Although there was some uncertainty about the monetary direction the United States Federal Reserve will take following the July FOMC meeting, the central bank approved with a 9-3 vote to maintain the interest rates at 3.50% to 3.75%.
All eyes have turned to the incoming press conference by the new Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, as investors anticipate which way he will lean.
“The Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3-1/2 to 3-3/4 percent, in support of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. The Committee is continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system,” reads the statement.
As reported earlier today, this meeting was described as the most unpredictable since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020. The reason for this is that all meetings since then had a 99% agreement about the outcome ahead of their conclusion.
In contrast, futures markets and prediction platforms had assigned a 30%-38% probability for a rate hike for today’s meeting.
Investors apparently had de-risked from more volatile assets like bitcoin ahead of the event today, as the asset slumped by $3,000 yesterday. It rebounded to $64,500 today, where it was rejected and slipped to under $63,800 before the meeting.
Its minor volatility returned after the announcement, pumping above $64,000 as of now. However, it’s likely that the Warsh speech will impact it even more, especially if the new Fed chair hints at what the central bank will do next – a rate hike or another pause.
Then cheap AI tax tools arrived. Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges cut her price target in June to $276, down from $519.
Intuit moved fast. It cut 17% of staff, roughly 3,000 jobs. It also lowered its TurboTax forecast.
The company is now worth about $88 billion, Forbes reported. A year earlier it was worth more than $219 billion.
Accenture (ACN) tells a similar story, down 45.21%. Clients are spending on AI instead of consultants.
New client orders slipped to $19.3 billion from $19.7 billion. Accenture cut its sales growth forecast to between 3% and 4%. The stock fell almost 18% in one day.
Cognizant (CTSH), Gartner (IT) and The Trade Desk (TTD) each lost 44% to 55%. All three sell work that AI can copy.
But the Two Biggest Losers Had Nothing to do with AI
Here is the twist. The two worst stocks fell for old-fashioned reasons.
AI Fear Wiped 40% Off 10 S&P 500 Stocks While the Index Rose 8%
CoStar Group (CSGP) is down 58.86%, the weakest in the index. Its problem is spending, not AI.
CoStar owns Homes.com, a property listings site. In January it said the site will not cover its own costs until 2029. Profit is not expected until 2030.
The core business is fine. Revenue jumped 23% to $897 million last quarter. Profit was just $3 million.
Investors lost patience. In February, hedge fund D.E. Shaw told CoStar to quit or shrink Homes.com. It said the move could unlock more than $10 billion. CoStar called the campaign “activism malpractice.”
Shareholders backed the board in June. Nasdaq had already dropped the stock from its Nasdaq-100 index in May.
Boston Scientific (BSX) is down 53.59%. It simply grew slower than promised.
In February it expected sales to grow 10% to 11%. By April it cut that to between 6.5% and 8%.
A rival explains why. Medtronic said its heart device sales rose 124% in the United States. It took “an additional 8 points of U.S. share.”
Then bad news piled up. Boston Scientific recalled its Accolade pacemakers. Regulators tied the fault to four deaths and 2,557 serious injuries. It also agreed to buy Penumbra for $14.5 billion.
Where the Money Went Instead
Chip and memory makers took it. Sandisk (SNDK) is up 505.17% this year. Dell Technologies (DELL) rose 247.55%. Micron Technology (MU) gained 222.68%.
Small investors piled in too, feeding the AI capex boom through chip funds. A narrow group of winners now drives the whole index, as data on AI stocks driving gains shows.
Everything else got punished for any slip. Expensive stocks fell hardest when forecasts came down, a danger flagged in recent earnings bubble warnings.
CoStar and Boston Scientific both report results this week. Those numbers will show whether investors were right or just impatient.
Bitcoin is stuck near $65,000, and trader Wise Crypto thinks AI spending is a big part of why.
The OG crypto poked above $66,000 earlier this week before losing steam, and the pattern points to money chasing AI stocks instead of crypto while inflation and bond yields keep pressure on risk assets.
Where the Money Is Actually Going
Wise Crypto laid out the case on X Thursday, noting that while spot Bitcoin ETFs have had seven consecutive days of inflows that have raked in just under $1 billion, the number was a small one next to the $6.9 billion that left those same funds in May and June.
Meanwhile, Big Tech is spending somewhere between $190 billion and $205 billion on AI infrastructure this year, with Nvidia’s data center revenue up 92% year over year, and AI-linked stocks have climbed roughly 69% since January. Bitcoin, over that same stretch, is down about 25%.
“Capital is flowing to AI, not crypto,” Wise Crypto wrote, pointing to two-year Treasury yields near 4.3% and ten-year yields near 4.6% as the forces keeping the dollar strong and investors cautious on risk assets.
The price data backs up the stall, as BTC was trading around $65,400 at the time of writing, down 0.6% on the day, after swinging between about $65,300 and $66,300 in the last 24 hours and between $62,500 and $66,900 over the past week. It is still up close to 5% across 30 days but sits roughly 45% below its all-time-high near $126,000 from last October.
Another market watcher, Ted Pillows, writing in his Thursday market report, pointed to Brent crude being near $94 a barrel after another round of US-Iran strikes, along with a ten-year TIPS real yield of about 2.31%, a post-pandemic high, as the direct drag on non-yielding assets like Bitcoin right now.
“I’d rather watch $64,000 get defended than chase a run back toward $66,500,” he said.
The Technical Levels Traders Are Watching
Michaël van de Poppe has said Bitcoin has already reached its target area, and that holding above the 21-day moving average keeps the door open for near-term gains, with $68,000 marking the next resistance zone and a break above it potentially opening a run to $73,000.
Fellow analyst Axel Adler noted that ETFs have taken in $439 million so far this week, while the so-called Coinbase discount, running for 78 days now, has started to narrow.
Further out, EGRAG CRYPTO flagged a developing double bottom pattern that would need a weekly close above $83,000 to gain traction, with $173,000 the eventual target if the setup plays out, though a weekly close below roughly $51,000 would invalidate it.
A similar reaction zone between $67,900 and $68,300 was pointed to by Bitfinex analysts, who also noted that short-term holders who bought in that range tend to sell once they recover their original positions, a pattern that has capped rallies before and could do so again if $68,000 comes back into play.
AI chip stocks have cooled fast. The SOXX fund, which tracks the semiconductor index, sits about 15.7% below its June high, and after a long run of dip-buying, retail traders have started selling.
That flip is the rare signal Scott Rubner, Head of Equity Derivatives Strategy at Citadel Securities, just flagged. One that has marked past selloff lows, or rather, local bottoms.
What Rubner Flagged
In a July investor note, Rubner said retail clients turned net sellers of chips on two down days, July 2 and July 7, as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), the benchmark for major chip makers, fell about 5%. Selling into a falling SOX is rare.
Note: We chart SOXX, the exchange-traded fund that tracks the SOX index, because the index itself cannot be traded.
Moreover, he counted only about eight such episodes over the past year. Nearly all arrived late in a selloff, just before chips bounced. That’s the AI chip bottom thesis this piece chases.
Citadel sees this through payment for order flow, the arrangement that lets it handle retail trades and read their positioning. That data is not easily accessible.
Why We Rebuilt the AI Chip Signal
Because that order flow is private, we rebuilt the signal from public data. Our proprietary Retail Capitulation Radar (RCR) tracks two leveraged chip funds, SOXL and SOXS, which aim to move two or three times the semiconductor index each day.
Retail traders dominate them. The RCR is our own bottom signal detector.
When retail dumps the bullish fund or crowds into the bearish one as chips drop, the behavior shows up in that trading. On the test, the strict signal fired twice, both in early March 2026.
The chart shows why that matters. SOXX has dropped about 16% from its June high, yet it still trades roughly 80% above that March base, where the signal last fired.
Here is the honest part. Citadel counted eight episodes, yet the public proxy (our metric) confirmed only two, and it did not reproduce the exact July signal on the chart. That gap cuts both ways. Either our proxy runs too tightly, or public data missed what Citadel’s private order book saw.
Another Historical Pattern Shows Similarity
Still, both datasets point the same way. In Rubner’s retail-selling episodes since February, chips rose over the next five to ten days every time, with a median gain near 18% over ten days, and the March case rose about 29%.
The proprietary radar above is deliberately strict, which is why it fired only twice. So we also ran a second, loser test that flags any two-day drop with broad chip weakness. That wider net catches more cases, ten in all, and it broadly agrees, with a median gain near 7% over the next ten days.
However, this test is noisier. One late-February episode kept sliding for three weeks before recovering, so the rebound is a direction, not an immediate rule.
What the AI Chip Signal Says Now
Timing matters here. Citadel flagged the move in early July, and chips have rallied since, so the setup is aging rather than fresh.
For now, the radar reads idle. It fires only when heavy retail selling meets a falling market. Today the selling pressure is elevated but still short of that mark, and the latest session jumped 5.45% (from the Tradingview chart), an up day the tool ignores.
Yet the pressure on the AI chip stocks has not cleared. Nvidia and AMD absorbed the selling best, holding buying support while their prices slipped, unlike most peers, so they would likely lead any turn back up.
The next trigger is close. Intel reports earnings on July 23, and options traders are leaning bearish into it. Puts outnumber calls on both volume and open positions, and the market braces for a 5.2% swing around the report.
So the story is not over. A weak Intel print could send AI chip stocks lower again. That would re-arm the bottom signal that sits idle today. That is why the options crowd is paying for protection rather than trusting the bounce.
A regulated trading platform has launched a new online hub where individuals can follow how money is moving in markets related to this fall’s midterm elections, providing one of the most extensive public views yet into what real-money dealers expect to happen on Election Day.
This week, Kalshi, a federally approved financial exchange, debuted its Midterms Hub, giving anybody with an internet connection a real-time glimpse of where traders are placing bets on US Senate, House, and governor races around the nation.
The software was developed, according to the business, for voters, media, campaign workers, and researchers who want the most recent information on close elections.
The hub gathers various election-related data in one location.
VoteHub allows users to view polling averages, which makes it simple to compare the results of opinion polls with what prediction markets anticipate.
Additionally, it shows the most recent Federal Election Commission campaign finance data, such as the amount of money each candidate has raised and the percentage of contributions under $200, which helps demonstrate whether support is mostly provided by larger or smaller grassroots donors.
Users can also access curated political news and view 2020 and 2024 presidential election results by state and congressional district.
The odds fluctuate in real time whenever a survey is released, a candidate makes news, or a debate ends, since the markets are open 24/7.
The firm claims that the candidate supported by Kalshi merchants has won nine out of ten elections since 2024, including three months prior to the election.
This was tested by The Washington Post, which examined hundreds of 2026 primary contests on the site and found that about 75% of them were won by candidates with odds between 70% and 80%.
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, who attended MIT and formerly worked as a trader at Citadel and an analyst at Goldman Sachs, believes these marketplaces are more difficult to influence with partisan spin than traditional polls or comments.
Mansour said prediction markets offer a clearer view of election expectations by reflecting financially backed forecasts rather than political rhetoric, making the Midterms Hub a useful source of insight.
According to the company, about 75% of people who visit Kalshi do not make any trades. Instead, they use the platform to see how election contracts are currently priced.
Midterm trading nears $200 million
The rollout comes after a court ruling in 2024 that made it lawful for Americans to bet on federal elections.
Earlier this year, in May, Kalshi unveiled the American Power Index, also known as KPOW, which he described as a political power index akin to the S&P 500.
The indicator combines who now controls the government with what traders predict will happen next. It is displayed as a single figure on a scale of positive 50 for Democrats and positive 50 for Republicans.
Kalshi alone has already made over $30 million from contracts related to the party’s control of the House and Senate following November.
The total amount bet on midterm results has increased to over $200 million, including rival website Polymarket.
In honor of the hub’s debut, Kalshi organized an event in Washington, D.C., where Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter moderated a conversation between Mansour and Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson and former White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty.
Platform moves into drug trial betting
The company is also moving into a new area that is letting users bet on the outcomes of drug trials and Food and Drug Administration rulings.
Kalshi partnered with AppliedXL, a firm that tracks pharmaceutical data, to verify what official documents will determine each trade’s outcome.
Three rules regulate the pilot:
Trading is restricted to late-stage trials only.
To avoid the impact of trade on recruiting, markets open only after patient enrollment has ended.
Additionally, the platform analyzes employment records to prevent anyone with inside information, such as trial investigators, from participating.
Medical researchers and healthcare professionals have fought back. According to Stat News, several experts are concerned about the long-term effects of allowing public trading in this type of market.
Even as the AI bubble becomes a mainstream talking point on Wall Street, tech companies continue to peddle the fantasy that AI is poised to become an almost magical money-maker. Case in point, OpenAI wants you to believe that by 2030, it’ll be raking in $100 billion a year just from ads alone — even though it’s currently struggling to reach just $1 billion.
That massive gulf was observed in a new analysis from marketing consulting firm Emarketer, first flagged by AdWeek, which found OpenAI is on pace to undershoot its own five-year ad revenue projections by a whopping 90 percent. In fact, Emarketer’s take is even more devastating than that: it estimates that the entire addressable market for chatbot advertising — the maximum amount of money up for grabs overall — at $5.4 billion.
That figure isn’t just bad news for OpenAI, but for every giant tech company, all of which are jockeying for a piece of the AI ad pie. In 2026, Emarketer projects that the combination of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon will bring in under $1 billion in ad revenue. For context, OpenAI had projected that its AI ad revenue alone would hit $2.5 billion by the end of this year.
It all adds up to a difficult question for investors. If the top AI companies — which have burned over $1.6 trillion building AI so far — can’t even hit OpenAI’s meager projection for 2026, what hope do they have of hitting their projections four years from now?
To hit that number, AdWeek observes, OpenAI needs three miracles to happen all at once. First, advertisers have to abandon decades worth of infrastructure built around search engines and social media and put all their advertising budgets into chatbots. Once that happens, OpenAI has to out-muscle previous ad-sales giants like Google and Meta, while the entire AI-ad market balloons from just a six-figure stream in 2026 to a raging, 12-figure river by 2030.
Basically, OpenAI will have to make a lot of history to justify these numbers. And whether it can do so is no small matter: according to OpenAI’s own forecasts, advertising is supposed to make up 36 percent of the company’s total revenue by 2030. If the AI lab can’t make the math work, the company’s five-year financial story falls apart, and with it, a major bullet point justifying one of the largest financial bubbles the world has ever seen.
Is it not enough to simply watch the beautiful game, unadorned?
These days you might use an AI chatbot to keep abreast of what’s happening in the World Cup. And that AI chatbot, in a sign of the times, might try to shove prediction market odds in your face as another way of ostensibly keeping you up to speed. Because are you really getting the full picture if you don’t know where a bunch of gamblers fall on the outcome?
This is exactly what OpenAI is doing. The Sam Altman-led company quietly struck a deal with Kalshi, which lets you bet on outcomes far beyond sports, to show its prediction market data in ChatGPT, the New York Times reported.
It’s perhaps the inevitable melding of two of the most divisive innovations to come out of the tech industry in recent years.
Searching France and Spain on ChatGPT ahead of their quarterfinal clash on Tuesday returned a graphic that showed that Les Bleus had a 60 percent chance of winning, according to the reporting. (We hope no one acted on that information.) Asking about the England and Argentina game on Wednesday showed that the Three Lions had a 54 percent chance of coming out on top.
Neither side promoted the deal, and the graphic is tellingly light on branding. There are no logos and no outbound links. The only sign of the collab is a small notice in the bottom left corner stating, “Source: Kalshi.”
This is the first partnership of its kind for OpenAI. The company recently updated its help page to stress that users “cannot place bets through ChatGPT,” with the Kalshi data being limited to “queries related to the 2026 World Cup,” according to the NYT.
Zooming out, it’s another sign of prediction markets laundering their image by glomming themselves onto other, more credible brands. In January, Kalshi partnered with CNN to provide its real-time prediction data on the news network’s broadcasts. Its rival Polymarket entered into a similar partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, that same month. Both have also partnered with Google to show their data in search results.
Their fuzzy legal framework, plus their Wild West approach to gambling, has led to numerous controversies. Suspiciously timed bets on massive events like the US’s capture of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro have raised concerns of rampant insider trading and put pressure on lawmakers to crackdown on the platforms. Arrests have been madein some cases, but these have been rare.
Put simply, for OpenAI, it may be somewhat risky to associate itself with all this baggage, which might be why the Kalshi collaboration is very limited — at least for now.
Bitcoin approached $65,000 on July 14 as a sharper-than-expected slowdown in US inflation weakened the case for another near-term Federal Reserve interest rate increase.
Data from CryptoSlate showed that BTC rose as high as $64,832 once the report landed, gaining about 4% from its intraday low and coming within $200 of a threshold it has struggled to hold over the past month.
This price performance followed the consumer price index falling 0.4% in June, its largest monthly decline since April 2020, the Labor Department said. Prices were 3.5% higher than a year earlier, down from 4.2% in May and below economists’ forecast for a 3.8% increase.
Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, was unchanged for the month and increased 2.6% from a year earlier. That was also below expectations and marked a slowdown from the 2.9% annual rate recorded in May.
Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen, told CryptoSlate that the reading represented a clear improvement but stopped short of establishing that inflation was on a sustained downward path.
Kennis said:
“The softness was led largely by energy, which eases near-term pressure on the Fed heading into the July FOMC and helped risk assets bid. That said, this is a cooler print rather than confirmation of durable disinflation.”
The energy decline behind CPI has already reversed
The inflation catalyst could lose force quickly because Bitcoin is responding to an inflation report that accurately describes June, a month whose conditions offer only a rough guide to the price conditions building in July.
This is because the improvement that pushed Bitcoin higher came from an oil market that had changed substantially before the inflation report reached investors.
BLS data show that energy prices fell 5.7% in June, while gasoline prices declined 9.7%, making the largest contribution to the monthly drop in the headline CPI. Those decreases followed a retreat in crude prices as a temporary agreement between Washington and Tehran raised hopes that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would recover.
That reprieve now has unraveled as the US has reinstated a naval blockade on Iran after Tehran said it had closed the strait, following a third consecutive night of attacks on Iranian targets by US forces, which Iran met by launching missiles at US allies and striking commercial vessels moving through the waterway.
Brent crude rose above $87 per barrel on July 14, then pared its gains, trading near $85. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) found an intraday high at $80.53 after both benchmarks reached their highest levels in about a month.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, described the June CPI as a “rearview mirror,” saying the decline reflected prices from several weeks earlier, and the latest escalation pushed crude and retail fuel costs higher.
The timing raises the possibility that headline inflation could rebound as July gasoline, diesel, and transportation expenses are incorporated into the data. Higher crude prices could also spread through freight, aviation, agriculture, and manufacturing supply chains.
A renewed energy shock would complicate Bitcoin’s attempt to move through $65,000, as it could revive expectations that the Fed will keep interest rates elevated or raise them again before the end of the year.
He said the central bank had no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation and stayed committed to restoring price stability.
According to Warsh:
“The Fed’s number one objective is to get monetary policy right—or as near to it as we possibly can. That is our clear and constant aim, the star we steer by. And if we get policy right—and we will—the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past.”
The Fed held its benchmark rate at 3.5%-3.75% in June after several officials raised concerns that energy costs could keep inflation elevated. The July 14 report weakened the case for a July increase, leaving the outlook for September and later meetings still unresolved.
Warsh described the CPI report as one data point and rejected the suggestion that it represented “mission accomplished.”
The restraint also limited how far traders could extend the post-CPI rally on expectations of easier monetary policy, and Bitcoin stayed below the resistance area that has capped several recovery attempts since June.
Bitcoin must now convert its post-CPI advance into a sustained move through the $65,000-$66,000 resistance area, building on the momentum it is forming.
BTC held near $62,000 through repeated US attacks on Iran and avoided the broad liquidation cascade that followed earlier geopolitical shocks.
Data from Santiment also showed that key Bitcoin stakeholders were exhibiting bullish behavior and accumulating the top crypto.
According to the firm:
“Wallets holding 10–10,000 BTC have added roughly 11,000 BTC over the past week, a meaningful shift because this tier of whales and sharks has historically tracked closely with price direction. Small retail wallets are still mainly accumulating too, which shows dip-buying interest remains alive even after weeks of volatility.”
A Santiment chart shows Bitcoin wallets holding 10 to 10,000 BTC accumulated roughly 11,000 BTC over the past week, tracking price direction.
That accumulation helped Bitcoin respond quickly when CPI weakened the dollar and Treasury yields, and it could also provide support if higher oil prices begin challenging the inflation outlook again.
Lacie Zhang, a research analyst at Bitget Wallet, told CryptoSlate that the CPI report provided the liquidity-driven catalyst Bitcoin needed to break higher, noting that renewed disruption around the Strait of Hormuz made the advance more vulnerable to reversal.
She placed near-term support at $62,000 to $63,000 and resistance at $65,000 to $66,000, and a sustained break above that zone would take Bitcoin beyond the range that has contained it through much of June and July.
Such a move may require an easing of oil tensions, further ETF inflows, or a softer policy signal from the Fed, which could give buyers the confidence needed to absorb profit-taking near $65,000.
Renewed attacks around the Strait of Hormuz would keep the oil-risk premium elevated. Higher fuel costs could lift inflation expectations, restore bets on another rate increase, and weigh on Bitcoin before it establishes support above the resistance zone.
Lucid Group (LCID) shares crashed nearly 50% on Tuesday after a report raised bankruptcy fears. The stock fell so fast that exchanges paused trading three times.
The report claimed the electric vehicle (EV) maker may go private or file for bankruptcy. Lucid quickly denied it, yet the panic erased about half of its market value in one day.
Lucid Group (LCID) Stock Performance. Source: TradingView
Why the Lucid Stock Crash Ran So Deep
The panic started with a report from industry outlet EV. It said turnaround firm AlixPartners will soon present options to Lucid’s board. Two of those options reportedly stand out.
The first is going private, meaning Lucid would leave the stock market.
The second is Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a legal process that lets a company keep operating while it reworks its debts.
The adviser also reportedly wants Lucid to pause its push into Europe and pour its energy into the Gravity SUV. That vehicle has struggled with quality problems since production began in late 2024.
BREAKING: Lucid $LCID crashes 49% after report says the company is considering bankruptcy.
The Saudi-backed EV maker brought in restructuring adviser AlixPartners, which has been asked to report to the board before its next meeting.
The market reaction was brutal. Shares sank as much as 55% and hit a record low of $2.37. At that price, Lucid’s 330 million shares were worth under $800 million.
Lucid Group (LCID) Stock Performance. Source: Google Finance
In November 2021, the company was valued near $90 billion, briefly more than Ford. Nerves were already raw after the SpaceX stock crash.
Lucid Pushes Back as August 4 Earnings Loom
Lucid called the rumors completely false. It said AlixPartners is helping the company run more efficiently, not preparing a court filing.
“AlixPartners has not recommended bankruptcy to management or the Board,” the company shared the statement on Tuesday.
It added it has enough cash to last well into next year.
$LCID The rumors are completely false. The company has sufficient liquidity to carry its operations well into next year, as recently published in its last quarterly filings, and it has not formed any special Board committee to explore the scenarios reported today. Our focus is…
Twork serves as Chief Communications Officer at Lucid Motors. The clarification likely explains the ongoing LCID stock recovery.
However, the fear has roots in Lucid’s own numbers. The company lost $2.7 billion in 2025, per its filings. It lost another $1.03 billion in the first quarter of 2026, nearly triple the year before. That quarter, building cars cost $594 million against $282 million in sales.
That gap explains the constant need for fresh money. Lucid raised about $1.05 billion in April, including $200 million from robotaxi partner Uber. In July, it reportedly borrowed $800 million more from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, its majority owner.
Silvio Napoli, the former Schindler boss who became CEO on June 1, has been cutting costs and jobs since.
Today we announced that Silvio Napoli has assumed the role of Lucid CEO, effective immediately.
Napoli was previously announced as incoming CEO in April and brings decades of global industrial leadership experience spanning large-scale operations, financial management, and… pic.twitter.com/6VkID0e3Cb
Donald Trump delivered three major policy shocks between July 6 and July 11. He declared the Iran ceasefire over, sending Brent crude oil up 5.2%. The POTUS also ordered a halt to trade with Spain, pushing Spain’s stock market index IBEX 35 down 2.6%.
Trump said the interim agreement with Iran was “over” after renewed attacks on commercial ships and US facilities in the Gulf. American forces then launched fresh strikes against Iranian targets.
Oil markets reacted immediately. Brent settled 5.2% higher, while WTI gained 4.4% and reached a two-week high. The S&P 500 and Dow closed lower, while the STOXX 600 recorded its steepest decline since March.
The surge in oil also pushed Treasury yields higher as investors priced in greater inflation risk. Higher fuel costs could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
However, Trump later said the US would continue talks with Iran and played down the prospect of another full-scale war.
Oil just went through one of its most volatile months in years.
The reason is the US-Iran war, which restarted in February after everyone assumed it had ended with last year’s ceasefire.
Since then, oil has swung from $58 to $119 and back down to $71, driven almost entirely by… pic.twitter.com/qtk4mxom6U
Markets will now focus on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries around one-fifth of global oil supply.
Spain Trade Threat Hits Stocks and Bonds
Trump also ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt trade and visits with Spain. He accused Madrid of failing to spend enough on defence and obstructing the US campaign against Iran.
Spanish markets fell sharply after the comments. The IBEX 35 lost 2.6%, making it Europe’s worst-performing major index that day.
IBEX 35 is Spain’s Benchmark Stock Market Index in Madrid. Source: Yahoo Finance
Santander shares dropped 4.3%, BBVA fell 3% and Zara owner Inditex declined 3.6%. Spain’s 10-year government bond yield rose nine basis points as investors demanded a higher return for holding its debt.
It remains unclear whether Trump can impose a complete bilateral embargo. The European Union handles trade policy for its members, and US-Spain commerce has continued despite earlier threats.
Still, prolonged uncertainty could weigh on Spanish banks, exporters, airlines and tourism companies.
BREAKING: President Trump says the US is “cutting off all trade with Spain.”
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) July 8, 2026
Trump Hardens His Position on Russia
Trump made a significant shift on Ukraine during the NATO summit in Ankara. He said the US would license Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air-defence systems, technology Kyiv has requested for years.
Days later, US senators announced an agreement with the Trump administration to advance tougher sanctions against Russia. The legislation could target countries that continue buying Russian oil and gas.
Markets have yet to show a clear reaction because Congress has not approved the final bill. Its impact will depend on the sanctions, exemptions and enforcement measures included in the final text.
President Trump said Wednesday the U.S. will give Ukraine a production license to build its own Patriot missile interceptors for defense, granting a major request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid the ongoing war with Russia. pic.twitter.com/BkG2GIOCRq
Strong secondary sanctions could disrupt Russian oil flows to China, India and Turkey. That would place further pressure on energy prices while increasing demand for alternative supplies.
Meanwhile, the Patriot decision could support defence manufacturers and suppliers. It also signals that Washington may apply greater military and economic pressure on Moscow.
