STOXX Europe 600 extended losses to 1%, hitting an intraday low.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf recently posted the "Strait Taylor Equation" on the social media platform X, mocking the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike. He wrote, "Let's see if raising rates can open the SOH (Strait of Hormuz), or produce a barrel of oil," and "You can't open a choke point with 25 basis points." He added, "This is the SOH risk premium, and we set it." Hours after the post, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points as expected. "This is a brilliant political propaganda move by Iran," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group. "This country has at least demonstrated an impressive ability to sting its American adversaries in 2026." In March of this year, Ghalibaf repeatedly commented on markets and energy prices on social media, mocking the Trump administration's attempts to influence the crude oil futures market, arguing that manipulation in the financial markets cannot truly get gas stations "actual fuel." Last month, Kalibaf released an image with the caption "Make America Hungry Again," a parody of Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, accompanied by data on food shortages and hunger in the United States. He stated, "You can't cover up failure with falsehoods." Negal Motawasi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said Kalibaf was trying to convey that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz or compensate for disrupted oil supplies. She pointed out that Kalibaf's revised "Taylor Rule" incorporated the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into a formula that originally focused primarily on inflation and economic output. "He's using the Fed's own policy language to try to suggest that the economic costs of war are partly dependent on maritime security, an area Iran can influence," Motawasi argued. She believes this is more about emphasizing Iran's economic leverage than seriously proposing a new method for setting interest rates. She also noted the timing of the release: Kalibaf released the image just as the Fed announced a 25-basis-point rate hike. He has previously published numerous articles on financial markets, one of his aims being to allow the American public to more intuitively perceive the economic costs of war through prices, markets, and monetary policy.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index opened 33.30 points higher, or 0.38%, at 8765.7 on Friday, September 18.