Marketplace Morning Report

Iran declared on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz has reopened for all commercial vessels. While the news caused stocks to rally and oil prices to drop, it’s unclear yet whether or not the market reaction is premature. Plus, we take a look into the aging demographics of first-time homebuyers and their shrinking share of the housing market.

The head of the International Energy Agency warned on Thursday that Europe could run out of jet fuel in few as six weeks. The continent is the biggest consumer of jet fuel shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, and ongoing closures in the strait could lead to swaths of flight cancellations. Also on the program: we discuss shifting expectations for American universities, our aging first-time homebuyer population, and changes at Netflix.

The Federal Reserve is meeting at the end of this month to figure out what to do with interest rates. They have a tough task ahead of them: weighing the job market, inflation, and a war in the Middle East that is "roiling supply chains in ways that are similar ... to what we saw emerging from the pandemic," said KPMG's Diane Swonk. Also on the show: Rising health insurance costs are dragging down wage growth.

Power utilities plan to spend $1.4 trillion over the next five years on capital projects. A lot of that boils down to grid maintenance and projects to support additional power generation. That’s a 21% increase over what utilities were planning to spend a year ago — and it could drive up household utility bills. Then, it’s been a little over three months since the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. How has Venezuela's oil industry changed since?

We talk a lot about the price of oil on this show, but there are actually dozens of types of oil. On today's program, we're learning about where they come from, what they're used for, and why the price of oil futures differs from oil's on-the-spot market price. And later, as energy gets more expensive, governments around the world are asking people to try to conserve energy. How much of an impact do those moves have?