Oil Back on the Rise Ahead of Iran’s U.N. Address: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Wednesday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of trading Wednesday. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to a lower market open later.

1. US President Donald Trump said that ‌Iran and the United States had been talking on Tuesday, and he thinks the two countries will reach a deal at some point. (Reuters) The first shuttle talks between the United States and Iran for months raised hopes on Wednesday that the adversaries could make some progress towards ending the Middle East war, although neither side spelled out any change in their positions. (Reuters) Oil has pared gains this week on signs of renewed diplomacy between the sides to end the conflict or at least restart a ceasefire. Brent crude is down more than 5% to around $98.50 a barrel. It’s still up 62% this year, while US diesel pump prices are at a record high. (Bloomberg)

Oil prices remain off their recent highs, but are back on the rise today as the market looks to determine what’s likely to come next between the U.S. and Iran. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will be among the world leaders addressing the U.N. today. Those comments and the response by Trump or the White House could signal what comes next. We’ll look to movement in oil prices as an indication for how the market interprets those aggregate comments and what that may mean for a deal between the two countries.

2. Inflationary pressures intensified in September, with both input costs and output prices increasing at the sharpest rates in four months. The latest rise in input costs was faster than the average for the year-to-date, but remained softer than the recent peak seen in May. Accelerated cost inflation was registered across both the manufacturing and services sectors. Similarly, output prices increased at sharper rates in both monitored sectors, as well as across Germany, France and the rest of the eurozone as a whole. (S&P Global)

The above is from S&P’s Flash September PMI report for the Eurozone published earlier today. The analogous report for the U.K., also out this morning, found a “steep and accelerated increase in average cost burdens at private sector companies, with the rate of inflation hitting a three-month high.”

At 9:45 AM ET, S&P Global will deliver its September Flash PMI report for the U.S., and given the move in oil, diesel and related prices, odds are the findings will echo the ones above. How the findings shape the comments from the bevy of Fed speakers we have between today and tomorrow will be something we watch ahead of the central bank’s upcoming late October monetary policy decision. While the odds of a rate hike so close to the midterms is low, we’ve seen central bank officials jawbone the market’s view on policy before.

3. Wall Street has turned bullish on Meta Platforms, betting that its new AI agent Muse could open a new revenue stream for the social media giant and reshape the company’s AI monetization prospects. Muse, launched on September 8, is an AI assistant that can send emails, book travel and ‌complete transactions such as selling a car on behalf of a user. The basic version is free, with subscriptions priced at $20 and $100 a month for heavier use. (Reuters) PayPal customers can now use Meta’s Muse artificial-intelligence consumer agent to shop and check out… The PayPal-Meta partnership was announced a day after Shopify said customers could use Muse to find products from Shopify merchants and complete purchases through “Shop Pay.” (Barron’s)

Meta’s (META) Meta Connect event kicks off today with a 4 PM PT keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. As we noted yesterday when we rang the register on a small slug of META shares for the Pro Portfolio, using the sharp climb in the shares so far this month, expectations for what Zuck will show and tell are considerable. Announcements from PayPal (PYPL) and Shopify (SHOP) over Muse integration will set the stage, but he will need to answer questions over paid subscription prospects, competitive responses from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, and privacy/security concerns.

4. Chinese authorities are examining the use of Broadcom’s hardware in state-backed data centres amid a drive to boost domestic producers and reduce reliance on foreign AI infrastructure. China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), which oversees state-owned companies, has been surveying the number of Broadcom switches in state-controlled data centres in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the survey… One sales representative at a data centre racks manufacturer said the potential restriction on Broadcom switches did not apply to data centres operated by private companies such as ByteDance and Alibaba. (FT)

This report by the FT has the potential to weigh on Broadcom (AVGO) shares in the near-term as it raises at least some questions over potential revenue exposure. However, per the company’s latest 10-K filing, while OEMs, contract manufacturers, channel partners or software customers in China (including Hong Kong) accounted for 17% of Broadcom’s revenue in 2025, “the end customers for either our products or for the end products into which our products are incorporated, are frequently located in countries other than China (including Hong Kong). As a result, we believe that a substantially smaller percentage of our net revenue is ultimately dependent on sales of either our product or our customers’ product incorporating our product, to end customers located in China (including Hong Kong).”

Even so, and despite the massive ramp in the company’s custom silicon and networking segments, in today’s market that report is likely to raise questions that management will need to answer sooner or later. Near-term, we’ll look to see if AVGO shares continue otherwise hug the 50-day moving average on the weekly chart for this One-rated holding.

5. SPEEA, the union representing Boeing engineers ‌and technical employees, said on Wednesday that they recommended their members accept Boeing’s latest contract offer. Boeing and its engineering union reached a contract agreement this month, a four-year ‌offer that includes higher general wage increases than the first offer which SPEEA members rejected in an August 21 vote. (Reuters)

This is another positive step for Boeing (BA) that should remove the risk of a potential strike in early October. It diminishes the near-term risk called out by BofA last week. In the same note, BofA reiterated its Buy rating and $270 price target, which is $5 above our target for the shares.

6. Accelevation is targeting a valuation of up to $5.37 billion in its US initial public offering, the data center infrastructure company said ‌on Tuesday, joining a wave of firms tapping investor demand for AI-linked stocks… Nvidia-backed AI cloud firm Nscale filed for an IPO this month, while smart-ring maker Oura launched its roadshow this week. AI startup Anthropic is preparing for a potential blockbuster listing later this year. (Reuters)

While the market has been focused on the expected OpenAI IPO shifting to 2027 and Anthropic’s moving to November from October, we are seeing renewing filing activity. The next higher profile tell for the IPO market will be the 50 million share offering from Oura, which is expected to price September 29. The target range for that transaction is $40-$44. Lead underwrites for that transaction are Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: MBA Mortgage Applications Index (Weekly), S&P Global Flash PMI (September), Gasoline Stocks Change (Weekly).

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: AM – Cintas (CTAS), Cracker Barrel (CBRL), General Mills (GIS), Paychex (PAYX). PM – HB Fuller (FUL), Stitch Fix (SFIX).

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AVGO, BA, META, and MS.