‘I thought the oil would be much higher’: Trump’s rosy Iran war spin risks sending traders the wrong message

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was caught off guard—pleasantly—by how well the U.S. economy held up during his war with Iran. Wall Street’s top analysts say he’s got part of the story right, and the rest dangerously wrong. “Even when it was down more a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised,” Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box Tuesday morning. “I thought it would be down much more, and I thought the oil would be much higher, and I’m very happy to say that it wasn’t.” Trump spat out specific numbers, suggesting oil could or should actually be twice as expensive as it currently is: “If you would have told me that oil is at 90 as opposed to 200 [dollars per barrel] I would be frankly, surprised.” The remarks came as Iran-U.S. ceasefire negotiations entered a critical 24-hour window, with Trump warning he expected to resume bombing if a deal framework wasn’t in place by Wednesday. With one eye on the ticker—Trump also noted during the interview the Dow was approaching 50,000—the president cast the conflict as an economic near-miss that validated his judgment. The recovery in markets, of course, is entirely self-inflicted, and Trump acknowledged as much with a trademark moment of levity when he described how he broke the news of the war to his cabinet. “So, I said to the people, I said to my people, they’re all gathered, all these wonderful guys, Scott Bessent, the whole—the whole group … I said, ‘Fellas, I got a little bad news for you. I’m going to put a little wrinkle in your numbers.'” His assembled cabinet asked what he was talking about, and Trump described his explanation: “We’re going down to a place called Iran” and that, come what may, the damage in the stock market would be “peanuts” compared to a nuclear confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Goldman: The rally is real, but it’s a bet on resolution On the equity market, Trump has a point—and Goldman Sachs backs him up, to a degree. The S&P 500 has staged a powerful rebound from its late-March lows, rising …