Good morning. On Fortune‘s radar today:

- Exclusive: Citadel’s Ken Griffin on Trump, Miami, and American politics.

- The markets see signs of hope.

- Is Trump tiring of the war?

- The “mouse jiggler” insider trading plot.

- Where Fed rate expectations lead, stocks follow.

- Caltech quantum team claims it can break standard encryption.

THE MARKETS

Help us Jerome Powell, you’re our only hope!

Oil declined to $106. The S&P 500 index closed down 0.34% yesterday but futures were up 0.95% this morning after traders digested Fed chair Jerome Powell’s remarks yesterday in which he said it was too soon to make conclusions about the effect of rising oil prices on the economy. The implication is that the Fed may not automatically want to raise interest rates to squeeze out oil-fuelled inflation—and stock buyers love low rates. Bonds rose for the same reason. Asian markets largely fell this morning but Europe and the U.K. were up in early trading.

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- Stocks just had their worst quarter in four years, the Wall Street Journal says.

- Crypto is safer than gold? Fascinating chart here from Goldman Sachs tracking the decline in various assets since the start of the war through March 27. The best performing asset is … crypto? That feels like a typo but it’s true. Bitcoin prices have stayed flat over the last month. The worst asset was gold, which lost 15% of its value after an unsustainable run-up.

ONE BIG THING

Exclusive: Citadel’s Ken Griffin won’t bend the knee to Trump

The CEO of Citadel ($70 billion in assets under management) is building a 54-story, 1,049-foot Norman Foster-designed tower on the Miami waterfront at a cost of $2.5 billion. It’s a physical symbol of his growing political influence—he has donated almost a quarter of a billion dollars to candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Senators Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) and Dave McCormick (R-Pa.).

But there is one Republican he hasn’t donated to: President Trump. In fact, Griffin (net worth: $50 billion) is a rare business voice that has grown louder and more critical of what he sees as the president’s wrong turns. Though he supports some of the president’s policies, it galls him that so many fellow CEOs are forced to curry favor at the White House. He feels the regime of tariffs “encourages crony capitalism,” he told Fortune’s Shawn Tully. “CEOs have to stomach going to D.C. and sucking up to one administration after another.”

- Nordstrom’s $6.25 billion deal to go private is paying off—and don’t expect an IPO anytime soon - Phil Wahba.

Iran

Trump wants out. Iran says, what talks?

President Trump is willing to end his war against Iran even if U.S. forces cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Wall Street Journal. The price of oil declined to $106 per barrel this morning on the news, down from yesterday’s high of just under $116. The president doesn’t want to exceed his preferred timeline for the conflict to end in six weeks, White House insiders told the paper. (Fortune told you about this six-week thing yesterday.)

On social media, Trump continued his threats against Tehran, while simultaneously promising to end the war soon. “The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” he said on Truth Social yesterday. “Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”

- Reality check: Trump has said the war is about to end 12 times so far, Axios notes, and Iranian officials continued to insist they have had no talks with the U.S. for the entire war. Strikes continued across the region today, including an Iranian bombing of a Kuwaiti oil tanker docked in Dubai.

- War Secretary Pete Hegseth denied a report in the Financial Times that his broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock before the war started about a multimillion-dollar investment in a defense stock fund. The investment was never executed, the FT said.

- Energy ‘vulnerable’ India seeks U.S. help to produce more oil and wean itself off Russia and the Middle East reliance amid geopolitical turmoil, by Fortune’s Jordan Blum.

LAW & ORDER

He jiggled her mouse, then allegedly traded on her emails

The Securities & Exchange Commission charged a 37-year-old Connecticut man with insider trading in the stocks of VMware and Score Media and Gaming after his friend allegedly obtained a “mouse jiggler” to stop his girlfriend’s computer from locking him out when she left the apartment. The woman—not accused of wrongdoing—was an executive assistant at an investment bank responsible for scheduling meetings involving poten