drones from Iran. And on the Iranian side, their Parliament’s Speaker Ghalibaf said that three points of the ceasefire agreement had been violated.

Moreover, the IRGC warned of a “regret-inducing response” if Israel’s strikes against Lebanon didn’t stop immediately, whilst the Fars news agency said that the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz was halted because of Israel’s continued strikes on Lebanon. So collectively, that’s raised concern about how durable this ceasefire will prove, particularly with it only being a two-week truce.”

Reid notes that US president Donald Trump posted on social media a couple of hours ago that US forces would “remain in place, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with”, and that if not military action would be “stronger than anyone has ever seen before”, and that the US military was “looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest”.

He also criticised NATO in a separate post overnight, saying that they weren’t “there when we needed them”, and called on people to “remember Greenland, that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!”. So that raised concerns about a repeat of mid-January, when Trump’s call for the US to take Greenland and the threat of European tariffs drove a risk-off move in global markets.

The agenda

• 8.30am BST: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey appears before the European parliament committee on economic and monetary affairs

• 9.30am BST: Bank of England credit conditions survey for Q1 2026

• 1.30pm BST: US gross domestic product, initial jobless claims, PCE inflation measure and wholesales inventories

• 3pm BST: IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva expected to deliver a speech on the outlook for the global economy and outline key policy priorities for member countries