| HORMUZ |
| Sixth Day of Strikes Grinds On as IRGC and CENTCOM Trade Blows Across the Gulf |
| CENTCOM hit missile storage and launch sites on Greater Tunb Island overnight and expanded to coastal surveillance installations near Bandar Abbas, while the IRGC answered with strikes on U.S. facilities at Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, a HIMARS battery in Kuwait, and fuel depots at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan — claiming two launchers and ammunition stores destroyed. Brent crude eased to about $84.60 Thursday morning, off its $86 intraday peak but still well above the ~$70 level before the escalation. Iran’s deputy foreign minister repeated that Hormuz stays closed until Washington honors the June memorandum of understanding; the Pentagon says the blockade holds until Iran stops firing on tankers. |
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| EARNINGS |
| TSMC Posts a Fifth Straight Record; UnitedHealth Blows Past the Street by $1.47 |
| Taiwan Semiconductor reported Q2 revenue near $39.8 billion with net profit up roughly 59% year-on-year, extending an AI-fabrication streak that now accounts for more than $40 billion of its 2026 projection. UnitedHealth delivered $6.38 adjusted EPS on $112 billion in revenue — beating estimates by $1.47 — and raised full-year guidance to $19.50–$20.00 a share, sending shares up 7% premarket. The S&P 500 dipped 0.15% to 7,561 as chipmakers Micron, AMD, and Broadcom fell about 3% despite TSMC’s beat. |
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| RED SEA |
| Tehran Tells Houthis to Prepare for Bab el-Mandeb Closure if U.S. Strikes Power Grid |
| Iran has directed its Houthi allies to stand ready to shut the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea if Washington hits Iranian power infrastructure, according to sources close to the group. Houthi forces have deployed missiles and drones near the chokepoint. With Hormuz already closed, a simultaneous Bab el-Mandeb blockade would disrupt roughly 30% of the world’s seaborne oil, covering both the Persian Gulf and Suez-bound trade routes. |
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| INFLATION |
| Producer Prices Fell in June for the First Time in Nearly a Year |
| The PPI dropped on an 18% slide in diesel and 12% decline in crude during the late-ceasefire lull — a backward-looking cooldown that follows Tuesday’s softer CPI read. Core PPI rose 0.2%, below expectations. Markets see the pair of prints as room for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh to hold rates at the Jul 28–29 meeting; Warsh has signaled patience in his first weeks on the job. |
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| AI |
| Google Targets Tomorrow for Gemini 3.5 Pro After Scrapping and Rebuilding the Model |
| Google DeepMind reportedly junked the nearly finished Gemini 3.5 Pro after engineers found structural failures in recursive tool-calling and code generation, then rebuilt from scratch. The new model targets a Jul 17 launch with a two-million-token context window and an autonomous-workflow layer — specs Google has not confirmed publicly. A limited enterprise preview has been running on Vertex AI since late June; DeepSeek’s rival model is due Jul 24. |
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| WASHINGTON |
| Blanche Faces the Judiciary Committee as Trump Extends D.C. Guard Through 2029 |
| Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sat for his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, defending the department’s independence in what both parties signaled would be a long fight. The White House extended the National Guard deployment to Washington through Inauguration Day 2029, now covering the full remaining term. Separately, the president previewed a primetime address centered on “election integrity” ahead of November’s midterms. |
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