The US has resumed strikes on Iran after a brief pause, hitting targets on Qeshm Island and dozens of Revolutionary Guard positions. Jordan says it intercepted five Iranian missiles targeting its territory overnight. The more immediately significant market signal is that a QatarEnergy LNG tanker transited the Strait of Hormuz on 29 July — the first such vessel to do so since 11 July. That suggests the waterway is not fully closed, but the 18-day gap tells you how much risk has been priced into energy supply routes. Watch Brent and European gas closely today.

The Fed held rates at its meeting, but borrowing costs are at a 19-year high as markets price in the inflationary consequences of the Iran conflict. The tension between a central bank trying to hold the line and an energy shock building in the background is the core macro story of the week. Kevin Warsh, whose positioning at the Fed has been drawing criticism, is separately described by the FT as actively confusing markets — worth reading if you have a view on Fed governance risk.

South Korea’s equity market is in serious trouble. Samsung and SK Hynix have fallen sharply enough that retail investors — millions of them, heavily leveraged into the AI semiconductor trade — are reporting what local media are calling “unprecedented” losses. The Economist frames it as a potential harbinger for AI-adjacent equity markets more broadly. If the thesis that memory chip demand would be sustained indefinitely by AI infrastructure spend is cracking, that has implications well beyond Seoul.

Meta’s earnings disappointed. Shares fell after Zuckerberg’s pitch on AI agents failed to convince investors that the capital expenditure is justified by near-term revenue. The company’s Q2 revenue projections came in below expectations. Microsoft, by contrast, posted strong Q4 results and is now openly competing with both OpenAI and Anthropic with its own in-house models. It also disclosed a $3.2 billion gain from its Anthropic stake, while its OpenAI investment was described as a mixed bag. The commercial relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI remains one to watch ahead of any IPO process.

On post-quantum cryptography: a signature scheme called HAWK, which had been a third-round candidate in the NIST standardisation process, has been broken by a newly published attack called Mythos. The Economist is separately running a piece on the urgency of upgrading to post-quantum encryption. For anyone with responsibility over long-duration data security or financial infrastructure, this is no longer an abstract concern.

US Q2 GDP data is due Friday 31 July.

Sources

BBC News, Guardian, Al Jazeera, FT, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, The Economist — 2026-07-30