Iran Missiles, Meta Cloud, and a Jobs Report Walk Into a Bar — Markets Are Having a Moment

Let's set the scene: tankers getting struck in the Strait of Hormuz, $META up nearly 9% on plans to build a cloud business that could generate $15-20 billion per gigawatt, and semiconductor stocks getting absolutely torched — Samsung down ~8%, SK Hynix off 10%+, and the Philadelphia SOX index dropping ~6.2% on the first day of Q3. Normal Tuesday stuff.

The Iran situation is the macro wildcard nobody fully priced. Oil is falling for a third straight day as Doha talks show progress and Hormuz flows normalize — WTI at $67.84, Brent at $70.81 — but fresh US strikes mean this truce is held together with diplomatic duct tape. Meanwhile, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is signaling inflation risks are easing while traders are somehow pricing in rate hikes as early as July. Pick a lane, market.

The real story heading into Q3 is the AI sector sorting itself out: $META going full hyperscaler is brilliant for Zuckerberg and a gut punch to $CRCW (CoreWeave), while Goldman reckons the World Cup adds 40,000 jobs to today's report — which either saves Jerome Powell's summer or complicates it further. Either way, the rotation from AI hardware into healthcare (+7% in June) and banking is real, and anyone still all-in on chips in a geopolitical firefight is playing with leveraged fire.