Live: ASX set to rise on US-Iran peace hopes, Wall St lifts on SpaceX IPO debut

The Australian dollar is rising after Donald Trump confirmed a peace deal has been reached with Iran, saying the Strait of Hormuz will open.

The ASX looks set to join the rally when markets open this morning, ahead of tomorrow's RBA rates decision.

Follow the day's financial news and insights from our specialist business reporters on our live blog.

Disclaimer: this blog is not intended as investment advice.

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Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 6:51am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 6:51am

Market snapshot

By Stephen Letts

ASX 200 futures: +0.4% to 8,853 points

ASX 200 (Friday): +2.0% to 8,804 points

Australian dollar: -0.1% to 70.43 US cents

Wall Street (Friday): S&P500 +0.5%, Dow +0.7%, Nasdaq +0.3%

Europe (Friday): Dax +1.8%, FTSE +1.6%, Eurostoxx +2.1%

Spot gold: +0.1% to $US4,219/ounce

Oil: Brent futures -3.4% to $US87.33/barrel, WTI futures -3.2% to $U84.88/barrel

Iron ore (Dalian, Friday): -0.3% to $US113.00/tonne

Copper (LME, Friday): +1.5% to $US13,687/tonne

Bitcoin: -0.4% at $US63,995

Prices current at around 7:00am AEST

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Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 8:12am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 8:12am

This week: RBA, Fed, BoJ and BoE all make rates decisions

By Stephen Letts

Australia:

Tue: RBA rates decision

Wed: CBA Household Spending Insights (May) Westpac consumer confidence (Q2)

Thu: National & state population (Q4)

International:

Tue: CN — Industrial production, retail sales, infrastructure spending, property data (May)

JP — BoJ rates meeting

Wed: UK — Inflation, jobs/jobless (May)

Thu: US — Fed rates decision

UK — BoE rates decision

NZ — GDP (Q1)

Central bank meetings and rate decisions dominate this week's macro calendar.

The RBA kicks things off on Tuesday with the consensus being that the cash rate will be held at 4.35% after three hikes.

In Japan, the Bank of Japan is expected to raise its official rate by 25bps on Tuesday to head off rising inflation

On Thursday, both the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are expected to leave their rates settings unchanged.

The Fed meeting will be the first to be run by new chair Kevin Warsh with markets keen to see whether the Trump appointee lays out a fresh vision for the bank and monetary policy.

The ABS's latest Australian head count may not be a market mover, yet the quarterly national and state population figures on Thursday will be interesting given the current political fission over migration.

At the last count (Q3, 2025), Australia's population rose by 1.6% over the year to 27.7 million.

Quarterly growth lifted to 0.4%, comprising a 23,300 natural increase (i.e. births minus deaths) and an 87,800 rise in net overseas migration.

The CBA economics team says in annual terms, population growth edged higher, reflecting a modest pickup in net overseas migration.

"However, some of this lift was seasonal, with Q3 typically boosted by student arrivals ahead of second semester," CBA said in a research note.

"The broader trend remains one of normalisation and we expect to see this continue in the (Q4) data."

Key Event

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 8:01am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 8:01am

ASX admits to misleading conduct, faces fine

By Stephen Letts

Australia's stock exchange operator and regulator ASX has admitted it misled the market in a 2022 statement about a major technology project.

ASX told investors that its CHESS replacement project was "progressing well", a statement the corporate watchdog ASIC said "was misleading and exposed market participants to the risk of financial harm".

ASIC and ASX will ask the Federal Court to find that ASX contravened the law, impose a penalty of $20.5 million, and order ASX to pay $3 million towards ASIC's costs.

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:42am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:42am

US government orders Anthropic to disable foreign access to AI platforms

By Stephen Letts

The US government has taken the highly unusual step of ordering the pioneering AI company Anthropic to suspend foreign access to its most advanced AI models.

Anthropic has been ordered to disable access to all foreign nationals, both inside and outside the US, to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 platforms.

Anthropic said in a statement it had not been given specific details of its national security concern.

Here's more from Reuters:

It is Anthropic's understanding that the government believes there is a method of bypassing, or "jailbreaking," a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used in identifying software vulnerabilities, the company said.

The order comes just as a previous dispute between Trump administration officials and IPO-bound Anthropic showed signs of easing across parts of the US government.

Anthropic's relationship with the government ruptured this year after it refused to allow the US military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems.

The government responded by putting Anthropic on a supply chain blacklist, set to take effect later in the year.

The action also marks a major escalation of US efforts to halt foreign adversaries' AI capabilities.

For years, US export controls have focused on the chips and tools that power AI rather than on restricting foreign access to AI itself.

Anthropic said the government has given it only "verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak".

"We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people," the company said.

The government directive and Anthropic's response highlight growing tension between AI developers and regulators over how to assess risks from so-called "jailbreaks," or methods used to bypass model safeguards.

As recently as Wednesday, Anthropic had called for greater US oversight of AI, including the ability to block models with unacceptable risks.

It said, however, the government action on Friday did not follow principles of fair and fact-based regulation.

Key Event

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:38am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:38am

Trump confirms the deal

By Stephen Letts

US President Donald Trump has confirmed a deal has been made with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In a Truth Social post Mr Trump has said congratulations. “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”

Key Event

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:33am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:33am

Pakistan PM's statement on US-Iran peace deal

By Stephen Letts

Here's the statement Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif just posted on X.

Key Event

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:27am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:27am

Peace in our time?

By Stephen Letts

This alert has just dropped from our foreign desk.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said, following intensive talks a peace deal between the US and Iran has been reached.

He also said the official signing ceremony will be on Friday 19th June, in Switzerland.

If that is the case, it may well support a stronger rally on the ASX today

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:18am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:18am

Rat on a keyboard

By Stephen Letts

Morning Stephen. I can usually see the point of the starting GIF , but a rat on a keyboard has me beat ???

- Phillip

Good morning Phillip, it was just a moment of self-reflection and certainly not a comment on any other content produced by the broader journalistic community.

Key Event

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:10am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 7:10am

Wall St boosted by SpaceX IPO and renewed hopes of peace, oil tumbles

By Stephen Letts

Wall Street's key indices all closed the week with solid gains thanks to renewed hopes of a peace deal in the Middle East and the spectacular lift-off of the SpaceX market debut.

Despite a lack of clarity about the details of the US-Iran deal, investors were prepared to bet it was an almost done deal. At the close:

S&P 500: +0.5% to 7,431 points

Dow: +0.7% to 51,202 points

Nasdaq: +0.3% to 25,889 points

It should be noted that while US officials said a deal, including an agreement that Iran would neither procure nor develop nuclear weapons, could be signed within days, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said that nuclear issues will be discussed in later stages and that management of the Strait of Hormuz would not return to the pre-war era.

The successful stock market debut of the Elon Musk-controlled spacecraft maker SpaceX was not in doubt though, and arguably it had a bigger impact on investor sentiment.

"The market's been stung more times about peace in the past. Yesterday (Thursday) was because Trump called off the attacks," Longbow Asset Management CEO Jake Dollarhide told Reuters.

"That was a tangible result. Today we're still waiting for proof of a deal.

"The excitement about the SpaceX IPO is what's driving the market. A healthy IPO is great for the market."

He added it could be a productive year for IPOs with artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic also expected to make their debuts this year.

In their first day of trading, shares in SpaceX closed up more than 19% at $US161.11, with the market debut pushing the company's valuation past $US2 trillion and making Mr Musk the world's first trillionaire.

While Wall Street's gains were solid, they were outpaced by European stocks which rose around 2% after the ECB raised interest rates for the first time in three years in a bid to head off rising inflation. The MSCI gauge of stocks across the globe rose 1.2% on Friday.

That performance looks like supporting the ASX today, with futures trading pointing to a 0.4% gain when trading closed on Saturday morning.

US Treasury bond yields edged higher, nudging the greenback up a notch and in turn, nudging the Aussie dollar lower.

Hopes of a peace deal had a far more significant impact on the oil market.

The global benchmark Brent crude futures fell to its lowest level since March, while the US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude futures, dropped to a two-month low.

Brent crude futures: -3.4% to $US87.33/barrel

WTI futures: -3.2% to $US84.88/barrel

Spot gold inched up 0.3% to $US4,227/ounce but was down 2.3% on the week.

Dalian iron ore futures slipped 0.3% to $US113/tonne as traders weighed sluggish steel demand against impending supply concerns after BHP workers at Port Hedland voted to impose rolling stoppages on shipments.

However, the benchmark July iron ore contract on the Singapore Exchange was 0.2% higher at $US101.30/tonne on Friday.

Steel demand entered its traditional off-season, resulting in sluggish transaction volumes and market sentiment, according to a research note from Shanghai Metals Market.

Coupled with high coking coal and coke costs, which squeezed steel mill margins, iron ore procurement remained subdued, Reuters noted.

Copper on the London Metals Exchange rebounded 1.5% after two sessions of losses as hopes of the peace deal helped ease concerns about rising inflation and slower global growth.

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 6:49am

Mon 15 Jun 2026 at 6:49am

Good morning

By Stephen Letts

Good morning and welcome to another day on the ABC markets and finance blog.

Stephen Letts from ABC business team limbering up for blow-by-blow coverage of the day's events, where every post is hopefully a winner, but none should be construed as financial advice.

In short, it looks like the ASX will continue its recent mini rally on the back of a solid rise on Wall Street's Friday close, fuelled by renewed hopes of a Middle East peace deal and the successful SpaceX IPO launch.

ASX 200 futures are pointing to a gain of 0.4%.

The game's afoot, so let's get blogging.