👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 💾 Asia’s chip market cracks: Korea’s Kospi fell 10.8% and halted trading as Samsung and SK Hynix led a punishing global memory selloff.

• 🔌 Nvidia underwrites its own customer: talks to guarantee $250 billion of OpenAI data centre debt revived circular-financing fears and knocked 5% off the shares.

• 🏦 The Fed’s hardest week starts: policymakers began a two-day meeting with a hold expected tomorrow, though markets still price 38% odds of a hike.

• 🛢️ Oil keeps bleeding lower: Brent fell toward $86 and WTI to $82 as the pause in US and Iranian strikes held firm.

• 🍎 Apple takes back the crown: it closed above Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company for the first time since April 2025.

• ✈️ Boeing’s turnaround faces its test: results land today with FAA certification powers restored and a backlog worth roughly $695 billion behind it.

• ₿ Crypto waits on Warsh: Bitcoin slipped near $63,000 and Ethereum toward $1,860 as the Senate shelved the crypto market-structure bill for now.

• 🥇 Gold fades before the decision: bullion slipped 0.7% to about $4,045 as a firm dollar and Fed nerves kept buyers on the sidelines.

• 🔍 Is the AI bubble popping?: the Deep Dive takes apart the $250 billion guarantee, the loop it creates, and the one precedent that went wrong.

• 📈 Nvidia loses the $200 line: the Chart of the Day has the levels I am watching below it and where the 50-week average sits.

🧠 One Big Thing

The rotation has become measurable. Money is moving out of the companies asking to be funded and into the ones already producing cash. Apple has added about 24% this year against Nvidia’s 4%, and the crown changed hands on a session when nothing happened at Apple at all. Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon all report inside the next 48 hours, worth more than eleven trillion dollars between them. Watch what each of them says about its capital spending plans rather than what it earned last quarter, because that is the line the market is currently pricing.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$250 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +33.70% Gossamer Bio extended Monday’s surge after the company said FDA minutes from a June pre-NDA meeting clear the way for a September submission of seralutinib in pulmonary arterial hypertension, and that it has bought back worldwide rights to the drug from Chiesi. The agency characterised the borderline statistical result from the Phase 3 PROSERA trial as a review issue rather than a barrier to accepting the filing.

• : +11.04% Aldeyra Therapeutics moved sharply in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified.

• : +59.90% LiveWire Group added to a violent multi-day squeeze that has lifted the electric motorcycle maker from under a dollar last week, after second quarter revenue rose 55 percent to 9.1 million dollars and electric motorcycle unit sales jumped 386 percent.

• : +9.70% Opko Health rose after second quarter revenue came in at 163.5 million dollars against 156.8 million a year earlier, lifted by intellectual property transfer revenue that jumped to 46.1 million from 15 million.

Losers

• : -11.74% Amkor Technology extended Monday’s slide after a record quarter was overshadowed by the outlook, with the chip packager posting 1.9 billion dollars in revenue and 70 cents in earnings per share but guiding third quarter communications revenue down by a high single digit percentage on a system-in-package production transfer.

• : -9.25% Western Digital led the storage names lower as a memory rout that began overnight in Seoul carried into US trading, with SK Hynix down close to 15 percent and Samsung off more than 13 percent on reports of Chinese progress in lithography equipment and fresh broker calls that memory pricing peaks in 2027. The company reports earnings later this week into a sharply deteriorating tape.

• : -15.18% Sandisk extended an 11 percent Monday decline, hit harder than its peers through this pullback because a run of several hundred percent this year has left it carrying the richest multiple in the group.

• : -9.05% Micron Technology fell for a second session as investors kept digesting the Shanghai debut of Chinese memory maker CXMT, which closed up 466 percent on Monday to become the most valuable company listed on the mainland after raising 8.6 billion dollars to fund DRAM capacity that competes directly with Micron.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $63,312 (▼0.60%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,875 (▼0.81%)
XRP: $1.06 (▼0.92%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,440 (▼0.11%)
NASDAQ 100: 27,959 (▼0.82%)
FTSE 100: 10,840 (▲0.49%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.62% (▼0.54%)
Oil (WTI): $81 (▼1.04%)
Gold: $4,020 (▼1.48%)
Silver: $57.17 (▼2.06%)

Data as of: UK: 11:22am BST / US: 6:22am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 7:22pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

💾 Asia’s chip market cracks and the selling spreads

South Korea’s Kospi closed 10.84% lower at 6,023.66, a fall steep enough to trip the exchange’s circuit breaker and halt trading, dropping the index below 6,000 for the first time since April and stretching its July loss to nearly 30%. Samsung Electronics lost 13.4% and SK Hynix 14.65%, and between them those two carry more than half the index. Japan went with it. Kioxia dropped more than 18%, SoftBank shed over 6%, and the Nikkei 225 fell as much as 4% to its lowest level since 22 May (CNBC).

The selling arrived in New York before the bell. Micron and Western Digital were each down 4.9%, Intel and AMD off more than 3%, Nvidia around 1.2% lower, and the Roundhill memory ETF 6.9% weaker, with Nasdaq 100 futures off about 1% while Dow futures edged higher. Two forces are pushing at once. One is the financing question hanging over OpenAI’s build-out, covered below. The other is a report that China has begun mass-producing its own immersion lithography machines, the equipment that prints circuits onto wafers, with the first units going to SMIC, Hua Hong and ChangXin Memory this year (Yahoo Finance).

🔌 Nvidia offers to underwrite its own biggest customer

Nvidia is in talks to guarantee as much as $250 billion of the debt being raised for an OpenAI data centre campus in southern Ohio, with a separate discussion covering up to $350 billion of OpenAI’s future chip purchases. The site runs to 10 gigawatts, is being developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, and carries a reported total cost above $500 billion, with a first phase of roughly 800 megawatts due in 2028. The talks are unfinished and the structure could still change. Nvidia shares fell 4.99% to $196.51, closing below $200 (CNBC).

The reaction arrived faster than the detail. Michael Burry, who has held a short position against Nvidia for months, posted “Around and around we go.” Bloomberg’s running tally of Nvidia’s announced commitments across the AI ecosystem now reaches roughly $750 billion, set against revenue of $215.9 billion for its last full financial year. AMD fell more than 5% alongside it, and by this morning the selling had spread to memory makers and chip equipment names across Asia (Bloomberg).

🏦 The Fed opens two days with a harder call than it wanted

The Federal Open Market Committee began its two-day meeting today, with the decision landing tomorrow at 7:00pm BST (2:00pm ET) and new Chair Kevin Warsh taking questions half an hour later. A hold at 3.50% to 3.75% is still the expected outcome, but the market is not treating it as settled: CME FedWatch pricing puts the odds of at least a quarter-point rise at 38%, against 62% for no change. Those odds sat near 10% in mid-July before oil went vertical. There is no fresh set of rate projections at this meeting, so tone carries the whole message (Forbes).

Today gives the committee one more data point. The Conference Board publishes July consumer confidence at 3:00pm BST (10:00am ET), after a June reading of 91.2 in which the share of Americans saying jobs were hard to get climbed to 22.5%, the highest since January 2021. Oil coming off its highs has taken some heat out of the inflation case, and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 4.64%. Second-quarter GDP and the June core PCE inflation reading both arrive the morning after the decision, so anything Warsh says tomorrow gets tested within 18 hours.

🛢️ Oil slides again as the strike pause holds

Brent crude for September delivery fell 2.07% to $86.53 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate dropped 1.72% to $82.19, a second straight session of losses as the halt in fighting between the United States and Iran held. The United States stopped its attacks late last week after nearly a fortnight of strikes, and Tehran stopped hitting American bases in neighbouring countries. President Trump said he suspended the campaign to give negotiations another chance. Brent traded above $100 as recently as the middle of last week (CNBC).

The detail that matters more than the headline is what Oman is brokering. Under the proposal on the table, the Strait of Hormuz would run as two separately managed corridors: ships in the southern route through Omani waters would sail freely on pre-war terms, while vessels using the northern route inside Iranian waters would need permission from Tehran. No tolls would be charged. Traffic through the strait had fallen to a three-week low. Getting cargo moving again is what turns a pause in the fighting into lower petrol prices, and it is the piece the Fed is watching too (Bloomberg).

🍎 Apple takes the most valuable company title back from Nvidia

Apple finished yesterday worth more than Nvidia for the first time at a closing bell since April 2025, ending a run at the top that the chipmaker had held for well over a year. It happened because Nvidia fell, not because Apple rose: a 4.99% drop left the chipmaker valued around $4.77 trillion. The gap over 2026 tells the story better than any single session. Apple shares are up roughly 24% so far this year while Nvidia has added about 4% (CNBC).

For most of the past two years, size at the top of the US market was a proxy for AI enthusiasm, so this handover is a reasonable measure of how much of that enthusiasm has drained. Apple has spent the year being marked up for the thing it was criticised for, which is spending far less on AI infrastructure than its rivals. That view gets tested later this week when Apple reports after the close, with revenue expected somewhere near $109 billion to $110 billion. It will be Tim Cook’s final set of results before John Ternus takes over on 1 September.

Stories You Might Have Missed

✈️ Boeing puts its turnaround on the record

Boeing reports second-quarter results before the US open today, with chief executive Kelly Ortberg and finance chief Jay Malave taking questions at 3:30pm BST (10:30am ET). Analysts expect a loss of about 28 cents a share, a sharp narrowing from the $1.24 loss a year earlier, on revenue up more than 7% to around $24.26 billion. The company handed over 171 commercial aircraft and 35 defence aircraft in the quarter, and its order backlog stands at roughly $695 billion. The bigger development came earlier this month: from 20 July the Federal Aviation Administration restored Boeing’s authority to issue final airworthiness certificates for all newly built 737 MAX and 787 jets, removing a bottleneck that had capped deliveries. Options pricing implies a move of about 6% in either direction (Yahoo Finance).

₿ Crypto marks time as Washington puts the rulebook aside

Bitcoin eased to around $63,300 and Ethereum to about $1,875, with XRP near $1.06 and the total value of the crypto market close to $2.26 trillion, the whole complex a fraction lower over 24 hours. The whole complex is sitting on its hands until the Fed speaks tomorrow, since a hike would hit the high-beta end of risk assets first. July has still been the first month since April with money flowing into both US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum funds, roughly $234 million and $338 million respectively, although a single session late last week saw about $225 million pulled back out. In Washington the Senate set the digital asset market structure bill aside to deal with Russia sanctions and nominations, leaving one working week before the summer recess for any preliminary floor action (CoinDesk).

🥇 Gold drifts lower with the dollar firm

Spot gold fell 0.7% to $4,044.81 an ounce, giving back a gain of as much as 1% from the previous session, as the dollar held near a one-month high and made bullion more expensive for buyers holding other currencies. The metal has been stuck in a range between roughly $3,950 and $4,200 for weeks, which is what tends to happen when two opposing forces cancel out: a rate rise would hurt an asset that pays no income, while the inflation scare that created the rate risk is exactly what drives people to own it in the first place. Tomorrow’s decision breaks the deadlock in one direction or the other, and the reaction in the dollar will matter as much as the rate itself (CNBC).

🔍 Deep Dive - Around and Around We Go: The Nvidia and OpenAI Loop Behind the Chip Crash

Chip shares fell across three continents today. Korea’s main index dropped 10.84% and the exchange halted trading. Kioxia in Tokyo lost more than 18%. Memory names in New York opened around 5% lower. The trigger was a report that Nvidia is in talks to guarantee up to $250 billion of borrowing, so a customer can build a data centre and fill it with Nvidia chips. Nobody serious is claiming AI demand is fake. The worry is narrower, and it is about who is paying.

What a guarantee actually is

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Oil craters on Iran truce: US crude sank about 8% back toward $83 after the US and Iran paused fighting, unwinding July’s supply scare.

• 📈 Stocks fly into a make-or-break week: Nasdaq-100 futures jumped roughly 1.6% as cheaper oil reset a market that lost ground last week.

• 🏦 The Fed takes centre stage: A hold looks likely this week, but firmer inflation keeps surprise-hike odds near one in three.

• 💻 Big Tech’s AI bill on trial: Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon report within a day, after the group shed $800bn last week.

• ₿ Ether keeps its edge: Bitcoin held above $65,000, flat on the day, while ether outperformed near $1,965 as the war trade cooled.

• 🥇 Gold firms as fear fades: Bullion rose about 1% toward $4,100, steadying off nine-month lows even as havens sold off elsewhere.

• 🧱 Tariff wall now in force: New US duties of 10% to 12.5% on 60 partners took effect, covering almost all imports.

• 💳 Earnings deluge beyond Big Tech: Visa, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Ford and the oil majors also report, a broad read on the real economy.

• 📈 Chart of the Day, WTI rejected at $92: Crude found resistance exactly where I expected it, and $80 is the level I am watching now.

🧠 One Big Thing

This week asks one question four different ways: is the AI build-out worth it? The Magnificent Seven lost close to $800 billion in a single session last week because Alphabet’s $205 billion spending plan spooked investors even as its cloud sales soared. Now Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon each have to answer the same charge. The signal is not the size of the capex line, it is whether cloud growth and AI revenue are accelerating fast enough to earn it. The market has flipped from rewarding ambition to demanding proof. Watch the cloud growth rates and the 2027 spending guides far more than the earnings beats.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

34%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +39.64% First Tracks Biotherapeutics surged on read-across after argenx agreed to buy rival Forte Biosciences in a $2.2 billion cash deal that validates CD122 as a commercially viable drug target, the same mechanism behind First Tracks’ lead candidate ANB033. The San Diego biotech was spun out of AnaptysBio only in April and has more than doubled since early July.

• : +39.37% Forte Biosciences jumped after agreeing to be acquired by immunology group argenx for $77 per share in cash, valuing the company at roughly $2.2 billion. The price represents an 86% premium to Forte’s average trading level since it reported positive Phase 1b vitiligo data for its anti-CD122 antibody FB102 on July 9.

• : +5.30% SAP extended last week’s post-earnings rally after second quarter current cloud backlog rose 27% to a record 22.9 billion euros, beating expectations on the single metric the market had been watching most closely. The German software group reiterated its full year cloud revenue and roughly 10 billion euro free cash flow guidance.

Losers

• : -4.27% Devon Energy slid with the wider oil complex after the United States and Iran paused military strikes over the weekend, draining the Middle East risk premium and sending Brent crude down as much as 7% to below $90 a barrel.

• : -3.94% Occidental Petroleum fell as the Gulf de-escalation unwound the supply disruption trade that had pushed crude above $100 last week. Brent remains up more than 50% year to date despite today's slide.

• : -3.51% Diamondback Energy dropped in sympathy with the crude selloff, with the Permian pure play among the most oil price sensitive names in the large cap energy group.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $65,244 (▼ 0.14%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,964 (▲ 0.57%)
XRP: $1.11 (▼ 0.58%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,522 (▲ 1.00%)
NASDAQ 100: 28,743 (▲ 1.63%)
FTSE 100: 10,806 (▲ 0.87%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.64% (▼ 0.90%)
Oil (WTI): $83 (▼ 7.92%)
Gold: $4,103 (▲ 1.23%)
Silver: $59.20 (▲ 1.75%)

Data as of: UK: 12:08pm BST / US: 7:08am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:08pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Oil craters as the US and Iran pull their punches

Oil fell hard to start the week after the US and Iran paused their strikes for a second straight day over the weekend, pulling the war premium out of crude. US benchmark WTI dropped about 8% to around $83 a barrel, and Brent gave up its brief push above $100 from late last week to slide toward the mid-$80s, one of the sharpest two-day reversals in months. Tehran said it had halted its retaliatory attacks while a US pause held, and confirmed it was still in talks with Oman over safer passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil (CNBC).

Cheaper oil takes the heat out of inflation, right as the Fed sits down to decide. Crude had surged close to 40% this month as the conflict spread from Hormuz to the Red Sea, and that spike was the single biggest reason a summer of cooling prices suddenly looked at risk. Take the spike away and the inflation scare goes with it. Watch the Strait, though, because the pause is fragile and unofficial: Iran-backed Houthi forces claimed fresh attacks on Saudi Aramco sites at Jizan and Yanbu over the weekend, so another spike is not off the table (NPR).

📈 Cheaper oil sends stocks flying into a make-or-break week

The oil drop lit a fuse under equities to open a week stacked with the biggest events of the quarter. Futures on the Nasdaq-100 jumped about 1.6% and the S&P 500 climbed around 1%, pointing to a strong open after a bruising stretch. Stocks limped out of last week lower across the board, the Nasdaq Composite off roughly 2% over the five days, dragged down by chipmakers after Taiwan Semiconductor’s bigger spending plans knocked the sector before the weekend (Yahoo Finance).

The week itself is the story. A Fed decision, the June reading of the Fed’s favoured inflation gauge, and four of the five most valuable companies on earth all report inside three days, with the first estimate of second-quarter US growth landing on top. That is a genuine test of the two beliefs holding this market up: that inflation is still cooling, and that the AI trade still pays. A green open built on a fragile oil truce needs those tests to break its way.

🏦 The Fed steps into the spotlight with a harder call than it wanted

The Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting gets under way and ends with a decision this week, at 7:00 PM BST (2:00 PM ET), and it has become the most awkward call in months. The central bank is still widely expected to hold its target range at 3.50% to 3.75%, but the oil-driven inflation scare had lifted the odds of a surprise rate rise to about one in three before crude tumbled. New Chair Kevin Warsh, who has said he wants to give markets less hand-holding, then faces the press half an hour later at 7:30 PM BST (2:30 PM ET), and with no fresh rate projections due, his tone will carry the message (CNBC).

This decision sets the price of money for everything from your mortgage to Bitcoin. Cheaper oil hands Warsh cover to hold without looking like he is ignoring inflation, and softer crude has already dragged the 10-year Treasury yield back to about 4.64%, off last week’s highest level since early 2025. The bigger test lands the morning after, when core PCE inflation and the first cut of second-quarter growth print together. A hot inflation number one day after a hold would revive hike talk fast.

💻 Big Tech’s AI spending goes on trial

The most valuable companies in the world start reporting into a market that has turned nervous about the bill for artificial intelligence. Microsoft and Meta report after the close alongside the Fed decision, with Apple and Amazon the evening after, four firms worth more than $11 trillion between them. The mood shifted last week when Alphabet beat on sales yet fell after lifting its 2026 capital-spending plan to as much as $205 billion, and the Magnificent Seven shed close to $800 billion in a single session as investors recoiled at the scale of the spend (Yahoo Finance).

Same question hangs over all four: does the spending actually convert? Microsoft is expected to steer its own AI build-out toward roughly $220 billion, Meta has already pushed its 2026 capex above $136 billion, and both need cloud growth fast enough to justify it. Amazon reports with AWS growth seen near 33%, and Apple closes the week with iPhone and services numbers, the last set of results under Tim Cook before John Ternus takes over as chief executive on 1 September. Watch the cloud growth rates and next year’s capex guides more than the headline earnings.

₿ Ether keeps its edge as crypto steadies

Crypto rode the weekend relief wave, then held it. Bitcoin sat just above $65,000, barely changed on the day after the pop, while ether did the heavy lifting, up around 0.6% near $1,965 and holding above a closely watched trend line to outrun the larger coin. XRP was little changed near $1.11. The trigger was the one lifting stocks and sinking oil at the same time: the US and Iran holding fire pulled the risk-off fear out of the market and put the peace trade back to work (CoinDesk).

Ether’s edge has its own engine underneath the macro. Spot Ether ETFs have started pulling in money again after a long dry spell, helped by the arrival of products that pay a staking yield, giving big institutions an income reason to hold it. The wider prize is still stuck in Washington, where the CLARITY market-structure bill is racing an early-August Senate recess before the window shuts, with a compromise on ethics and enforcement still unresolved. A clean pass would be the sector’s biggest legal step forward in years (CoinDesk).

Stories You Might Have Missed

🥇 Gold steadies as the war premium leaks out

Gold rose more than 1% toward $4,100 an ounce to start the week, pulling away from nine-month lows even as other safe havens were sold. The move looks odd for a risk-on day until you see the driver: with oil falling and the inflation threat easing, traders are betting the Fed has less reason to keep rates high for long, and lower rates lift gold because it pays no yield of its own. Bullion still finished last week sharply lower, so this is a bounce off a beating more than a fresh charge, and the Fed decision is the next big test (CNBC).

🧱 Trump’s tariff wall clicks into place

A fresh set of US import duties took effect at the end of last week, replacing an expiring temporary tariff with something far broader. The new levies run 10% to 12.5% and hit 60 trading partners covering about 99.4% of US imports, justified by the White House on forced-labour grounds. Partners from the EU to Brazil called the reasoning “unjustified,” and most signalled they would keep negotiating rather than hit back, though the measures were challenged in court within hours of taking effect. It is a slow-burn inflation risk landing at the worst possible moment, days before the Fed decides (CNBC).

💳 The earnings flood goes well beyond Big Tech

The megacaps grab the headlines, but the week buries investors in results from the real economy too. Visa and Mastercard give a read on whether shoppers are still spending as prices climb, Coca-Cola shows whether households are trading down, and Boeing and Ford report into that fresh round of tariffs on their supply chains. Robinhood and Coinbase offer a direct look at how active retail traders have been through a wild month, and the oil majors Exxon and Chevron close the week, reporting just as crude hands back its war-driven gains (CNBC).

📈 Chart of the Day - WTI Crude Oil

Read more

Last Week, Graded

UK Inflation, June CPI: Cooler British prices rose 2.6 percent over the year, down from 2.8 percent and just under the 2.7 percent expected, the softest reading since March 2025 as cheaper motor fuel and calmer transport costs did the heavy lifting, which keeps the Bank of England comfortably on its wait-and-see path.

ECB Rate Decision, July: Hold, as expected The European Central Bank left its deposit rate at 2.25 percent in a unanimous vote, and President Lagarde pointed to September as the live meeting while the bank waits to see how the oil spike from the Iran conflict feeds into euro-area inflation.

Tesla, Q2: Revenue Beat, Profit Miss Tesla posted record revenue of 28.24 billion dollars, up 26 percent and ahead of the 25.71 billion expected, but adjusted earnings of 33 cents a share badly missed the 51 cents forecast as operating income collapsed 57 percent and margins thinned to 1.4 percent, and the stock fell about 5.6 percent after hours and more than 7 percent the next day.

Alphabet, Q2: Beat, Then Sold Off Google’s parent grew revenue 24 percent to 119.8 billion dollars with cloud sales up a stunning 82 percent, yet shares still slid about 3.65 percent after the company lifted its 2026 capital-spending plan to as much as 205 billion dollars, a sign investors are starting to flinch at the size of the AI build-out bill.

The setup: Britain’s inflation cooled and Europe held steady, but both readings were taken before oil went vertical, so this week asks all three central banks whether the spike changes anything.

Week at a Glance

🔴 Fed Rate Decision — Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET / 7:00 PM BST

🔴 Microsoft & Meta Earnings — Wednesday, After Close

🔴 Bank of England Rate Decision — Thursday, 7:00 AM ET / 12:00 PM BST

🔴 Apple & Amazon Earnings — Thursday, After Close

🟠 US Q2 GDP & June PCE — Thursday, 8:30 AM ET / 1:30 PM BST

🟠 Bank of Japan Rate Decision — Friday, time not fixed

🟠 Euro Area Flash Inflation — Friday, 5:00 AM ET / 10:00 AM BST

🟠 Exxon & Chevron Earnings — Friday, Before Open

🟡 US Consumer Confidence, July — Tuesday, 10:00 AM ET / 3:00 PM BST

MONDAY — July 27

Read more

This Week

XRP finished the week at $1.09 for the third Sunday running, inside a $1.08 to $1.16 range, while the wider crypto market added about 1 percent. Sentiment finally moved: the Fear and Greed Index printed 26, its first reading out of Extreme Fear in over a month. The price did not care.

Washington gave the week its shape. President Trump signed off on the ethics language that had blocked the CLARITY Act for months, the Treasury Secretary said the bill was on the 1-yard line, and two days later the Senate Majority Leader said it would not pass before the summer break. Away from that, the XRP Ledger put its biggest upgrade in years to a validator vote, and Ripple opened the front door to RLUSD for institutions.

The Consensus

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act misses its window. Trump agreed the ethics text, Democrats rejected it anyway, and Thune says it will not pass before the recess.

• 🔧 Six changes go to an XRP Ledger validator vote, including batch transactions and confidential transfers, the biggest package in years.

• 💵 Ripple launches Ripple Mint so institutions can issue RLUSD themselves, while monthly transfer volume drops about 26 percent.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🖥️ Intel smashes the bar: Revenue jumped 25% to $16.1 billion, its fastest in fifteen years, sending shares up as much as 12% after hours.

• 📉 Wall Street’s worst day in a month: The S&P 500 fell 1.2% and the Nasdaq 2.2% as AI spending fears and surging oil hit stocks.

• 🛢️ Oil breaks $100: Brent topped $100 a barrel for the first time since May as Trump weighed a bigger strike on Iran.

• 🧱 Trump rebuilds his tariff wall: The US set new 10% to 12.5% duties on 60 economies, covering almost all its imports, effective today.

• ₿ Bitcoin slips as bill stalls: BTC eased toward $65,500 as CLARITY Act passage odds held near 38% and the recess clock ticked down.

• 🏦 ECB holds, eyes September: Europe’s central bank kept rates at 2.25% while Lagarde left the door open to a hike in September.

• 🛡️ Lockheed beats and lifts guidance: The defence giant grew revenue 11% to $20.1 billion, raised its outlook, and posted a record $230 billion backlog.

• 🥇 Gold slips toward $4,040: Bullion fell for a second day as higher oil and firmer yields outweighed the safe-haven bid from the Middle East.

• 🇬🇧 UK data lands this morning: June retail sales and fresh flash business surveys give the first read on how the economy fared in July.

• 📈 Chart of the Day, SpaceX: SPCX bounced off 110.64 support to close at 118.24, still capped by its downtrend line until a break confirms.

🧠 One Big Thing

Strip out the earnings and today is about the cost of money hardening. Oil above $100, a new US tariff wall on 60 economies, an ECB openly weighing a September hike, and firmer bond yields all send the same higher-for-longer message, and that is the exact backdrop that punishes long-duration, capital-hungry growth. It is why Alphabet and Tesla slid on spending, why gold cannot hold its highs, and why Bitcoin eased as risk appetite thinned. The through-line is not the results, it is the discount rate stiffening a week before the Federal Reserve meets. Watch the 10-year Treasury yield and oil into the 28th and 29th.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$16.1 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +116.88% LiveWire Group more than doubled in pre-market after the Harley-Davidson backed electric motorcycle maker reported second quarter revenue up 55% year over year and a narrowed net loss. The stock had closed down 15.29% at 77 cents near its 52-week low before reversing hard in extended trading on very thin volume.

• : +9.46% Amkor Technology climbed after the semiconductor packaging firm announced a multi-year, 1.5 billion dollar strategic partnership with Nvidia, under which Nvidia will make a prepayment to fund expansion of Amkor’s advanced packaging and test capacity in Arizona.

• : +5.89% SAP SE rose after the German software group posted second quarter current cloud backlog of 22.9 billion euros, up 27%, with cloud revenue up 22% and IFRS earnings per share up 30% to 1.89 euros. The bounce comes off a 52-week low, and SAP trimmed its full year operating profit outlook slightly to reflect dilution from the Dremio and Prior Labs acquisitions.

• : +4.28% Intel advanced after reporting second quarter revenue up 25% to 16.13 billion dollars and adjusted earnings of 42 cents per share, roughly double consensus, driven by a 59% surge in data center and AI revenue. Current quarter guidance of about 16.3 billion dollars also landed well ahead of Wall Street.

Losers

• : -22.11% Codexis dropped after the enzyme engineering company priced an underwritten public offering of 16.67 million shares at a roughly 25% discount to Thursday's close, raising about 23 million dollars in net proceeds for working capital and R&D.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $65,365 (▲ 0.46%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,890 (▲ 0.68%)
XRP: $1.11 (▲ 0.55%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,454 (▲ 0.12%)
NASDAQ 100: 28,600 (▼ 0.07%)
FTSE 100: 10,678 (▲ 0.75%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.70% (▼ 0.09%)
Oil (WTI): $90 (▼ 2.38%)
Gold: $4,051 (▲ 0.04%)
Silver: $58.23 (▲ 1.07%)

Data as of: UK: 9:45am BST / US: 4:45am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 5:45pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🖥️ Intel roars back with its biggest beat in years

Intel delivered the surprise of the earnings season after the US close yesterday, and the shares jumped as much as 12% in extended trading. Analysts had modelled $14.4 billion in revenue. Intel did $16.1 billion, up 25% on the year and its fastest growth in almost fifteen years. Adjusted earnings came in at $0.42 a share, double the $0.21 expected. The standout was the data-centre and AI unit, where sales climbed 59% to $6.3 billion as demand for server chips returned, while the client-computing business added 13% to $8.9 billion. The foundry arm, the part that makes chips for other firms, grew 31% to $5.8 billion, with yields on its new 18A process reported near 85%, up from around 65% a quarter earlier (CNBC).

The timing could hardly be sharper. Alphabet reported the same evening, beat, and still fell, punished for lifting its AI spending toward $205 billion with the returns unproven. Intel offered the mirror image: a company whose long-doubted turnaround is starting to show up in the actual numbers. The stock had already run about 163% this year on hope, so the bar was high, and it did give back part of the after-hours pop as investors weighed a bottom-line net loss near $11 billion tied to one-off charges. The read-through for the wider chip trade is real. After a brutal fortnight for semiconductors, a genuine beat from the sector’s most troubled name suggests the AI build-out is still pulling hardware through.

📉 Stocks log their worst day in a month

Wall Street had its roughest session in weeks yesterday. The S&P 500 fell 1.2% to 7,408, its biggest one-day drop in a month, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slid 2.2% to 25,138, and the Dow lost 507 points, or about 1%. The selling was led by the very megacaps that were meant to carry the market: Alphabet dropped despite beating on sales, after it raised its 2026 capital-spending plan to as much as $205 billion, and Tesla weakened after swinging to a cash burn. Rising oil, which climbed past $100, added a second weight, hitting sentiment across the growth names most sensitive to inflation and rates (TheStreet).

So why did a clear beat get sold? Because investors have stopped treating AI spending as automatically good. The five largest US cloud builders are on track to spend around $700 billion this year, most of it on AI, and until the revenue shows up to justify it, every raised budget reads as a cost the company has to defend. Microsoft, Meta and Amazon all report over the coming days, and each faces the same test Alphabet just failed: prove the build-out is paying, or watch a strong quarter get sold anyway.

Intel’s beat is the counter-case, and the gap between the two sets the tone into next week.

🛢️ Oil breaks $100 as Trump weighs a bigger strike

Crude pushed through a level it had not seen since the spring. Brent settled above $100 a barrel yesterday, its highest since May and up more than 13% on the week, while US West Texas Intermediate settled near $92. The climb ran for a fifth straight session, driven by a widening conflict with Iran. US forces struck Iranian targets for a thirteenth consecutive night, hitting command centres and sites tied to the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil. President Trump told Axios he is weighing a larger assault, saying Iran had “not received enough pain yet,” and warned of major military punishment for further attacks on shipping (CNBC).

The move reaches well past the petrol pump. The slide in oil earlier this summer, from around $95 to the low $70s after a June ceasefire, was the single biggest reason inflation cooled on both sides of the Atlantic. A sustained return toward and beyond $100 threatens to unwind that relief and stiffen the case for central banks to hold rates high. It lands a week before the Federal Reserve meets on the 28th and 29th, and it has already pulled the European Central Bank back toward a rate hike. For a market that spent June relaxing about prices, triple-digit oil is the fastest way to reverse the mood.

🧱 Trump rebuilds his tariff wall on 60 economies

The US moved to reconstruct President Trump’s tariff wall today, setting fresh duties of 10% to 12.5% on imports from around 60 economies, a group that covers the top US trading partners and roughly 99.4% of everything America buys from abroad. The new levies take effect this morning, replacing a temporary 10% global tariff that expires today. They arrive under a new legal banner: the Office of the US Trade Representative acted under a forced-labour provision, penalising countries it says failed to block goods made with forced labour. Partners that have adopted such bans, among them the UK, Canada, Mexico and India, face the 10% rate, while those that have not, such as Brazil, face 12.5% (Bloomberg).

In February the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s earlier tariffs, ruling he had overstepped his emergency powers. This is the administration’s way around that defeat, rebuilding the wall on firmer legal ground. For investors the effect is much the same as before: a broad new tax on imported goods that companies tend to pass along, adding to inflation just as oil surges back over $100 and central banks are already on edge. Most trading partners rejected the forced-labour rationale, with Brazil calling the move arbitrary, though most stopped short of retaliating and kept the door open to more talks, which limits the immediate risk of a wider trade war (CNBC).

₿ Bitcoin slips as the crypto bill runs out of road

Bitcoin eased back toward $65,500, weighed down by the same rising oil and firmer yields pressuring the rest of the risk market, and by fading hopes for its big legislative prize. The market-structure bill known as the CLARITY Act is stuck. Senate negotiators released an updated draft that softened the disputed ethics provision, letting it sunset in 2029 and giving regulators a year to implement it, but key Democrats are still not satisfied. Prediction market Polymarket puts the odds of the bill becoming law this year near 38%, down from close to 48% earlier in the week. Senator Cynthia Lummis, pushing for a floor vote, called it likely the last chance to pass meaningful crypto rules this decade (CoinDesk).

The maths is unforgiving. The bill needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear the Senate’s cloture hurdle, and it has to do so before lawmakers leave for their August recess, so the window is now a matter of days. Miss it and the effort likely slips toward the year end, deep into the midterm run-up. For a market that rallied through the spring on the prospect of a clear US rulebook, a vote count that keeps drifting lower removes one of its main supports at the same moment the macro backdrop turns less friendly.

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🏦 The ECB holds but signals a September move

The European Central Bank left its deposit rate at 2.25% yesterday, the hold everyone expected, then leaned hawkish in the message. President Lagarde said some governors had begun to ask whether a further hike was warranted, and warned that the jump in oil poses an upside risk to inflation, which she now sees staying well above target into the first half of 2027. Traders moved to price an increase at the next meeting in September. With the Fed boxed in and unable to cut, the ECB is turning into the major central bank most likely to be raising into the autumn, a divergence that tends to firm the euro and lift European bond yields (Bloomberg).

🛡️ Lockheed Martin beats big and lifts its outlook

Lockheed Martin gave the defence sector a strong quarter and the shares rose more than 5%. The company earned an adjusted $7.94 a share, well ahead of the $7.23 analysts expected, on revenue up 11% to $20.1 billion, beating the $19.4 billion forecast. Growth came across every division, led by a ramp in missiles and munitions as governments restock. Management raised full-year guidance, lifting its sales outlook to roughly $79.75 billion to $81.75 billion and earnings to between $29.95 and $30.65 a share, and pointed to a record order backlog of about $230 billion. With conflict escalating in the Middle East and Europe still rearming, the demand backdrop for defence hardware remains firm, and Lockheed’s raised numbers put a concrete figure on it (Yahoo Finance).

🥇 Gold slips as higher-for-longer bites

Gold fell for a second session, easing toward $4,040 an ounce after dropping close to 2% the day before. The metal is caught in a tug of war. The escalating Middle East conflict and a softer dollar have fuelled safe-haven buying, but the same oil surge that lifts inflation expectations also strengthens the case for keeping interest rates high, and higher rates dull the appeal of an asset that pays no yield. For now the rate side is winning, leaving bullion drifting back from its recent highs even with strikes at sea and a jittery stock market. It is another sign that the cost of money, not the war, is setting the ceiling across assets this week (Yahoo Finance).

🇬🇧 A busy morning for UK data

Britain gets its clearest read of the week this morning. The Office for National Statistics publishes June retail sales, expected to have slipped after a strong May, and a set of flash business surveys for July lands across the euro area, the UK and the US through the day, giving the first hard gauge of how the major economies performed this month. The context is soft: an industry survey from the British Retail Consortium showed total sales up just 1.9% on the year in June, with a record heatwave pulling shoppers away from the high street and online now close to 40% of non-food spending. Coming the day after the ECB’s hawkish turn and days before the Fed, the numbers set the tone for the pound and gilt yields into the weekend (ONS).

📈 Chart of the Day: SpaceX (SPCX)

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🔍 Big Tech’s spending spooks the market: Alphabet and Tesla both fell after hours as ballooning AI budgets overshadowed strong sales.

• 🛢️ Oil races toward $100: Brent jumped almost 5% to nearly $98 after Houthi missiles struck two Saudi oil tankers.

• ₿ Bitcoin slips as odds fade: BTC eased toward $65,700 as CLARITY Act passage odds tumbled to 38% on Democrat pushback.

• 🏦 The ECB decides today: Europe’s central bank is set to hold at 2.25%, leaving Lagarde’s tone the market’s real signal.

• 🖥️ Intel reports into a high bar: The chipmaker, up 163% this year, reports tonight with its foundry turnaround under the microscope.

• 💼 ServiceNow jumps as software wins: The AI-software firm beat and raised guidance, rising about 4% while the big spenders got punished.

• 💻 IBM stumbles on weak sales: Revenue missed and mainframe sales fell 42%, though the stock steadied after last week’s 25% crash.

• 🥇 Gold slips from a two-week high: Bullion eased to about $4,089 after touching $4,130, torn between Mideast havens and rising yields.

• 🔍 Deep Dive, SpaceX playbook check-in: SPCX hit the retest zone weeks early, near its post-IPO low, as the IPO playbook’s calls land.

• 📈 Chart of the Day, SpaceX: SPCX broke to a fresh post-IPO low near $115, the lower edge of the playbook’s retest band.

🧠 One Big Thing

The market just punished Alphabet for spending more even though the demand was clearly there, with cloud revenue up 82%. That is the shift worth noticing: investors no longer treat AI capital spending as automatically good, they want proof it pays off. At the same time ServiceNow, which sells AI software rather than building the infrastructure, jumped about 4%. A rotation is forming, away from the capital-heavy hyperscalers and chip suppliers and toward the software layer that monetises AI without the balance-sheet risk. Watch whether Intel tonight gets the Alphabet treatment for its foundry cash burn, or the ServiceNow one.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$205 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +26.62% NVE Corporation surged after reporting fiscal first quarter revenue up 81% to $11.0 million and earnings of $1.32 per diluted share, with management pointing to accelerating semiconductor demand and newly launched medical sensor products.

• : +16.28% Hyliion Holdings jumped after being awarded a $41.7 million cost plus fixed fee contract from the Office of Naval Research covering the design, construction, testing and delivery of 2 megawatt and 3 megawatt KARNO power generation systems.

• : +6.87% SK hynix depositary receipts climbed as the memory complex extended its rebound on rising DRAM and NAND contract prices. The move is amplified by arbitrage positioning ahead of the July 29 window that opens conversion between the receipts and the underlying Korean shares.

• : +6.83% ServiceNow rallied after beating the high end of its guidance on every top line and profitability metric, with subscription revenue up 23% in constant currency and full year subscription guidance lifted to $15.77 billion.

• : +6.76% United Rentals climbed on record second quarter results, posting adjusted earnings of $12.76 per share on revenue of $4.41 billion and raising full year revenue guidance to a range of $17.5 billion to $17.8 billion.

• : +5.71% RTX Corporation gained after its second quarter results landed before the open, with the aerospace and defense group riding surging global defense budgets and a record $271 billion backlog into the print.

• : +5.49% Lockheed Martin rose after reporting second quarter results before the open, a sharp turn from a first quarter that missed on both lines, with missile and fire control programs including PAC-3 and THAAD converting backlog into revenue.

• : +5.02% Thermo Fisher Scientific advanced after releasing second quarter results before the open, extending a run that has the stock up more than 14% over the past month on bioproduction and pharma services strength.

Losers

• : −16.95% Rollins slumped after second quarter revenue of $1.08 billion and adjusted earnings of $0.32 per share both missed estimates, with management flagging slower growth in residential pest control brands that lean on consumer initiated search demand.

• : −5.89% Tesla fell after posting record quarterly revenue of $28.24 billion but adjusted earnings of just $0.33 per share against a $0.53 consensus, as capital expenditure surged 142% to $5.79 billion and free cash flow turned negative.

• : −4.14% Texas Instruments slipped despite a second quarter double beat and above consensus third quarter guidance, as investors took profits on a stock that had gained more than 65% year to date heading into the print.

• : −6.11% Alphabet dropped after lifting 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a record $195 billion to $205 billion, overshadowing a quarter in which revenue reached $119.8 billion and Google Cloud revenue grew 82%.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $65,733 (▼0.50%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,928 (▼0.24%)
XRP: $1.14 (▼0.48%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,512 (▼0.37%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,050 (▼0.45%)
FTSE 100: 10,702 (▼0.05%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.68% (▲0.34%)
Oil (WTI): $91 (▲4.82%)
Gold: $4,090 (▼0.93%)
Silver: $58.75 (▼1.64%)

Data as of: UK: 11:40am BST / US: 6:40am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 7:40pm JST

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✅ 5 Things to Know

🔍 Google beats on almost everything and still falls

Alphabet posted one of its strongest quarters ever after the US close yesterday, and the shares still dropped about 5%. Revenue rose 24% on the year to $119.8 billion, ahead of the roughly $117 billion analysts expected. Google Cloud grew 82% to $24.8 billion, and the backlog of signed but not yet delivered cloud work reached a record $514 billion. The catch was a single line. Alphabet raised its 2026 capital-spending plan to between $195 billion and $205 billion, up from $180 to $190 billion and well above the roughly $188 billion the market had modelled, with quarterly spending hitting a record $44.9 billion and free cash flow for the quarter turning negative by $5.9 billion (CNBC).

Here is why a great quarter got punished. For most of the past two years, when a big tech firm said it would spend more on AI, its stock went up, because heavier spending was read as winning the race for computing power. That rule has flipped. Capital spending is cash that leaves today to build data centres and buy chips, and it then shows up as a cost on the books for years afterwards, whether or not the promised revenue arrives on time. By lifting its build toward $205 billion and flagging still more in 2027, Alphabet is committing to a wave of future costs, and investors have stopped funding that on faith. They now want to know when it pays back, and a strong cloud number is not enough if the bill is growing faster than the proof.

Alphabet is not alone in this. The five largest US cloud builders are on course to spend around $700 billion this year, most of it on AI, each racing not to be the one that under-builds and loses the decade. The problem is that AI revenue is still arriving in a trickle next to that flood of spending, and Tesla, reporting the same evening, also swung to burning cash. Microsoft, Meta and Amazon all report in the coming days and face the same test, so the question for each is how it frames the payback, not just the spend (CNBC).

🛢️ Oil races toward $100 as tankers burn

Oil surged again today, with Brent crude climbing about 4.6% to nearly $98 a barrel, its highest since late May, and US West Texas Intermediate up almost 5% to around $90.60. The trigger was a sharp escalation at sea: Iran-backed Houthi militants said they fired missiles and drones at two Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, accusing them of breaking a blockade. The strikes came as the US renewed threats to widen its campaign against Iran, with reports of a B-1 bomber deployment, keeping the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, at the centre of the market’s worry (CNBC).

The move matters far beyond the petrol pump. The slide in oil earlier this summer, from around $95 to the low $70s after a June ceasefire, was the single biggest reason inflation cooled on both sides of the Atlantic. A sustained climb back toward triple digits would unwind much of that relief and strengthen the case for central banks to keep rates high. It lands a week before the Federal Reserve meets on the 28th and 29th, and on the same morning the European Central Bank sets policy, sharpening every “higher for longer” conversation in the room.

₿ Bitcoin slips as the crypto bill’s odds tumble

Bitcoin eased back toward $65,700 today, slipping under pressure from rising oil, firmer bond yields and a wobble in Washington. The market-structure bill known as the CLARITY Act lost momentum after Senate Republicans released an updated draft and key Democrats promptly criticised it, sending its chances of passing this year sliding. Prediction market Polymarket now puts those odds near 38%, down from close to half a week ago. The sticking point is the ethics provision that the White House and President Trump had agreed to, with lawmakers still split over how the ban on officials profiting from digital assets should be enforced (CoinDesk).

The clock is the real pressure. Crypto advocates are pointing to an early-August deadline, with the Senate due to break for its summer recess, so the bill either clears in the next couple of weeks or likely slips toward the year end. That leaves Bitcoin caught between two forces: a macro backdrop turning less friendly as oil and yields rise, and a regulatory prize that keeps looking further away. For a market that had rallied on hopes of a clear US rulebook, a fading vote count removes one of its main supports.

🏦 The ECB holds while keeping September in play

The European Central Bank announces its rate decision today, and a hold is close to certain, with markets pricing better than a 99% chance the deposit rate stays at 2.25%. That makes the decision itself a near non-event and hands the entire signal to President Lagarde’s press conference. This is a meeting without fresh staff forecasts, so the tone of her words carries unusual weight, especially with the ECB having become the first major central bank to raise rates in response to the war when it hiked in June (Yahoo Finance).

For investors the question is whether a September hike is still live. Around 70% of forecasters expect one more increase this year, and that move is nearly fully priced, so Lagarde faces a balancing act: sound concerned enough about prices to keep her options open, without stoking expectations the market has already banked. The fresh jump in oil only complicates the picture, reviving the inflation risk the ECB has been guarding against. Any hint that September is firming would lift the euro and European bond yields, while a softer message would take the second hike off the table.

🖥️ Intel reports into an unforgiving bar

Intel reports second-quarter results after the US close today, and expectations could hardly be higher. The stock has climbed about 163% this year on hopes its long-struggling foundry business is finally turning, so the bar tonight is steep. Analysts look for revenue near $14.4 billion, up about 12% on a year ago, and adjusted earnings of roughly $0.21 a share, a sharp swing from a loss in the same quarter last year. Options traders are bracing for a move of around 15% in either direction, a sign of how much is riding on the print (Yahoo Finance).

The detail the market cares about is the foundry, the business that makes chips for other companies, where Intel has been signing marquee names including Apple, Microsoft and a reported Google order for custom AI chips. Revenue there is seen near $5.5 billion, but the unit is still burning cash, and gross margins around the mid-30s reflect the low early yields on its new 18A process. After the punishment Alphabet took for heavy spending, Intel arrives at an awkward moment: it needs to show its own vast investment is starting to pay, not just pile up. A miss on margins or guidance could hit hard given how far the shares have already run.

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💼 ServiceNow jumps as software sidesteps the spending fear

ServiceNow offered the counterpoint to the megacap gloom, its shares rising about 4% after hours on a clear beat. The software firm grew subscription revenue almost 25% to $3.88 billion, posted adjusted earnings of $0.90 a share against the $0.86 expected, and raised its full-year subscription outlook for the second time to about $15.77 billion. It said the annual value of contracts tied to its AI products has passed $1 billion, with a renewal rate of 98%. The reaction was telling on a day when investors punished companies for spending on AI: ServiceNow sells the software that runs on top of that infrastructure, so it profits from the AI build-out without carrying the enormous capital bills, and the market rewarded exactly that (Yahoo Finance).

💻 IBM stumbles on soft sales and a mainframe drop

IBM had a rough quarter, with revenue of $17.16 billion rising just 1% and falling short of the $17.9 billion analysts wanted, while adjusted earnings of $2.93 a share also missed. Mainframe sales dropped 42% as a product cycle faded, and the company trimmed its full-year guidance. The shares steadied, edging up about 2% after the report, but only after a brutal run-up: IBM had already crashed roughly 25% in a single session last week on a disappointing pre-announcement, so much of the bad news was in the price. The contrast with ServiceNow was stark, an older technology giant leaning on legacy hardware struggling on the same evening a nimble software rival raced ahead (CNBC).

🥇 Gold slips from a two-week high as yields bite

Gold eased today, slipping about 1% to around $4,089 an ounce after touching roughly $4,130 in the previous session, its highest in two weeks. The metal is caught in a tug of war. The escalating Middle East conflict and a softer dollar have fuelled safe-haven buying, which drove this week’s climb, but the same oil surge that lifts inflation expectations also strengthens the case for higher-for-longer interest rates, and higher rates dull the appeal of an asset that pays no yield. That leaves bullion pinned near its highs rather than breaking out, a reminder that even with strikes at sea and a jittery stock market, the cost of money still sets the ceiling (Yahoo Finance).

🔍 Deep Dive: SpaceX Hit the Playbook's Retest Zone. Is It Time to Buy the Dip?

Five weeks ago, before SPCX ever traded, our SpaceX IPO Playbook drew the whole shape: a day-one pop, an index-driven squeeze to a summer high, then a break below the $135 offer once the underwriting props lapsed, into a retest of the low-to-mid $100s. The stock has walked that path almost date for date, and it has reached the retest zone weeks early. Here is the check-in, with the receipts.

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• 🔍 Big Tech’s earnings test lands: Alphabet and Tesla report tonight, the season’s first megacap results, with the AI spending line the market’s focus.

• 🇬🇧 UK inflation cools again: June CPI slowed to 2.6%, below the 2.7% expected and the lowest since early 2025, giving the Bank room to hold.

• 🛢️ Oil tops $92 on Iran: Brent jumped nearly 4% to its highest since June after an 11th night of US strikes on Iran.

• ₿ Bitcoin near a one-month high: BTC hovered just below $66,000 as the crypto market bill advanced, though Democrats dispute how its ethics rules get enforced.

• 🍁 Trump hits Canada with 50%: New tariffs on most Canadian goods, from wine to cement, take effect next month, sparing energy and minerals.

• 📱 AT&T beats on earnings: Adjusted profit topped forecasts and the carrier added 432,000 postpaid phone customers, though revenue came in a touch light.

• 🏦 The ECB decides this week: Europe’s central bank is expected to hold, so Lagarde’s press conference carries the signal on a September move.

• 🏭 SK Hynix denies Intel Ohio deal: The memory maker rejected a report it is buying Intel’s stalled Ohio chip campus, days before Intel reports.

• 🔍 Deep Dive, Japan’s rate shock: A faster Bank of Japan could unwind the yen carry trade that props up global markets, as in August 2024.

• 📈 Chart of the Day, WTI oil: US crude presses toward the 88 to 90 ceiling that capped summer rallies; I want a daily close above 90.

🧠 One Big Thing

Two forces are pulling inflation in opposite directions at once. UK prices cooled to 2.6% this morning largely because oil fell over the summer, yet Brent is now back above $92 and Trump has just slapped 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods, both of which push prices the other way. The divergence matters for positioning: it gives the Bank of England room to sit still while the Federal Reserve stays boxed in a week before it meets. The question is whether the oil spike sticks. Watch the Strait of Hormuz, because that decides how hard the “higher for longer” backdrop hardens.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

¥163

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +66.38% China SXT Pharmaceuticals is riding a low-float momentum bid that swept through US-listed Chinese micro-cap pharma names after China Pharma Holdings rallied nearly 700% on Tuesday on volume more than 20 times its daily average. The move is mechanical rather than fundamental, with no company announcement behind it.

• : +19.18% Finward Bancorp agreed to be acquired by First Financial Bancorp in an all-stock deal valuing the Munster, Indiana lender at roughly $208 million, with each Finward share converting into 1.35 First Financial shares. The combination lifts First Financial’s pro forma Chicago-area deposits by 75% to more than $4 billion.

• : +17.51% AirJoule Technologies announced an exclusive sales agreement with Japan’s Kubota Corporation covering multi-unit residential developments, alongside initial deployments of its water-from-air technology in Texas and California.

• : +15.76% Super Micro Computer disclosed a preliminary fourth-quarter update showing more than $60 billion in new orders and a record backlog, and lifted its gross margin estimate to 15% to 17% from prior guidance of 8.2% to 8.4%. Revenue is tracking near the low end of the $11 billion to $12.5 billion range, which investors largely waved through given the scale of the margin surprise.

• : +12.25% FTAI Aviation moved sharply higher in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified, ahead of second quarter results scheduled for July 29.

• : +5% Dell Technologies extended Tuesday’s advance in sympathy with Super Micro Computer, as investors treated the server maker’s margin upgrade as a favourable read-through for the broader AI hardware supply chain.

Losers

• : -16.84% Zhengye Biotechnology Holding is extending the unwind of a parabolic low-float run that carried the veterinary vaccine maker from under $1 to an $8.01 close on Monday before it surrendered more than 64% on Tuesday. The company said Tuesday it was unaware of any material non-public information that would explain the trading.

• : -15.61% Pegasystems missed on both lines in the second quarter, posting adjusted earnings of $0.35 per share against a $0.43 consensus on revenue of $420.7 million. Management said unprecedented shifts in the AI market are causing clients to delay purchasing decisions, slowing annual contract value growth to 7%.

• : -7.77% GE Vernova reported second quarter revenue of $11.1 billion and raised its full-year revenue and free cash flow guidance, but GAAP earnings of $2.47 per share landed well short of the roughly $3.18 analysts expected. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.25 billion also came in below consensus, and Wind orders fell 39%.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $65,983 (▼ 0.77%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,928 (▼ 0.03%)
XRP: $1.14 (▼ 0.50%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,529 (▼ 0.22%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,158 (▼ 0.54%)
FTSE 100: 10,712 (▲ 1.10%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.63% (▲ 0.13%)
Oil (WTI): $87 (▲ 3.29%)
Gold: $4,120 (▲ 0.97%)
Silver: $59.37 (▲ 1.02%)

Data as of: UK: 12:13 BST / US: 07:13 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:13 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🔍 Alphabet and Tesla put AI spending on trial

Alphabet and Tesla report after the US close today, the first two of the so-called Magnificent Seven megacaps to open the earnings season, and the market is jittery going in. US stock futures slipped, with the Nasdaq 100 down about half a percent, giving back part of yesterday’s chip-led rally that lifted the S&P 500 0.9% and sent Micron up 12%. Analysts expect the seven biggest tech names to post blended profit growth near 28% on a year ago, but with almost 88% of companies that have already reported beating estimates, the bar is unusually high (CNBC).

For retail investors the swing factor is spending, not the headline profit. Alphabet, which grew first-quarter revenue 22% to $109.9 billion on cloud and search, has guided full-year capital spending toward $180 to $190 billion, and that figure funds the chip orders propping up Nvidia and the wider AI trade. Tesla delivered a record 480,126 vehicles in the quarter, yet its shares hang on automotive margins after months of heavy discounting, with options pricing a move of about 7.6% in either direction. IBM also reports tonight (Yahoo Finance).

🇬🇧 UK inflation cools, easing the pressure on the Bank

UK consumer prices rose 2.6% in the year to June, the Office for National Statistics reported this morning, down from 2.8% in May and below the 2.7% economists had expected. It was the slowest annual pace since early 2025. The biggest driver was transport, where price growth cooled to 5.7% from 6.8% as the earlier drop in oil fed through to petrol pumps. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, held at 2.6%, and services inflation, the gauge the Bank of England watches most closely, eased to 3.6% from 3.7% (ONS).

For British households and investors this hands the Bank of England room to keep interest rates on hold at its meeting late this month. Two of the Bank’s nine rate-setters voted in June to raise rates to 4% on fears the summer’s energy shock would leave inflation stuck, and a softer print undercuts that case. Sterling and gilt yields moved on the release before US markets opened. The next test is this week’s flash business surveys, then the rate decision at month end, though a fresh climb in oil could still complicate the picture.

🛢️ Oil tops $92 as Iran talks sour

Brent crude pushed above $92 a barrel today, its highest since June, after the US carried out an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran and diplomacy appeared to stall. Prices jumped almost 4% at one point. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran was “not serious” about peace talks and that control of the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, remained a sticking point between the two sides. Iran was reported to have targeted US radar and air-defence installations across the Gulf overnight (CNBC).

Higher oil feeds straight into petrol prices and the broader inflation picture, and that is the real market worry, because it strengthens the case for central banks to keep interest rates high for longer. It arrives at an awkward moment, hours before Big Tech earnings and a week before the Federal Reserve meets on the 28th and 29th. The slide in oil earlier in the summer, from around $95 to the low $70s after a mid-June ceasefire, was the single biggest reason inflation cooled. A sustained move back toward triple digits would unwind much of that relief.

₿ Bitcoin holds near $66,000 as the crypto bill inches forward

Bitcoin pushed to a one-month high above $66,000, a gain of about 3.5% in a day, before easing back to hover just below that level, as the crypto market-structure bill known as the CLARITY Act moved closer to a Senate vote. The rally followed reports that President Trump had accepted an ethics provision barring senior officials from profiting on digital assets, the clause that had held the bill up. Prediction market Polymarket now puts the odds of the bill passing this year near 48%, up from around a third a week ago (CoinDesk).

The path is still not clear. Senate Democrats are unhappy with the detail of that ethics section, disagreeing over who should enforce the ban, with the White House wanting the US attorney general and Democrats pushing for state attorneys general. Crypto insiders expect the text to reach the Senate floor as soon as next week, but lawmakers leave for their summer recess on the 7th of August, so the bill either passes within a fortnight or likely slips toward the year end (CoinDesk).

🍁 Trump slaps 50% tariffs on Canada

President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods, accusing Canada of unfairly discriminating against American cars, dairy and alcohol. The new levy covers items from wine and packaging to textiles and cement, and takes effect around the 19th of August. Energy, potash, critical minerals and fish are exempt, which softens the blow, and the affected goods account for only about 5% of Canada’s exports to the US. The White House singled Canada out as one of only two countries, alongside China, that retaliated against last year’s tariffs (CNBC).

For markets the tariffs matter less for their direct hit than for what they signal, a fresh flare-up in trade tension just as investors were focused on earnings and oil. Tariffs act like a tax on imports and tend to nudge prices higher, which lands awkwardly with the Federal Reserve already reluctant to cut rates. The Canadian dollar and cross-border industrial names are the most exposed. With the measure not biting until next month, there is room to negotiate, and past tariff threats have often been softened before the deadline.

Stories You Might Have Missed

📱 AT&T beats on profit and packs on phone customers

AT&T opened the telecom earnings run before the US market opened, and its shares rose on a clear beat. Adjusted earnings came in at 65 cents a share, up from 54 cents a year ago and ahead of the 59 cents analysts expected, with adjusted core profit of $12.3 billion also topping forecasts. The carrier added 432,000 postpaid phone customers, comfortably above the roughly 325,000 the market had penned in, and generated $4.7 billion of free cash flow. Revenue was the one soft spot, rising about 2.5% to $31.6 billion but landing just shy of the $31.8 billion expected. AT&T stood by its full-year plan for at least $18 billion of free cash flow and around $24 billion of share buybacks. IBM reports after the close, with its AI-bookings pipeline in focus (Yahoo Finance).

🏦 The ECB takes its turn this week

The European Central Bank delivers its rate decision later this week, the only major central-bank call with the Fed in its pre-meeting quiet period. After lifting its deposit rate to 2.25% in June, the Bank is widely expected to hold, so the market reaction will run through President Lagarde’s press conference rather than the decision itself. Around 70% of forecasters still see one more increase this year, most likely in September, so any hint from Lagarde about whether that move is still live would move the euro and European bond yields. The eurozone economy contracted 0.2% on a year ago in the first quarter, so an overly tight stance carries its own risk (Bloomberg).

🏭 SK Hynix denies it is buying Intel’s Ohio plant

A report that SK Hynix was in talks to buy Intel’s semiconductor campus in Ohio was swiftly denied by the South Korean memory-chip maker today. In a regulatory filing, SK Hynix said it had “not pursued or decided to acquire” the site, after Korea JoongAng Daily reported it was negotiating to set up US memory production there within five years. Intel broke ground on the New Albany campus in 2022 with a planned $28 billion investment, but has since pushed the timeline out to 2030 or 2031. The episode underlines the pressure on foreign chipmakers to build on American soil, days before Intel reports its own results (Yahoo Finance).

🔍 Deep Dive: Japan just hinted it will hike faster, and that is everyone’s problem

Two things happened within hours of each other overnight, and together they are the biggest macro story of the week. First, the yen slid past 163 per dollar, its weakest level against the dollar since 1986. Then, this morning, Bloomberg reported that Bank of Japan officials are open to raising interest rates faster than the once-every-six-months pace markets had assumed, precisely because that weak yen is pushing up inflation (Bloomberg). That sounds like a local Japan problem. It is not. Japan is the cheap-money tap for the entire global financial system, and the last time the BOJ surprised markets on rates, in the summer of 2024, stocks from Tokyo to New York had their worst day in years.

What just happened

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🖥️ Chips bounce a second day: Semiconductors lead again before Alphabet, Tesla and Intel report this week, the first real test of AI spending.

• ₿ Crypto’s logjam breaks: Bitcoin tops $66,000 after Trump accepts ethics limits, clearing the crypto bill’s biggest obstacle before Congress breaks in August.

• 🚗 GM beats and lifts guidance: Adjusted profit topped forecasts and the outlook rose again, though a $2.3 billion EV charge cut net income by 31%.

• 🛢️ Oil hovers near $90: Crude holds around $90 on a tenth day of strikes, even as ceasefire proposals circulate and Houthis threaten Saudi Arabia.

• 🇬🇧 UK jobs cool: Unemployment held at 4.9%, below forecasts, and pay growth slowed, keeping the Bank of England on hold into tomorrow’s inflation test.

• 🥇 Gold rebounds but stays capped: Bullion bounced about 2% to near $4,080, still pinned close to a nine-month low as rate-hike bets climb.

• 🛡️ Defense earnings begin: Northrop Grumman reports this morning, opening a run of defense results as war spending lifts one of the industry’s biggest backlogs.

• 🏦 ECB and UK CPI loom: The ECB delivers the week’s only major rate call, with UK inflation and megacap earnings landing first tomorrow.

🧠 One Big Thing

The sticking point on the crypto market-structure bill was never the market structure. It was a single ethics clause that would stop the president, members of Congress and other officials from profiting from digital assets, and it sat awkwardly against Trump’s roughly 1.4 billion dollars of crypto income last year. With the White House now conceding that clause and sending the language to Senate Republicans, the bill’s fate turns from content to calendar. The Senate has barely two weeks before its August recess, after which the vote slips toward November and the midterms. Watch for the amended text and a floor vote being scheduled, because the market is now pricing the deadline, not the law.

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⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

44%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +7.55% SanDisk Corporation led a broad memory and storage rally in pre-market as investors positioned for upbeat results from the major tech names reporting over the next fortnight, dragging SK hynix, Western Digital, Micron, Marvell, Intel and Seagate up between roughly 5% and 6.5% alongside it. The move extends Monday’s rebound off oversold conditions after the semiconductor complex shed around 20% over the past month.

• : +5.32% Digi Power X Inc. rose in sympathy with the wider AI infrastructure bid, with no company-specific announcement since its July 7 operations update and a July 17 shelf registration filing.

Losers

• : -21.19% Eva Live Inc. gave back ground in thin pre-market trade on no company news, a low-float unwind rather than a fundamental catalyst.

• : -20.63% Meiwu Technology Company slid on no fresh disclosure, continuing the violent two-way swings that have defined this heavily diluted Shenzhen micro-cap all year.

• : -14.47% Calix, Inc. dropped after second quarter revenue of $293.3 million narrowly missed consensus despite an EPS beat at $0.47, with surging memory component costs squeezing the gross margin story that had underpinned the recovery thesis.

• : -10.00% Danaher Corporation fell despite a second quarter beat at $1.94 adjusted EPS and raised full-year guidance, as customer project timing pushed out bioprocessing revenue and overshadowed mid-teens order growth in the unit.

• -58.33% Columbia Financial, Inc. shares reset lower as the new post-conversion line began trading, reflecting the 2.2000x exchange ratio applied in the completed second-step conversion, $1.7 billion stock offering and Northfield Bancorp acquisition rather than any change in underlying value.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $66,111 (▲ 1.39%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,930 (▲ 1.41%)
XRP: $1.13 (▲ 1.61%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,522 (▲ 0.50%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,163 (▲ 1.33%)
FTSE 100: 10,522 (▲ 0.65%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.60% (▲ 0.22%)
Oil (WTI): $83 (▲ 1.27%)
Gold: $4,056 (▲ 1.18%)
Silver: $58.70 (▲ 3.95%)

Data as of: UK: 12:00 BST / US: 07:00 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:00 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🖥️ Chips extend their rebound before Big Tech’s test

Semiconductors are leading the market higher for a second day, and the mood that cracked last week is quietly repairing. US futures point up, with contracts on the Nasdaq 100 climbing about 1.3% and the S&P 500 about 0.5%, and Asian equities rose for the first time in four days, led by chipmakers. It is a sharp turn from a week that saw the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fall into a bear market and the Nasdaq shed 2.9% on fears the big cloud companies would rein in their spending on artificial intelligence. For now, the buyers are betting that panic went too far (Yahoo Finance).

The proof arrives tomorrow. Alphabet and Tesla report after the close, with Intel to follow later in the week, and between them they carry three of the biggest capital-spending programmes in technology. Alphabet is the one that moves the chip chain: its cloud backlog has nearly doubled to 462 billion dollars, and its guide to spend 180 to 190 billion this year is the line that validates or punctures the whole trade. A rebound built ahead of those numbers can reverse just as fast if the spending plans disappoint, which is why a rally on positioning is not the same as a rally on results (CNBC).

₿ Crypto’s logjam breaks as Bitcoin tops $66,000

Bitcoin has pushed back above 66,000 dollars and Ethereum is near 1,930, up about 1.4% on the day, after the dispute that had stalled the crypto market-structure bill appeared to break. The blockage was a single ethics provision, one that would bar the president, members of Congress and other federal officials from profiting from digital assets while in office. Reports say the White House has now accepted that language and sent it to Senate Republicans, clearing what had been the biggest obstacle to a vote (Yahoo Finance).

The pressure point now is the calendar. The Senate has only until the first week of August before it breaks for recess, and a bill not passed by then likely slips to November, when the midterm elections crowd everything else out. The amended text is expected in the coming days, and traders have already responded: prediction-market odds of the bill becoming law this year have climbed to around 44%, up from roughly 32% last week. The tension underneath is hard to miss, because the clause Trump conceded touches his own reported 1.4 billion dollars of crypto income last year.

🚗 GM beats and lifts guidance, but an EV charge bites

General Motors opened the heavy week of earnings with a stronger-than-expected quarter before the bell. Adjusted earnings came in at 3.57 dollars a share against the 3.19 the market expected, and revenue of 48 billion dollars rose 1.9% on the year and beat forecasts, as adjusted operating profit climbed about 30% to 3.94 billion on firm pricing and lower costs. The weak spot was the bottom line: net income fell 31% to 1.31 billion, dragged down by a 2.3 billion dollar special charge, most of it tied to resolving supplier claims after the electric-vehicle market came in smaller than GM had planned for (Yahoo Finance).

On the strength of the quarter GM raised its full-year adjusted operating-profit guidance for the second time this year, to a range of 14 to 16 billion dollars, while leaving its expected tariff bill unchanged at 2.5 to 3.5 billion as offsets take hold. Chief executive Mary Barra pointed to strong demand for pickups and SUVs and held pricing, with incentives running 4.7% of sticker price against an industry average of 6.3%, and a profitable international arm including the China joint ventures. The read that carries to the sector is that truck pricing is still covering the tariff hit, with the next-generation Silverado and Sierra due before year-end (CNBC).

🛢️ Oil hovers near $90 as ceasefire talk meets a new front

Oil is holding close to 90 dollars a barrel, with Brent near 89 and US crude around 83, as the conflict between the US and Iran runs into a tenth consecutive day. The one flicker of relief is diplomatic: Iran says mediators have submitted proposals to cool tensions, with reports of a possible ten-day ceasefire, and Trump described Iran as “very, very badly damaged.” Crude is caught between that thin path to de-escalation and a war that keeps widening (CNBC).

The fresh risk this morning comes from Yemen. The Iran-aligned Houthis say they will impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, a move that would open a new front and threaten energy and trade routes well beyond the Gulf. For investors the oil price is still doing the Fed’s arguing for it, because every dollar on crude feeds into petrol, shipping and the inflation numbers policymakers watch, and the market now prices about a 55% chance of a rate rise in September, up from 51% a day earlier. With the Fed meeting at the end of the month, crude near 90 dollars makes a patient message harder to sell.

🇬🇧 UK jobs cool, keeping the Bank on hold

Britain’s labour market came in soft but stable this morning, and the numbers hand the doves the argument. The unemployment rate held at 4.9% in the three months to May, below the 5.0% economists had expected, while regular pay growth slowed to 3.4%, its joint-weakest since October 2020, with total pay up 4.3%. Payrolled employees slipped by 4,000 in June, vacancies fell to 712,000, and youth unemployment rose to 16.4%, the highest since 2014, underlining that the jobs market is cooling without cracking (Yahoo Finance).

For markets the read is about the Bank of England. Easing private-sector pay is exactly what policymakers want to see before deciding whether to move, and a soft print reinforces the case to hold at the end-of-month meeting, easing the pressure from the two rate-setters who voted in June to hike. It also lands the morning before tomorrow’s UK inflation figures, which are seen cooling toward 2.7%. The pound and gilt yields will move on that print before US markets open, so today’s jobs data is the quiet setup for a louder read tomorrow.

Stories You Might Have Missed

🥇 Gold rebounds but stays pinned near a nine-month low

Gold bounced about 2% to near 4,080 dollars an ounce, recovering from around 4,005 the day before, though it remains close to its lowest level in nine months. The metal is caught in the same bind that has held it all month: a widening war would normally send investors rushing in, but rising Treasury yields and hardening rate-hike bets keep punishing an asset that pays no interest. Markets now price about a 55% chance of a Federal Reserve rate rise in September, up from 51%, and roughly 80% by December. Until the rate story softens, bullion’s usual haven bid stays capped, and the swings around the 4,000 line show a market unsure which force wins (Yahoo Finance).

🛡️ Northrop Grumman opens the defense earnings run

Northrop Grumman reports before the bell this morning, the first of the big defense contractors to post second-quarter results. Analysts expect earnings near 6.82 dollars a share on revenue of about 10.81 billion, a rise of roughly 4% on the year, supported by one of the strongest order backlogs in the industry as US and allied defense spending climbs on the back of sustained geopolitical tension. Management had guided to high single-digit sequential sales growth across all four of its segments. The result sets an early marker for a sector that has been a rare pocket of strength, with Lockheed Martin and RTX both due to report later in the week (Yahoo Finance).

🏦 The ECB and a UK inflation test lie just ahead

The macro calendar loads up over the next two days. Tomorrow brings UK inflation, seen cooling toward 2.7%, alongside the Alphabet and Tesla earnings after the US close. Then, later this week, the European Central Bank delivers the week’s only major rate decision, and with a hold widely expected the market’s attention falls on President Lagarde’s press conference for any hint on whether a further move is still live this year. Oil near a one-month high has revived a little hike talk, though analysts suggest it would take Brent well past 100 dollars to force the ECB’s hand, leaving the tone of the message as the real signal for the euro (Yahoo Finance).

🔍 Deep Dive - Half the Price, Nearly the Frontier: The Real Reason Kimi K3 Erased $3.3 Trillion

A Chinese lab most retail investors had never heard of released an AI model on 16 July, and within days it had knocked more than $3.3 trillion off global chip stocks. The number is dramatic, but the story underneath it is simpler, and more important, than the headline. Kimi K3 did not beat the best American models. It got close enough, at roughly half the price, to make investors question the one assumption holding up the entire AI trade.

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Last week the inflation scare that had markets braced for a rate hike finally broke, and the cause was oil. Brent slid from around 95 dollars a barrel at the start of June to near 73 by month e…

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A note on this week’s schedule: Sundays with Sensei moves to tomorrow. I will be live Monday evening, with the private event for newsletter members after the show on Monday night.

This Week

XRP spent the week pinned near $1.09, ranging between $1.05 and $1.12 while the wider market bled about 4 percent, and yet the chart quietly did something it has not managed in a year: it closed above the bear market trendline. Around that move, Washington’s biggest crypto bill slipped again, Ripple confirmed its payments software can speak the banking network’s language, the XRP Ledger crossed 8 million funded accounts, and a misread DTCC document convinced half of X that $5 had been “confirmed.”

Four stories carried the week. Here is what happened, what actually matters for XRP, and what is noise.

The Consensus

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act slips again as the merged Senate text misses its window and a Trump meeting with Senate Republicans fails to settle the ethics fight.

• 🏦 The XRP Ledger passes 8 million funded accounts and Ripple confirms its payments software supports SWIFT messaging, with a catch worth understanding.

• 🏛️ XRP enters DTCC’s collateral rulebook, where a $5 threshold decides how usable it is as institutional collateral. It is plumbing, not a price call.

• 📈 The XRP ETF streak breaks, then bounces back with July’s biggest single-day inflow as cumulative demand nears $1.49 billion.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

XRP Is Above the Bear Market Trendline. Now It Needs the Momentum.

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🎬 Netflix cools after hours: A soft third-quarter outlook sent the stock down more than 8%, even as the quarter itself met forecasts.

• 📉 Chips extend the rout: TSMC’s jump in spending plans deepened fears over the cost of AI, dragging the Nasdaq to a second straight loss.

• 🛍️ Shoppers box in the Fed: June retail sales held up and jobless claims fell to 208,000, giving policymakers little reason to cut soon.

• 🏥 UnitedHealth beats and raises: Adjusted profit of $6.38 crushed the $4.85 forecast, and shares jumped 8% as the outlook rose.

• 🛢️ Oil grinds higher again: A sixth night of US strikes on Iran left Brent near $85 and up about 12% on the week.

• ₿ Crypto’s bill hits Wall Street: The CLARITY Act gets a New York hearing today as Bitcoin holds near $63,100, though no vote is scheduled.

• 🥇 Gold’s haven bid fades: Bullion is heading for its worst week in six, stuck near $4,000 as rate fears outweigh the war.

• 🔍 The SpaceX playbook, five weeks on: The pre-IPO base case has tracked almost date for date, with the stock now slipping below its $135 offer.

• 📈 Chart of the Day: Silver is sliding under its trendline and Momentum Band, with $50 the psychological level Sensei is watching into the drop.

🧠 One Big Thing

TSMC just told the market that AI demand is so strong it will spend as much as $64 billion this year and pour another $100 billion into Arizona, and the market sold chips anyway. That reaction is not a vote against AI; it is a question about the return. Capex is a cost booked today against profits that arrive years later, and when the Fed refuses to cut, those distant payoffs get discounted harder. The tension now is whether the big spenders can show revenue catching up to the bill. Watch whether Nvidia and AMD steady the group, and watch the 10-year yield.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$12.86 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

No major winners today

Losers

• : -11.90% STAAR Surgical fell after posting preliminary second quarter net sales above $90 million that still underwhelmed the market, as Middle East weakness and the continued absence of full year guidance overshadowed the headline growth.

• : -11.26% Intuitive Surgical slid despite beating on both revenue and earnings, with investors fixating on slowing surgery volumes, a recent Class II recall of certain da Vinci components, and a stretched valuation.

• : -9.89% Netflix dropped after its second quarter report showed revenue slightly below expectations and softer third quarter guidance, even as earnings came in ahead of estimates.

• : -6.27% Powell Industries moved sharply lower in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified.

• : -5.60% Hyperliquid Strategies fell in sympathy with a roughly 9 percent overnight drop in the HYPE token that its treasury strategy tracks directly, amid a broader crypto pullback.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $63,123 (▼1.05%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,835 (▼1.51%)
XRP: $1.09 (▼0.07%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,519 (▼0.78%)
NASDAQ 100: 28,800 (▼1.46%)
FTSE 100: 10,546 (▼0.14%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.53% (▼0.70%)
Oil (WTI): $80 (▲0.55%)
Gold: $3,992 (▲0.35%)
Silver: $55.29 (▼0.40%)

Data as of: UK: 12:00 PM BST / US: 7:00 AM EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:00 PM JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🎬 Netflix stumbles on a softer outlook

Netflix reported second-quarter revenue of $12.56 billion, up about 13% from a year earlier, with earnings of $0.80 a share edging past forecasts by a penny and an operating margin near 33%. The quarter itself was fine. What unsettled investors was the outlook: the company guided third-quarter revenue to $12.86 billion, growth of just under 12% but shy of the roughly $13 billion analysts wanted, and it pointed to a second straight quarter of slowing sales. It also said it would disclose less, cutting its viewing report to once a year from 2027. The shares fell more than 8% after the close (CNBC).

The drop matters because Netflix had become a proxy for the whole streaming trade, and the stock went in already down about 42% from last summer’s high. A slowing top line collides with a company that has leaned on price rises and a young advertising business to keep growth alive, and the reduced disclosure makes it harder to check how engagement is really trending against YouTube and TikTok. The read-across runs to the ad-supported tier and to peers reporting later this month. For a market already nervous about paying up for growth, a marquee name guiding lower is the kind of signal that spreads.

📉 Chips deepen the selloff as AI-spending fears bite

A global selloff in semiconductors dragged Wall Street to a second straight loss, and the trigger was spending rather than demand. TSMC, whose results were strong, lifted its 2026 capital budget to as much as $64 billion from a prior ceiling near $56 billion, and flagged another $100 billion for its Arizona plants. Investors read the surge as a sign that the cost of building AI is climbing faster than the payoff, and they sold. The Philadelphia semiconductor index fell more than 2.6%, Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom slid between roughly 2% and 3%, and the Nasdaq Composite closed down 1.47% at 25,881.95 (CNBC).

This is the same worry that hit the memory names earlier in the week, now aimed at the foundry leader: demand is real, but the bill is enormous and the return is years out. Futures pointed lower again this morning, with a sixth night of US strikes on Iran adding to the caution. The next tests are concrete. Chip-equipment orders read strong earlier in the week, so the question is whether the AI leaders can convert record spending into the revenue growth that justifies it. Until they do, every large capex number gets read as a cost first and a promise second.

🛍️ Resilient shoppers keep the Fed boxed in

The US consumer and the jobs market both refused to buckle. June retail sales rose 0.2% on the month and 6.7% from a year earlier, in line with forecasts, with a 5.3% drop at petrol stations masking a firmer 0.7% gain once fuel is stripped out. Weekly jobless claims fell to 208,000, below the 217,000 economists expected, and continuing claims came in lighter too. After cooler inflation readings earlier in the week, the data shows an economy still growing at a steady clip rather than one crying out for lower rates (Yahoo Finance).

That is the tension for markets. Softer inflation had revived hopes of a rate cut, but a resilient consumer and a firm labour market hand the new Fed chair every reason to wait, and he has already said the inflation fight is not finished. With the Fed’s pre-meeting quiet period starting tomorrow and the decision due at the end of the month, today’s first read on July consumer sentiment is the last major data point before officials go silent. A strong economy is good news, except for anyone hoping cheaper money arrives soon.

🏥 UnitedHealth beats big and lifts its outlook

UnitedHealth delivered the kind of clean beat the managed-care sector badly needed. Adjusted earnings came in at $6.38 a share against a consensus near $4.85, on revenue of $112 billion, and the company raised full-year adjusted profit guidance to a range of $19.50 to $20.00, well above the roughly $18.50 the market expected. It also lifted its cash-flow outlook toward $24 billion. The metric that matters most, the medical care ratio, improved to 86.7% from 89.4% a year earlier, the number that had spooked investors through a bruising stretch of rising costs. The shares jumped about 8% (Yahoo Finance).

The result matters beyond one company. UnitedHealth is a bellwether for the whole health-insurance industry and a heavyweight in the Dow, so a turnaround in its cost trend tends to lift peers and steady a corner of the market that had been a persistent drag. Management credited benefit redesign, firmer pricing and tighter medical management for the improvement, the levers investors wanted to see working. The question from here is durability: whether one strong quarter marks a genuine turn in medical costs or a single good print. For now, it is a rare bright spot on an otherwise heavy day.

🛢️ Oil climbs again on a sixth night of strikes

Oil pushed higher for a third straight session as the conflict between the US and Iran escalated. US Central Command said it had completed a sixth consecutive night of strikes, hitting military and maritime targets, with reports of five bridges struck and seven people killed. The market’s focus is the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries about a fifth of the world’s seaborne crude, where confirmed transit has fallen 62% to 4.1 million barrels a day. Brent traded near $85 and WTI near $80, leaving crude up roughly 12% on the week (CNBC).

The stakes for everyone else run through the pump and the inflation data. Higher crude feeds into petrol prices and complicates the disinflation story that cooler CPI and PPI told earlier in the week, which is part of why gold has struggled and the Fed is in no rush to cut. A 60-day ceasefire memorandum signed last month expires in mid-August, and energy consultancy Rystad expects a narrow, face-saving deal rather than a full resolution. Until the strikes stop, the risk premium stays in the price, and it is the disruption, not a closure of the strait, that is doing the work.

₿ Crypto’s rulebook heads to Wall Street

The House Financial Services Committee holds a field hearing on the CLARITY Act in New York today, staged at Federal Hall under the title “Building the Future of Finance.” The bill would split oversight of digital assets between the CFTC and the SEC, and the House already passed it last year, so today is about building momentum and taking industry testimony, not casting a vote. The aim is to press the Senate to act before its August recess. Bitcoin held near $63,100 and Ether near $1,835 into the event, steady rather than spiking, a sign traders see a milestone in the making but not a done deal (Yahoo Finance).

🥇 Gold’s haven bid goes missing

Gold is heading for its worst week in six, hovering around $4,000 even as the US and Iran trade strikes, an unusual failure of the classic safe-haven trade. The reason is that the same forces lifting oil are working against bullion: firmer energy prices point to stickier inflation, that keeps the Fed leaning hawkish, and higher-for-longer rates plus a stronger dollar make gold, which pays no yield, less attractive than cash and Treasuries. For a metal that set a record above $5,500 in January, the slide shows how completely the rate outlook has taken over from fear as the driver (Yahoo Finance).

🔍 Deep Dive: The SpaceX Playbook, Five Weeks On

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🖥️ Record chips, nervous market: TSMC’s profit jumped 77% to a record on AI demand, yet chip stocks slid and its own shares dipped.

• 🍎 Apple breaks its record: an approval to launch iPhone AI in China lifted Apple to an all-time high, up 4% to $327.50.

• 🚀 SpaceX cracks its floor: the stock fell below its $135 IPO price for the first time, erasing the whole post-listing pop.

• 📉 Prices cool, Fed won’t budge: wholesale prices fell 0.3% in June, the second cool read this week, yet Warsh signalled no rush to cut.

• 🎬 Netflix reports in a hole: the streamer reports after the bell tonight with its stock down 43% from last summer’s high.

• 🏦 Morgan Stanley caps the record run: record revenue of $21.3bn and a 15% dividend hike closed a blowout quarter for the big banks.

• 🛢️ Oil holds a one-month high: Brent sat near $85 and WTI near $80, steady after fresh US strikes and the Iran port blockade.

• ₿ Bitcoin waits on Washington: BTC held near $63,000 as the CLARITY Act’s odds slipped to 43% before tomorrow’s New York hearing.

• 🏥 UnitedHealth faces its test: the insurer reports before the open, with Wall Street looking for earnings up 19% after a rough stretch.

🧠 One Big Thing

The AI trade is running on a split screen. TSMC just grew profit 77% to a record and raised its full-year guidance, Apple hit an all-time high on its China AI approval, and ASML lifted its outlook a day earlier. The demand is not the problem. Yet chips sold off, South Korea’s Kospi fell 7%, and SpaceX dropped below its IPO price. What is cracking is the willingness to pay any multiple for that growth while the Fed stays on hold. Fundamentals up, valuations down. Watch whether TSMC’s raised guidance steadies the group, and Netflix tonight as the next test of whether beats still get paid.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

77%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : +34.14% AtaiBeckley shares surged on a report that Eli Lilly is in advanced talks to acquire the psychedelic drug developer, with a deal potentially announced within days.

• : +15.16% GH Research climbed on read-through from the reported Lilly interest in AtaiBeckley and newly finalized FDA guidance for psychedelic drug trials, both of which lifted sentiment across psychedelic depression developers.

• : +6.65% UnitedHealth Group jumped after reporting better than expected second quarter results and raising its full-year earnings guidance, easing concerns about the medical cost pressures that had weighed on the managed care sector.

Losers

• -35.63% Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance fell in a mechanical move as the stock traded ex-dividend for a $3.75 per share distribution, largely a return of capital, that the company is paying as part of its board-approved plan to liquidate and wind down the business.

• 9.97% AST SpaceMobile dropped after announcing a $1 billion convertible senior notes offering, reviving investor concerns about shareholder dilution.

• 6.89% Sandisk led a broad memory and storage selloff alongside Western Digital and SK hynix, as a Korean brokerage estimate pointing to slower HBM4 shipments at SK hynix triggered profit-taking across a sector that had run up sharply this year.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $64,226 ▼0.74%
Ethereum (ETH): $1,885 ▼1.62%
XRP: $1.11 ▼0.40%

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,598 ▼0.22%
NASDAQ 100: 29,465 ▼0.77%
FTSE 100: 10,469 ▼0.05%

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.57% ▲0.48%
Oil (WTI): $79 ▼1.08%
Gold: $4,039 ▼0.54%
Silver: $56.71 ▼1.95%

Data as of: UK: 12:45 BST / US: 07:45 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:45 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🖥️ TSMC posts a record, but the chip trade still slips

TSMC, the Taiwan company that makes the most advanced chips for Nvidia, Apple and much of the industry, reported record second-quarter results before the open. Revenue reached $40.2 billion, up 33.7% on a year earlier and at the top of its own guidance, while net profit surged 77% to a record as high-performance computing, the AI category, grew to 66% of sales. Gross margin held at a rich 67.7%. Management raised its 2026 revenue-growth forecast to above 40% and guided third-quarter sales as high as $45.8 billion, roughly 37% more than a year ago (Yahoo Finance).

The report is the clearest read yet that AI hardware demand is still accelerating rather than cooling, and it follows ASML’s raised guidance a day earlier. Yet the shares dipped in premarket trade and the wider chip complex fell, with Nvidia, AMD, Micron and Broadcom all lower and South Korea’s Kospi sliding 7% in a chip-led rout (CNBC). The distance between spectacular numbers and a nervous tape is the whole story: after a long run, investors are questioning the price of the AI trade even as its fundamentals keep beating.

🍎 Apple hits a record high on its China AI breakthrough

Apple closed at an all-time high of $327.50, up about 4%, after China’s cyberspace regulator cleared Apple Intelligence, its on-device AI service, for the mainland. Alibaba’s Qwen model will power the features, with Baidu also involved, ending a gap that had left Apple Intelligence unavailable in Apple’s second-biggest market since the 2024 launch. The approval landed alongside a reported 24% jump in Apple’s China shipments last quarter, a sign the local slump that has dogged it may be turning (CNBC). Regulators set no launch date.

China has been Apple’s problem child for two years, with buyers drifting to Huawei and Xiaomi partly because the iPhone could not match the AI features rivals were already selling. Clearing that block matters more for the story than for any single quarter: it removes an overhang ahead of Apple’s own earnings, and it hands Alibaba a marquee AI customer, which is why Chinese tech names moved on the news too. The next catalyst is Apple’s results and any firm date for the China rollout.

🚀 SpaceX slips below its IPO price for the first time

SpaceX fell below its $135 listing price for the first time since last month’s record float, dropping as much as 2.9% to $132.15 before closing at $135.27, a whisker above the line. The debut raised a record $86 billion and briefly made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, and the stock surged nearly 50% in its first three days. It has since handed back close to a quarter of its value, and its market capitalisation has fallen to about $1.75 trillion from a post-listing peak near $2.6 trillion (CNBC).

The unwind is partly profit-taking after an overheated debut, but it also tracks the same nerves showing up in chips: worry about debt-funded AI spending and what a Fed that will not cut does to richly priced growth stocks. SpaceX has a Starship launch ahead, which could steady sentiment, but the round trip back toward the offer price is a reminder that even the most hyped listing of the year answers to the same discount rate as everything else. The IPO line is now the level the market is watching.

📉 Wholesale prices fall, but the new Fed chair won’t call it

Wholesale prices fell 0.3% in June, the first monthly drop since August 2025 and a sharp miss against forecasts for no change, as energy sank 6.4% and petrol prices tumbled 12%. The producer price index is the wholesale read that feeds into what shoppers eventually pay, and its cooling follows the soft consumer prices reported earlier in the week, so both of the week’s big inflation gauges came in below expectations. Core wholesale prices, which strip out food and energy, rose a mild 0.2% (CNBC).

On paper that is exactly the disinflation markets wanted before the Fed meets on 28 to 29 July. Yet Kevin Warsh used his first Senate testimony as chair to say the improvement is “not mission accomplished” and gave no hint of a cut, keeping the door open to holding rates high (CNBC). The tension between cooling data and an unmoved Fed is why good news is not lifting the most stretched stocks. Today’s June retail sales and weekly jobless claims, both due at 1:30pm BST / 8:30am ET, are the next test of whether the consumer forces the Fed’s hand.

🎬 Netflix reports tonight with its stock deep in a hole

Netflix reports second-quarter results after the US close tonight (9:01pm BST / 4:01pm ET), and it does so with the shares down about 43% from last summer’s high and roughly 19% lower this year. Wall Street expects revenue of $12.58 billion, up nearly 14% on a year earlier, with earnings near $0.79 a share. The debate is less about the top line than about engagement and advertising: investors want to see the ad business scaling toward $3 billion and membership pushing past 325 million (Yahoo Finance).

The bar is awkward. Netflix has warned that this quarter carries the year’s biggest jump in content costs, pushing its operating margin down to about 32.6% from 34.1% a year earlier before it recovers later in 2026. After a long slide, the stock needs the numbers to reset the narrative from an engagement worry into an advertising growth story. A clean beat with firm ad guidance could end the selloff; a soft subscriber or margin print would confirm the bears. It is the first big consumer-tech read of the season.

Stories You Might Have Missed

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📊 Inflation cools, hike bet collapses: June CPI fell to 3.5% and core held flat, sinking July rate-hike odds to 17% from 42%.

• 🔬 ASML lifts its outlook: The chip-gear giant beat and raised full-year sales guidance to €45bn, reigniting the AI-hardware trade.

• 💻 IBM’s worst day ever: Shares cratered 25% after a profit warning as clients diverted budgets to memory and servers, hitting software names.

• 🏦 Goldman and Citi crush it: Goldman posted a record $20.98 EPS and Citi beat every estimate, capping a blowout bank season.

• 🛢️ Oil hits a one-month high: Brent topped $85 as US strikes resumed and the blockade returned, though Trump dropped his 20% toll.

• 🥇 Gold caught in a tug-of-war: Bullion jumped over 2% on the cool CPI, then slipped today as the oil rally revived inflation worry.

• ₿ Bitcoin waits on the clock: Crypto holds steady as the CLARITY market-structure bill eyes a Senate floor vote the week of 20 July.

• 🏥 J&J headlines more earnings: Johnson & Johnson and Morgan Stanley report today, with TSMC and Netflix the big reads tomorrow.

• 🔍 Deep Dive: A full PPI Day Playbook on today’s producer-price print, why the pipeline matters more than the headline, and the levels to watch.

🧠 One Big Thing

June’s inflation number cooled hard, but look at where the cooling came from. The energy index fell 5.7%, its steepest drop since 2020, because June was the ceasefire month for oil. The genuinely good news sits in core, which was flat on the month, the first real sign that underlying price pressure is easing rather than spreading. The catch is that oil is already back above $85, a one-month high, so the energy relief that flattered the headline is reversing in real time. That puts the weight on today’s PPI and on core holding. Watch the wholesale energy read and Warsh’s tone for whether this relief has legs.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

17%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : Aehr Test Systems surged after fiscal Q4 earnings beat expectations and management guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $130 million to $150 million, implying roughly 160 to 200 percent growth on the back of record bookings and AI-driven burn-in demand.

• : PayPal jumped on a report that Stripe and Advent International submitted a joint bid to acquire the company for $60.50 per share, valuing it at more than $53 billion, about a 28 percent premium to Tuesday’s close.

• : Weave Communications moved higher in pre-market on a low-float, thin-volume push with no specific catalyst identified.

• : BlackRock rose as it reported second quarter results before the open, with investors positioned for another quarter of record assets under management and continued iShares and private-markets inflows.

• : Alibaba extended its multi-session rally as investors kept rotating into Chinese technology on the strength of its Alibaba Cloud and Qwen AI story, with no fresh company-specific catalyst behind today’s move.

• : ASML gained after second quarter sales and margins came in above guidance and the company raised its full-year 2026 outlook for a third time, citing accelerating AI-driven demand for advanced logic and memory chips.

Losers

• : Pentair tumbled after preliminary second quarter sales landed near $930 million, down about 17 percent versus prior guidance, and the company slashed its full-year outlook on pool channel inventory destocking while naming an interim CFO.

• : Phoenix Education Partners fell after fiscal third quarter revenue came in flat and below estimates and full-year guidance disappointed, with margins pressured by higher advertising spend and costs tied to adapting recruitment to AI-driven search.

• : Evotec dropped as its US-listed shares caught up to a steep Frankfurt selloff after the company cut full-year 2026 revenue and earnings guidance, blaming delayed high-margin partnership milestones now pushed into 2027.

• : Elevance Health declined after reporting second quarter results this morning, with the market focused on continued pressure in Health Benefits margins from elevated Medicaid and ACA medical costs.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $64,578 (▼0.58%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,874 (▼0.79%)
XRP: $1.11 (▼0.44%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,606 (▲0.19%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,938 (▲0.49%)
FTSE 100: 10,495 (▲0.20%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.61% (▲0.50%)
Oil (WTI): $80 (▲0.60%)
Gold: $4,028 (▼0.62%)
Silver: $57.98 (▼1.23%)

Data as of: UK: 11:30 am BST / US: 6:30 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 7:30 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

📊 Inflation cools hard as the hike scare fades

June CPI came in far softer than forecast. Consumer prices fell 0.4% on the month, the sharpest drop in years, pulling the annual rate down to 3.5% from 4.2% in May. The relief was broad: the energy index sank 5.7%, its biggest fall since April 2020, as June’s Middle East ceasefire let petrol prices unwind, while core prices, which strip out food and energy, were flat on the month and eased to 2.6% on the year. Traders reacted fast, cutting the odds of a July Fed rate hike to 17% from 42% the day before (CNBC).

The read matters because it reframes the whole summer. A hot core into rising oil was the nightmare setup, and core coming in flat is the first hard sign that underlying pressure is easing rather than spreading. The market has not called the all-clear, though: it pushed the hike bet out rather than off, still pricing roughly a 58% chance by September and about 80% by December. Today keeps the story live. June producer prices land at 1:30pm, a wholesale read after May’s hot 1.1% jump, and Warsh returns for a second day, this time before the Senate (CNBC).

🔬 ASML beats, lifts guidance, and revives the AI trade

ASML, the Dutch company with a near monopoly on the machines that print the most advanced chips, beat estimates and lifted its outlook for the second time this year. Second-quarter net sales came in at €9.3 billion with a 54% gross margin and net income of €2.9 billion, all ahead of forecasts. More important was the guidance: ASML now sees full-year sales of €43 billion to €45 billion, up from €36 billion to €40 billion, and called orders “extremely strong” through the first half as customers rushed to expand capacity. The shares rose about 4% (CNBC).

For a market rattled by SK Hynix’s round-tripped listing, this is the cleanest signal yet that AI-hardware demand is still accelerating, not fading. ASML sits at the base of the chip supply chain, so its order book is a forward read on what every foundry and memory maker plans to build. Management pointed to strong logic and DRAM investment and order visibility running into 2027 and 2028, with Intel now using its High-NA machines in production. The next confirmation comes fast: TSMC, the world’s leading foundry, reports tomorrow. Watch whether its capital-spending plans echo ASML’s confidence.

💻 IBM suffers its worst day on record

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Hormuz toll ignites oil: Trump sets a 20% fee on all Strait cargo and blockades Iranian ports, lifting Brent past $86, a one-month high.

• 📊 CPI then the Fed chair: June inflation lands at 1:30, with Warsh’s first testimony 90 minutes later and a July hike near a coin flip.

• 🏦 Banks smash estimates: JPMorgan posts a record profit on a $6bn trading haul, with BofA and Wells Fargo also beating.

• 💾 SK Hynix keeps sliding: The memory giant gives back more of its record listing, down toward $152 from a $168 debut as valuations reset.

• ₿ Bitcoin waits on Washington: BTC holds near $63,000 as the CLARITY market-structure bill could reach the Senate floor within days.

• 🥇 Gold loses its haven bid: Bullion shed about 3% toward $4,000, its worst day in a month, as rate-hike fears outweighed the war premium.

• 🖥️ Chip earnings could steal focus: ASML reports tomorrow and TSMC soon after, a live read on AI-hardware demand after SK Hynix’s round trip.

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Two playbooks for the day, a full CPI Day guide and a Warsh Hearings guide, are below.

• 📈 Chart of the Day: Oil, and the price zones that decide whether a July rate hike stays on the table.

🧠 One Big Thing

For the first time this year, the biggest inflation print and the start of bank earnings arrive the same morning, with an oil shock layered on top. That is three separate reads on the same question landing within hours. CPI shows what prices did, the banks show what credit and the consumer are actually doing, and oil shows what is coming next. The tension is whether they agree. A firm CPI with cautious bank guidance whispers stagflation; a soft print with solid loan books lets the rally breathe. Watch whether the data and the boardroom tell the same story today.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

20%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : Tower Semiconductor Ltd. surged after announcing a roughly $3 billion dual-track expansion of its 300mm silicon photonics, silicon germanium and advanced packaging capacity in Japan, backed by about $1 billion in grants from Japan’s METI, alongside raised 2028 targets.

Losers

• : Evotec SE extended its slide after the drug discovery group slashed 2026 guidance late Monday, cutting revenue to 570 to 610 million euros from 700 to 780 million and swinging its adjusted EBITDA forecast to a loss of 70 to 105 million euros from a projected profit. The Frankfurt line fell around 30% to its lowest level in a decade.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $62,724 (▲ 0.69%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,792 (▲ 0.93%)
XRP: $1.07 (▲ 0.17%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,556 (▼ 0.09%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,589 (▲ 0.38%)
FTSE 100: 10,441 (▼ 0.50%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.62% (▼ 0.04%)
Oil (WTI): $81 (▲ 3.53%)
Gold: $4,018 (▲ 0.42%)
Silver: $57.87 (▲ 0.44%)

Data as of: UK: 11:45am BST / US: 6:45am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 7:45pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Washington puts a toll on the Strait of Hormuz

President Trump has moved to reinstate a blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz and to charge a fee “at the rate of 20% on all cargo” crossing the waterway, with US Central Command saying the blockade takes effect at 4pm ET today. It is the first time Washington has taxed the world’s most important oil chokepoint, through which about a fifth of the world’s seaborne crude passes. Brent has surged past $86, its highest in a month and up nearly 13% over two sessions, after tanker traffic through the strait fell to roughly a third of normal, about 13 transits against a 33-a-day average (CNBC).

The move drove yesterday’s broad selloff, but the bigger point is structural: a standing 20% tax on a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil is a cost, not just a scare, and it feeds shipping, insurance, and fuel prices through the summer. It will not show up in today’s June inflation number, because June was the ceasefire month, so the effect builds into August and beyond. Citi warned the plan materially raises the risk of further escalation. For now the market is pricing disruption, not closure, so watch whether the 4pm ET deadline passes without incident and how Iran answers.

📊 CPI lands, then the new Fed chair testifies

June’s Consumer Price Index arrives at 1:30pm BST, the most watched inflation report of the year after an energy spike lifted May’s annual rate to 4.2%, a three-year high. Consensus sees headline prices slipping about 0.1% on the month, easing the annual rate toward 3.8% as June’s ceasefire-month petrol drop of roughly 10% washes through, while core, the Fed’s preferred gauge, is seen firm near a 0.3% monthly gain. Ninety minutes later, new Fed chair Kevin Warsh gives his first testimony to Congress, with a July rate hike now priced at roughly a coin flip, up from about a third a week ago (Yahoo Finance).

The catch is timing. June was the calm month, so today’s headline is a photograph of the ceasefire, and the fresh Hormuz toll will not land until the August report. That puts the weight on core, and it makes Warsh’s afternoon the real event, because the market wants to know whether he calls the oil shock a one-off or a spreading process. There is a lot to read across the two, so I have built a full playbook for each, both in today’s Deep Dive below. The CPI guide walks through what every headline-versus-core combination would do to stocks, crypto and gold, and the oil levels that keep a hike alive. The Warsh guide decodes the phrases that read as hawkish or patient, who he is, and where the sparks will fly. If you read two things before the open, read those. Watch core, and watch Warsh’s language around the word “transitory.”

🏦 The banks post blowout profits, but Dimon warns

JPMorgan opened earnings season with the highest quarterly profit in its history, powered by a record $6.03 billion stock-trading haul that jumped 86% on the year and beat even the most bullish analyst estimate, lifting total trading revenue to an all-time high of $12.1 billion. A long-held Visa stake added $4.6 billion, investment-banking fees rose 30% to $3.28 billion as dealmaking thawed, and the bank raised its full-year net interest income outlook to about $105.5 billion. Even so, CEO Jamie Dimon struck a wary tone, warning that geopolitical tension, sticky inflation, and elevated asset prices are “shifting below the surface like tectonic plates” (Bloomberg).

The strength ran across the group. Bank of America’s traders set their own record, with equity-trading revenue up 70% to $3.6 billion and earnings of $1.21 a share topping the $1.12 expected, while its investment bank and a 68% jump in advisory fees rode the same dealmaking revival that SpaceX’s record June IPO helped ignite. Wells Fargo beat too, lifting net income 17% to $6.4 billion, or $2 a share against a $1.71 estimate, on stronger wealth-management and investment-banking fees. Volatile markets and a reawakening in deals, rather than plain old lending, did the heavy lifting (Bloomberg).

The reaction told the real story. Despite the records, JPMorgan shares slipped about 1.4% in early trading, because a volatility-fuelled trading boom is not the same as durable growth, and because the same morning’s rate-hike bets are lifting bond yields and setting a jumpy tone into the CPI print. The banks did confirm that the consumer is holding up and credit is calm, which steadies the question of how strong the economy really is. But Dimon’s tectonic-plates warning echoes the oil-and-inflation backdrop, and blockbuster profits were not enough to lift the wider market while yields climb.

💾 SK Hynix hands back more of its record debut

SK Hynix’s US-listed shares slid toward $152, down from a $168 debut, extending a sharp reversal that has now unwound most of the pop from one of the year’s marquee listings. The stock sank more than 10% in Asian trade, with its Seoul-listed line weak alongside it, as investors wrestled with how to value the newly US-listed shares against the Korean stock and took profits after the debut spike. The memory maker led the semiconductor slide that dragged the Nasdaq down 1.55% yesterday (Yahoo Finance).

The listing itself raised $26.5 billion, the largest first-time share sale by a foreign company in US history, so the round trip in a matter of sessions is a real referendum on how much investors will pay for AI memory. SK Hynix supplies more than half the world’s high-bandwidth memory, the chips that feed AI accelerators, which ties its fate to the demand reads coming this week. ASML reports tomorrow and TSMC soon after, both treated across markets as live gauges of AI-hardware appetite. Watch memory and foundry names into those prints.

₿ Bitcoin steadies as its Washington moment nears

Bitcoin is holding near $63,000 after dipping below $62,000 over the weekend on the Middle East flare-up, with Ethereum steadier alongside it. The bigger story is in Washington: the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that would finally define which digital assets are securities and which are commodities, could reach the Senate floor as early as 17 July. The bill is running on a hard four-week runway before the Senate breaks for its summer recess on 7 August, and prediction markets put its chances of passing this year at roughly 60% to 70% (Yahoo Finance).

The bill would sort tokens into three buckets: commodities like Bitcoin overseen by the CFTC, fundraising tokens under the SEC, and payment stablecoins supervised by banking regulators, which would lift one of the largest regulatory overhangs on the sector. It is still snagged on ethics language and the split of authority between agencies, and a miss before the recess would push the catalyst out for months. A House field hearing in New York on 17 July is a talking shop rather than a vote, so watch the Senate floor calendar for the real signal.

Stories You Might Have Missed

🥇 Gold loses its haven bid as rates fears bite

Gold shed about 3% yesterday, its biggest daily drop in more than a month, sliding toward $4,000 before steadying near $4,014 this morning. That is a striking move on a day oil climbed and the US tightened a blockade, the sort of backdrop that usually sends money into bullion. Instead, ramped-up expectations of higher interest rates and a firmer dollar did the opposite: higher rates dull the appeal of an asset that pays no yield, so investors chose Treasuries over the metal even as the war premium built. Gold now sits well below its January record near $5,595, and its direction from here leans on today’s CPI and Warsh’s tone (CNBC).

🖥️ Chip earnings this week could steal the show

The memory rout has raised the stakes for a run of chip results that markets treat as real-time reads on AI demand. ASML, which makes the machines that print the most advanced chips, reports tomorrow, with new bookings watched as a gauge of how much hardware the AI buildout still needs. TSMC, the foundry that manufactures the world’s leading silicon, follows soon after with its own capital-spending plans. After SK Hynix round-tripped its record debut in days, these prints offer the cleanest test yet of whether the AI-hardware trade is cooling or simply repricing. A strong order book would steady the semis; a soft one would deepen the doubt (CNBC).

🔍 Deep Dive

Two special playbooks for today’s double event, so you can read the inflation print and the new Fed chair like a pro.

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Oil jumps as strikes resume: Brent rose about 3% toward $78 after the US and Iran traded fresh attacks and Tehran claimed Hormuz was closed.

• 📊 Inflation test lands tomorrow: June CPI and Kevin Warsh’s first testimony arrive together, the clearest read yet on whether a Fed hike is live.

• 🏦 Banks open earnings season: JPMorgan, Goldman and three more report before tomorrow’s open, with Goldman’s profit seen up 32% on trading.

• 💾 SK Hynix round trip: The chip giant’s US shares fell about 8% today, handing back much of its record 13% Nasdaq debut pop.

• ₿ Bitcoin dips before rules week: Bitcoin slipped near $63,000 as traders eyed a Senate back in session and this week’s CLARITY Act crypto hearing.

• 🥇 Gold falls as war flares: Gold slid to about $4,058, roughly 25% below January’s record, as the inflation read overpowered its haven bid.

• 🖥️ Chip earnings loom too: ASML and TSMC report later this week, offering markets a fresh real-time gauge of AI hardware demand after the banks.

• 🎰 MGM weighs a $12.4bn buyout: MGM set up a committee to weigh Barry Diller’s $12.4bn bid for the casino group’s remaining shares.

• 🔍 Tech’s $2.9tn AI debt binge: The cash-rich giants have become the bond market’s biggest borrowers to fund a $2.9tn data-centre build.

• 📈 Chart of the Day: the level Sensei is watching now, with the triggers that matter.

🧠 One Big Thing

Look at what moved together this morning. Oil jumped, gold fell, and yields held firm, which is the market’s way of pricing a supply and inflation shock, not a growth scare. That is the most awkward possible setup into tomorrow’s CPI. A fresh energy spike lifts headline prices just as a split Fed decides whether a hike belongs on the table, and a chair who has already floated one steps in front of Congress hours later. The read to carry into the week: watch the 10-year Treasury yield and the core CPI number, because together they decide whether risk assets keep their footing.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

4.2%

May’s annual inflation rate, the hottest since 2023, is the bar June’s CPI has to clear when it lands tomorrow, with rising oil now threatening to keep price pressure alive.

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : Q32 Bio Inc. soared into this morning’s 36-week topline readout from Part B of its SIGNAL-AA trial of bempikibart in severe alopecia areata, having already surged in Friday’s after-hours session when the readout date was set.

• : Agenus Inc. jumped after announcing an $85 million private placement led by Commodore Capital, a raise that could reach $340 million if all warrants are exercised and extends the company’s cash runway through the end of 2031.

Losers

• : Julong Holding Limited extended a violent unwind in the newly listed Chinese building systems micro-cap, which has been hit with repeated Nasdaq volatility halts as speculative positioning washes out of a thin float.

• : Stratus Properties Inc. fell on a mechanical adjustment as today marks the record date for its $5.00 per share initial liquidating distribution, part of the Austin developer’s plan of complete liquidation and voluntary Nasdaq delisting.

• : National Beverage Corp. dropped as shares went ex-dividend on a $3.25 per share special payout, a mechanical move that accounts for nearly the entire decline.

• : Micron Technology, Inc. fell on the same SK Hynix shock, which reignited questions over whether AI memory pricing has already peaked.

• : Bloom Energy Corporation kept sliding under twin short-seller attacks, with Hunterbrook Capital alleging the fuel cell maker understated its reliance on Chinese scandium suppliers and Crossroads Capital disclosing its own short a day later.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $63,020 (▼1.13%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,782 (▼1.30%)
XRP: $1.08 (▼0.51%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,598 (▼0.30%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,755 (▼0.92%)
FTSE 100: 10,485 (▼0.31%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.57% (▲0.26%)
Oil (WTI): $74 (▲2.95%)
Gold: $4,066 (▼1.33%)
Silver: $58.56 (▼2.14%)

Data as of: UK: 12:04 BST / US: 07:04 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:04 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Oil jumps as the US and Iran trade fresh strikes

Oil climbed to start the week after the US and Iran exchanged a new round of attacks over the weekend, reviving fears over the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil. Brent crude rose about 3% toward $78 a barrel and US WTI traded near $73, paring bigger early gains. US Central Command said its forces hit dozens of targets, using one-way attack sea drones for the first time, in retaliation for an Iranian strike on a container ship that was left ablaze with one crew member missing. Iran said the strait was closed “until further notice,” a claim CENTCOM rejected (CNBC).

The escalation puts last month’s 60-day interim peace deal in doubt and lands at the worst possible moment for markets, hours before the year’s most watched inflation report. Higher oil feeds straight into headline prices, and a fresh energy shock is exactly what could push an already-split Fed toward a hike rather than a cut. Shipping data shows the strait thinning out, with only six vessels tracked crossing in one recent overnight window against 18 to 22 a day earlier this month. Watch whether traffic seizes up further, because a genuine closure, rather than the threat of one, is what turns an oil scare into an oil crisis.

📊 CPI and the new Fed chair headline a huge week

Wall Street closed last week near records, with the S&P 500 finishing at 7,575.39, up 0.42%, the Nasdaq Composite at 26,281.61 and the Dow adding about 150 points, helped by Nvidia and Meta (CNBC). That calm is about to be tested. Tomorrow brings June CPI, the most important inflation reading of the year after May’s 0.5% monthly jump lifted the annual rate to 4.2%, its hottest since 2023. Economists expect headline prices to slip 0.1% as energy cools, while core, which strips out food and energy, is seen up 0.3%. Futures wavered to start the week, with S&P contracts off about 0.3% and Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.9%.

Hours after the print, Kevin Warsh delivers his first testimony as Fed chair, then repeats it before the Senate midweek, giving markets their clearest read yet on how hawkish he really is. He has already floated a hike as an option, so a hot core reading plus rising oil could harden that case and lift yields, while a soft print would calm nerves before he speaks. The Fed enters its pre-meeting quiet period at the weekend, so this is the last real policy signal before the 28 to 29 July decision. Watch the 10-year Treasury yield, which has been setting the tone across stocks and crypto alike.

🏦 Big banks fire the starting gun on earnings

The second-quarter earnings season opens before tomorrow’s bell, and as ever the big banks go first. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup all report, giving the first hard look at how the economy is actually behaving through loan demand, credit quality and trading desks. Expectations are high: analysts see JPMorgan earning about $5.52 a share, up roughly 10% on the year, and Goldman around $14.47, a jump of more than 32%, on a rebound in dealmaking and trading (Yahoo Finance). Across the S&P 500, second-quarter profits are expected to rise about 24%.

The bar is set high enough that a beat may not be enough on its own, with options markets pricing swings of about 6% for Goldman and 4.4% for JPMorgan on the day. The metric that matters most is net interest income, the gap between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits, because it shows how the higher-for-longer rate picture is filtering through. Their tone on the consumer and on credit provisions often sets the mood for every report that follows. Watch the guidance and the language on loan losses more than the headline profit, because that is where any crack in the economy shows up first.

💾 SK Hynix hands back its record debut

SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory-chip maker, gave back much of its blockbuster Wall Street debut to start the week. Its US-listed shares fell about 8% in early trading, and its Seoul stock sank more than 15% in its worst day, after the shares had jumped 13% in their Nasdaq debut to close at $168.01 (Bloomberg). The Nasdaq listing raised $26.5 billion, the biggest first-time share sale by a foreign company in the US, topping Alibaba’s $25 billion in 2014, with demand running at about seven times the shares on offer. The stock trades under SKHYV before switching to SKHY tomorrow.

The round trip captures the whole debate over the AI trade in one session. Investors will pay up for the memory that feeds AI data centres, then think twice at the price, especially with chip names leading futures lower this morning and Middle East risk back on the screen. SK Hynix supplies more than half the high-bandwidth memory that sits beside Nvidia’s chips, so its shares have become a proxy for how durable that demand really is. Watch ASML’s order book and TSMC’s results later this week, the two reports that will either confirm the AI-capex boom or start to question it.

₿ Bitcoin slips as a decisive crypto-rules week opens

Bitcoin started the week on the back foot, trading near $63,000 as the risk-off mood from the Middle East and a firmer dollar weighed on crypto. Ethereum slipped toward $1,780 and the total crypto market fell about 0.9% to $2.17 trillion (CoinDesk). The bigger story is in Washington. The Senate returns from recess today, restarting the clock on the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that would split oversight of crypto between the SEC and the CFTC and give the industry the rulebook it has wanted for years.

A new draft of the bill is expected in the coming days, with backers hoping for a Senate floor vote as soon as the week of 20 July, though ethics rules, federal preemption and the SEC-CFTC split are still unresolved and time is short before the August recess. A House field hearing on the bill lands later this week, a talking-shop event rather than a vote. For now crypto is trading on the macro, not the politics, but a genuine breakthrough on rules would be the first real catalyst in weeks. Watch whether the new text actually drops, because the market has been promised it before.

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🥇 Gold falls even as the war flares

Gold fell to start the week even as US-Iran strikes escalated, with spot gold down about 1.5% near $4,058 an ounce. The usual haven bid gave way to a colder logic: higher oil raises the odds of a fresh inflation shock, which keeps the Fed hawkish and lifts the dollar and yields, all of which weigh on an asset that pays nothing to hold. Gold is now roughly 25% below its January record around $5,595, a reminder that in this cycle the rates story has repeatedly overpowered the crisis story. Tomorrow’s CPI is the next test of whether that holds (Yahoo Finance).

🖥️ The chip earnings that could steal the show

The banks open earnings season, but the reports markets may care about most come later in the week from the chip world. ASML, which makes the machines that print the most advanced chips, reports midweek, and its order book is read across markets as a real-time gauge of AI hardware demand. Taiwan Semiconductor, which manufactures the most advanced silicon for Nvidia and Apple, follows soon after with its results and 2026 spending plans. After SK Hynix’s wild debut and today’s reversal, both prints will shape how investors price the whole AI-infrastructure trade (CNBC).

🎰 MGM weighs Barry Diller’s $12.4 billion buyout

MGM Resorts has formed a special board committee to weigh a takeover proposal from Barry Diller’s People Inc., the company formerly known as IAC, which already owns about 26% of the casino operator and has offered to buy the rest at $48.30 a share (Bloomberg). The bid values MGM at roughly $12.4 billion, and the company has told advisers it believes the offer undervalues its assets. JPMorgan is helping finance Diller’s side. It is an early sign that large US dealmaking is thawing again, a theme the bank results this week should help confirm or cool.

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This Week

A quiet price week hiding a loud news week. XRP is sitting around $1.10, down a touch over the last seven days, and sentiment is still stuck in Extreme Fear, yet underneath that flat chart Ripple had one of its most active stretches of the year. A full European license, the legislation that could finally fix XRP’s legal status moving into its decisive phase, and the token turning up somewhere no cryptocurrency has been before.

Six stories carried real weight this week, so this issue runs all six. Here is what happened, what actually matters for XRP, and what is noise.

The Consensus

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act rewrite is coming as the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees merge their bills, with a unified text possible the week of 20 July.

• 🇪🇺 Ripple wins a full EU MiCA license in Luxembourg, clearing it to run regulated crypto payments across all 30 European Economic Area countries.

• 🏦 The XRP ETF streak reaches nine weeks, near $1.48 billion in total, then posts one of its biggest single-day outflows of the year.

• 🤖 The XRP Ledger crosses one million AI agent payments, giving XRP a real and growing job settling machine-to-machine transactions.

• 🏀 XRP lands on the Kansas Jayhawks’ jerseys, the first cryptocurrency ever to appear on a major college program’s kit.

• 🐋 Whales keep pulling XRP off exchanges even as one long-running accumulation signal quietly turns.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

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This is the week the summer’s biggest data collides with its biggest personalities. Tuesday brings June CPI, the most closely watched inflation report of the year after an energy shock pushed the annual rate to a three-year high, and it lands the same morning the big banks crack open earnings season. Hours later the new Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, sits before Congress for the first time since he was sworn in, then does it again on Wednesday as PPI adds a second inflation read. Thursday piles on retail sales and a wave of earnings from Netflix to TSMC, and Friday closes with the first look at July consumer mood. Add World Cup semi-finals on US soil and a Fed that goes quiet on Saturday, and there is almost nowhere to hide.

Last Week:

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📈 AI lifts Wall Street higher: The Nasdaq closed at a record 26,206.89, up 1.3%, as chip names ran hot and traders shrugged off fresh Iran headlines.

• 💾 SK Hynix lands on the Nasdaq: The Korean memory maker raised $26.5bn, the largest first-time US listing by a foreign company ever, and debuts today.

• 🧠 Meta builds its own chip: Facebook’s owner will start making an in-house AI chip in September, sending its shares up 4% on the plan.

• ✈️ Delta beats and holds its year: The airline topped estimates and guided Q3 profit to $2.00 to $2.50, opening earnings season on a firmer note.

• ₿ Regulation now moves crypto: Bitcoin held near $63,300 as Washington’s rulebook, not the Middle East, became the market’s main driver.

• 🛢️ Oil keeps sliding: Brent slipped toward $76 as returning Iranian barrels drained the war premium, even with US strikes still in the headlines.

• 🥇 Gold holds above $4,100: A softer dollar supported the metal, though rate-hike worries kept it well below January’s record near $5,600.

• ⚽ World Cup hits the last eight: Spain meet Belgium in Inglewood today, one of four quarter-finals played on US soil this weekend.

• 🔍 Washington’s four-week crypto window: Two US rulebooks, the SEC’s safe harbour and the CLARITY Act, could land or die by 7 August.

• 📈 Chart of the Day, XRP: XRP is pressing the multi-year trendline near $1.12; a clean break opens the road toward the $1.30 resistance

🧠 One Big Thing

Two stories landed today that point the same way: SK Hynix’s blockbuster debut and Meta’s move to make its own AI chip. The money in AI is quietly shifting from the merchant chip seller to the picks and shovels underneath it. Every hyperscaler now designing custom silicon, Meta after Amazon, Google and reportedly DeepSeek, still needs someone else’s memory and someone else’s foundry. That is why SK Hynix drew orders at seven times supply while Nvidia trades at its cheapest forward multiple since 2019. The trade may be splitting into who builds versus who sells. Watch memory and foundry names against Nvidia, with TSMC reporting on the 16th.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$26.5 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : Julong Holding Limited extended its low float squeeze into another pre-market session, with the thinly traded Chinese intelligent systems micro-cap ripping higher on momentum and short covering rather than any company news. The stock has tripped repeated volatility halts across recent sessions.

• : WD-40 Company jumped after its fiscal third quarter results blew past estimates, posting adjusted EPS of $2.33 versus roughly $1.57 expected and lifting full year revenue guidance.

• : Circle Internet Group surged after winning approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Circle National Trust, a national trust bank that brings its USDC stablecoin infrastructure under direct federal oversight. A broad crypto rally with bitcoin back near $64,000 added a tailwind.

• : EquipmentShare.com raised its full year 2026 financial guidance on strong customer demand and authorized a new $500 million share repurchase program.

• : The Pennant Group moved sharply higher in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified.

• : Meta Platforms climbed as its aggressive AI push drew fresh attention, with the company moving into the AI coding market and unveiling plans for a multibillion dollar Canadian data center to expand its compute footprint.

Losers

• : Fermi Inc. dropped after launching a $350 million convertible senior notes offering, later upsized to $375 million, with the dilution overhang weighing on the AI power developer as it works through an ongoing governance fight.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $64,378 (▲ 1.93%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,800 (▲ 3.22%)
XRP: $1.11 (▲ 1.72%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,584 (▼ -0.06%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,836 (▼ -0.34%)
FTSE 100: 10,463 (▲ 0.08%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.55% (▼ -0.04%)
Oil (WTI): $73 (▲ 1.28%)
Gold: $4,106 (▼ -0.41%)
Silver: $59.49 (▼ -0.77%)

Data as of: UK: 12:50 BST / US: 07:50 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:50 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

📈 AI powers Wall Street to fresh records

US stocks closed at highs yesterday as investors bet again on AI-driven demand and looked past a fresh flare-up in the Middle East. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.3% to a record 26,206.89, the S&P 500 added 0.8% to 7,543.64, and the Dow gained 0.3% to 52,478.41 after a choppy session. Chip stocks led the charge: Micron climbed 5.2%, SanDisk jumped 7.6% and Applied Materials rose 3.2%, while Meta added 4% on plans to build its own AI chip. Futures were mixed this morning as traders waited for the Nasdaq debut of Korean memory maker SK Hynix (Yahoo Finance).

The pattern is the same one that has defined this week: any dip in the AI trade gets bought, and macro risks that would once have rattled markets are being waved through. That leaves the market leaning heavily on a single theme just as its two biggest near-term tests arrive. June inflation lands on the 14th and the first big banks report alongside it, either of which could interrupt the run. For now the momentum sits with the chipmakers and the hyperscalers spending on them, and the SK Hynix debut gives that appetite a live read this morning.

💾 SK Hynix’s $26.5bn Nasdaq debut

SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, pulled off the biggest first-time US listing by a foreign company on record and begins trading on the Nasdaq today. It sold American Depositary Shares at $149 each and raised $26.5 billion, a deal larger than Alibaba’s 2014 debut, with institutional orders running more than seven times the shares available. Trading opens under the temporary ticker SKHYV on a when-issued basis, with regular dealing under SKHY due to start on the 13th. Early indications put the stock near $158, which is below its Korean-share equivalent and short of the 20% premium HSBC had projected (Yahoo Finance).

Every AI system, the ones answering questions and generating images, runs on specialised chips, and those chips are close to useless without fast memory sitting right beside them to feed in data. That memory is called HBM, high-bandwidth memory, and SK Hynix makes more of it than anyone else on the planet, roughly 56% of global supply. So while Nvidia takes the headlines for the AI brain, SK Hynix quietly supplies a large share of the short-term memory that brain cannot think without. Listing in New York puts that business in front of American investors for the first time, in one of the largest fundraises the market has ever seen.

The listing lands amid a bigger shift running through the whole sector. Tech giants like Meta, Amazon and Google are racing to design their own custom chips rather than buy everything from Nvidia, yet they all still need the same ingredient underneath: memory. That turns SK Hynix into a rare name that wins almost regardless of which chip design comes out on top, since nearly every AI accelerator, whoever builds it, needs its parts. Demand running at seven times the shares on offer is the market saying it wants direct exposure to that chokepoint, not only to the famous names sitting above it (CNBC).

The opening price is a reality check rather than a verdict. A debut below its home-market value and below the premium the bankers wanted suggests a lot of optimism is already baked into the number, which is common when a listing arrives this hyped. The more useful signal is how SKHYV trades across its first few sessions, because it works as a live thermometer for the entire AI-hardware trade. It also lands a week before TSMC, the world’s biggest chip manufacturer, reports on the 16th and gives the next hard read on whether the AI spending boom is still accelerating.

🧠 Meta moves to build its own AI chip

Meta plans to start production of an in-house AI chip code-named Iris in September, a step meant to cut its reliance on outside suppliers and roughly double its computing capacity. According to an internal memo, the chip is the latest generation of Meta’s own accelerator programme and will be manufactured with Broadcom and TSMC, after testing that reportedly took just six weeks and flagged no major problems. The plan sits inside an AI infrastructure budget that could reach $145 billion this year and a target of 14 gigawatts of computing power. Investors liked it: Meta shares rose 4% (CNBC).

The move matters because it puts Meta alongside Amazon, Google and, reportedly, China’s DeepSeek in designing custom silicon rather than buying every chip from Nvidia. That could reshape who captures AI’s profits over time, though it comes with a catch worth stating plainly: a custom chip still needs someone else’s memory and someone else’s foundry. Broadcom and TSMC gain a marquee customer, and SK Hynix, debuting today, sells into exactly this demand. The threat to Nvidia is real but gradual, and its shares now trade at their cheapest forward multiple since 2019, so much of that pressure may already be reflected.

✈️ Delta beats and lifts its outlook

Delta Air Lines opened earnings season with a better-than-expected quarter and a confident tone on the rest of the year. The carrier topped the roughly $1.48 per share Wall Street had modelled, even as profit fell sharply from a year earlier on higher fuel costs, and guided third-quarter earnings to a range of $2.00 to $2.50 against the roughly $2.02 analysts expected. It reaffirmed its full-year forecast of $6.50 to $7.50 per share. Chief executive Ed Bastian said the original profit goal is still in reach because the airline can pass higher fuel bills through to customers (CNBC).

Delta is the traditional curtain-raiser for the season, so its read on the consumer carries beyond the airline itself. The message is that demand for premium travel is holding and that pricing power has not cracked, even with costs elevated. That is a reassuring signal for the sector and a mild positive for the wider consumer picture the market has been fretting over since the soft June jobs report. The bigger test comes next week, when the large banks report and give a broader look at spending and credit (Yahoo Finance).

₿ Regulation, not geopolitics, now drives crypto

Bitcoin held near $64,000 this morning, up around 2% over 24 hours, with the market’s attention swinging from Middle East headlines to Washington’s rulebook. The tone steadied as US spot Bitcoin ETFs snapped a long outflow streak, and the wider debate has moved to two pieces of policy. The CLARITY market-structure bill still sits on the Senate calendar with no floor vote scheduled, blocked by disputes over ethics disclosures, insider-trading rules and stablecoin yield. Separately, a statutory deadline for finalising GENIUS Act stablecoin rules falls on the 18th. The Senate returns from recess on the 13th (Yahoo Finance).

This is a real shift for anyone holding crypto: the next big move is more likely to come from a committee room than a conflict. A credible signal that CLARITY can clear its 60-vote Senate threshold before the August recess would be a genuine catalyst, since it would settle which tokens count as commodities and open the door to more regulated products. The flip side is that any sign of the bill slipping into next year removes a support the market has been leaning on. With roughly three usable weeks before the recess, the window is real but tight.

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🛢️ Oil slips as Iranian barrels return

Crude kept falling this morning, with Brent trading near $76 after losing more than 2% yesterday and West Texas Intermediate below $72. The driver is supply, not calm: even with fresh US strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on American bases in the region keeping the Strait of Hormuz in the headlines, the return of Iranian crude has drained the war premium that spiked prices earlier in the week. Traders are treating the conflict as a supply story with a known offset rather than an open-ended shock, which is why the geopolitical risk has faded from the price faster than the headlines suggest. Lower oil also quietly helps the inflation picture heading into next week’s CPI (Bloomberg).

🥇 Gold holds above $4,100

Gold steadied above $4,100 an ounce, supported by a softer US dollar but capped by the risk that the Fed still tilts toward a rate hike. The tension is straightforward: a weaker dollar makes the metal cheaper for overseas buyers, while higher rates raise the cost of holding an asset that pays no yield. That tug-of-war has kept gold rangebound this week even as Middle East tensions flared, well below the record near $5,600 set in late January. Next week’s inflation print is the near-term swing factor, since a hot number would firm up hike expectations and weigh on the metal, while a soft one would loosen that grip (Yahoo Finance).

⚽ World Cup reaches the last eight on US soil

The World Cup hits its quarter-finals this weekend, with all four ties played in the United States as the co-host nation keeps the tournament close to home. Spain meet Belgium in Inglewood today, followed by three more over the weekend in Miami Gardens and beyond, including Argentina and England still in the hunt. For investors the angle is the consumer: a major tournament on home soil pulls spending into travel, hospitality, streaming and advertising, a small but real tailwind for those sectors through the summer. The US men’s team is already out, beaten by Belgium in the round of 16, which takes some domestic heat out of the ratings story but not the spending one (Yahoo Sports).

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