At the same time, Al Arabiya is saying that Pakistan may announce today that talks between Iran and the US will resume. I would be careful on this one as they have misreported a couple of things during the whole course of the war.

However, this is a time where markets will want see what they want to see. That especially considering the fact that investors have been holding out and hoping for more optimistic news in the past few days.

As mentioned earlier, oil prices have risen strongly this week but equities have shrugged off a lot of the negativity. And now with these headlines, we’re starting to see stocks run up again.

S&P 500 futures are now up 0.5% after keeping flattish earlier. Meanwhile, oil prices have dipped with WTI crude now down over 1% on the day to $94.65.

At the same time, the dollar has dropped across the board with EUR/USD moving up by 0.3% to 1.1715 and AUD/USD up 0.3% as well to 0.7150 on the day.

Update: There are more sources talking about a possibility of a second round of talks and a “serious breakthrough” today, via Al Hadath – a Saudi news outlet. Again, I’d caution on these sources especially from the Middle East as they have been quick to jump the gun on many a time already during this whole conflict.

But as mentioned above, markets will see what it wants to see at the moment until proven otherwise.

Reuters in citing a Pakistan government source is now also reporting that Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is set to make a trip to Islamabad later today. Well, at least now there’s a bit more of a credible source. And we’re seeing risk trades extend gains on that.