Welcome back from Easter weekend.

We told you April 6 would be unlike any other market open of the year. We were right.

Today you are absorbing three things simultaneously: the strongest jobs report since December 2024, a last-ditch ceasefire proposal called the Islamabad Accord, and a brand-new Trump deadline that expires tomorrow night at 8 p.m. ET.

There is a lot to unpack. Let's get into it.

Axios broke the story late Sunday evening, citing four U.S., Israeli, and regional sources: Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey are pushing to broker a two-phase deal to end the war. The framework — already being called the Islamabad Accord in diplomatic circles — calls for an immediate 45-day ceasefire, during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened and a permanent resolution negotiated. Phase two would involve a structured agreement on ending the war entirely.

This is meaningfully different from the previous rounds of ceasefire talk for one key reason: multiple parties are now formally sponsoring the framework. This is not a Truth Social post. This is not an unnamed source. Pakistan's military leadership, Egyptian diplomats, and Turkish intermediaries are all named as active brokers. The framework was reportedly delivered to both the White House and Iranian leadership on April 5.

Markets have responded with cautious optimism. Stocks are on track for a fourth consecutive positive session — the first such streak since mid-March. Brent crude has eased toward $109. Emerging markets are rallying. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up 0.7%. South Korea's won is outperforming EM currency peers. Bitcoin has pushed back toward $70,000.

But here is the hard truth that two months of this conflict have taught us: optimism and resolution are not the same thing.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson called a short-term ceasefire "illogical" and "unacceptable" Monday morning, saying that agreeing without guarantees against further strikes is something "no rational person would do." Eurasia Group senior oil analyst Gregory Brew put it plainly: "Iran has little incentive to give up the Strait for a temporary reprieve — especially with the U.S. moving more assets into the region."

The odds on Polymarket of a ceasefire this month are at approximately 30% — up from 18% before the Accord surfaced. That means the market-implied probability is still a coin flip or worse. But it is moving in the right direction for the first time in weeks.

Watch Pakistan. Watch tanker traffic. The deadline is tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET.

Friday's March nonfarm payrolls report landed while markets were closed for Good Friday. Today is the first chance investors have to fully price it in. And the headline number is genuinely good: +178,000 jobs added in March, more than triple the Wall Street consensus of 57,000 to 60,000. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3%. The dollar rallied. Treasury yields moved higher.

Before you pop the champagne, read the fine print.

Of the 178,000 jobs added, 76,000 came from healthcare — 2.6 times the sector's trailing 12-month average. And the reason healthcare surged is almost entirely mechanical: those are the Kaiser Permanente nurses and physicians who were on strike in February and returned to work in March. Strip out the strike reversal math and the underlying March print is closer to +102,000. Still above the consensus, but not the blowout the headline suggests.

Further context that every steward needs: February was revised down from -92,000 to -133,000. That is a significant additional deterioration that barely made headlines. The four-month rolling average through March (December through March: -17K, +160K, -133K, +178K) works out to approximately +47,000 per month. That is not a healthy labor market. It is a volatile one.

The good news: the underlying data is genuinely better than feared. The economy did not crater. The labor market is battered but not broken. And the Fed, which was being pushed toward hiking rates by the bond market just two weeks ago, now has another reason to hold steady and wait.

The real test comes in April's payroll data — which will be the first to capture the full economic impact of $4+ gas, the manufacturing slowdown, and whatever the war's resolution (or continued disruption) looks like. That data doesn't drop until May. Until then, we are working with an incomplete picture.

The Easter weekend was not quiet in the Middle East.

An American F-15 was shot down over Iranian airspace on Friday. The crew member was rescued over the weekend in a dramatic military operation, which Trump announced on Truth Social: "WE GOT HIM!" He held a press conference this afternoon on the rescue. Markets are reading the rescue as a signal that U.S. military operations remain fully operational and that the administration's posture has not softened.

Also over the weekend, Trump extended his deadline for the fourth time — now to Tuesday, April 7 at 8 p.m. ET. His language, however, was anything but soft. He warned Iran it would be "living in Hell" if the Strait is not reopened, declaring the next round of strikes would be "Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one." He also told the Financial Times he wants to shift security of the Strait to the countries that rely on it rather than maintain a permanent U.S. presence — which analysts are reading as a genuine signal that the administration is looking for an exit strategy.

Here is the binary picture heading into tomorrow's deadline:

If a ceasefire framework is agreed: expect oil to fall $15-20 a barrel, tech and airline stocks to surge, and markets to open sharply higher Wednesday. This is the scenario the four-day rally is pricing in.

If the deadline passes without a deal and Trump follows through: expect oil above $120, fresh market losses, and the fifth week of geopolitical whiplash. Defense stocks will gain. Everything else gets hit.

There is no muted version of tomorrow.

While ceasefire talks dominate the headlines, the second and third-order economic damage from 37 days of Strait closure is quietly spreading into every corner of the economy. The faithful steward needs to see the full picture.

Fuel surcharges are going mainstream. Beginning April 17, Amazon will apply temporary surcharges to its marketplace sellers. UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service have all added fuel surcharges. United Airlines and JetBlue have raised baggage fees. Ryanair's CEO warned that 5-10% of summer flights could be canceled if the Strait remains closed.

The airline industry faces a structural problem: jet fuel has doubled since the blockade began. Even if a ceasefire is reached tomorrow, prices do not normalize overnight. The physical supply chain — tankers that need to move, refineries that need to restart, pipelines that need to be cleared — takes weeks to normalize. And Chevron's CEO made the point bluntly last week: the Strait must reopen by mid-April for the physical supply situation not to worsen significantly. We are four days from that midpoint.

Gas prices crossed $4 nationally last week for the first time since 2022. Diesel is at $5.45. The consumer who was already losing confidence is now paying more for everything that moves — which is everything.

This is the damage that doesn't go away the morning after a ceasefire is announced. It is the damage that shows up in Q2 earnings reports, in April retail sales data, and in May's payroll numbers. The faithful steward plans for what follows the headline, not just the headline itself.

"He has risen." — Matthew 28:6

This weekend, people around the world gathered in churches, in homes, around tables — to mark one of history's most astonishing claims. That death is not the final word. That what looks like the end can be the beginning of something no one saw coming.

We don't mean to be heavy-handed with the parallel. But we write a newsletter about markets during a war, on Easter Monday, with a ceasefire proposal on the table and a deadline at 8 p.m. tomorrow. If there is a week to hold both the gravity of what we face and the possibility of what we cannot yet see — this is it.

For the faithful steward: the resurrection story is ultimately a story about trust in outcomes you cannot engineer. You did not control the February 28 strikes. You cannot control tomorrow's deadline. You can control how you manage your finances, your exposure, your decisions — with clarity and patience rather than fear or euphoria.

Thirty-seven days. Five deadlines. Four rounds of ceasefire negotiations. One jobs report that shocked to the upside. One labor market that is still fragile beneath the headline. And one accord, brokered in Islamabad, that could end all of it by tomorrow night.

We have been here every day since February 28. We will be here tomorrow night when the deadline hits.

And we will be here Wednesday morning to help you make sense of whatever comes next.

Stay steady. Stay disciplined. Stay grounded.

Nathan Grey
Senior Editor
Bread & Bull