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Here's your midday brief for Tuesday, March 31st. I'm Imani Mouyez for the Wall Street Journal.

Stocks jumped after President Trump signaled a willingness to end the war without fully reopening the Strait of Ormuz.

This morning, he urged other countries to launch their own operations to get control of the strait from Iran.

The S&P and NASDAQ were both up 1% or more in midday trading.

Plus, Unilever is combining its food business with McCormick to create a grocery goods giant

in a cash-and-stock deal worth over $65 billion, including debt.

The new food company is expected to bring in about $20 billion a year in revenue

and include household names like Unilever's Helmand's mayonnaise and Norseut mixes,

and McCormick's red-capped bottle spices and French's yellow mustard. The deal is a big shift for Unilever and leaves it

focused on beauty and home products. And U.S. home price growth slowed in January. The S&P

totality K. Schiller National Home Price Index shows home prices grew 0.9% in the first

month of the year. High mortgage rates and concerns about affordability are weighing on buyers.

Heads up, an artificial intelligence tool helped us make this episode by creating

summaries that were based on WSJ reporting and then reviewed and adapted by an editor.

We'll have more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ What's News podcast.

You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcast.