![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2284911795.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udcec Would you prefer to receive this information in your email inbox every morning before the markets open in New York? Sign up here.<\/p>\n
STRAIT JACKETTrump has no good options for dealing with Iran<\/p>\n
It is slowly dawning on Wall Street that President Trump has no good options for ending the conflict with Iran, according to research notes seen by Fortune. In fact, he may be stuck in an as-yet-unsolvable dilemma: He cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz without handing a \u201cvictory\u201d to Iran, and he cannot keep it closed because the midterm elections are approaching and the war is unpopular with voters who dislike rising gasoline prices.<\/p>\n
Until the fighting restarted earlier this week, the U.S. had been attempting to usher ships through the Strait via a southern route that hugs the coast of Oman. The Iranians don\u2019t like that. They want ships to use a northern route that hugs the coast of Iran, in order to extract tolls. That\u2019s why Iran began attacking oil tankers earlier this week\u2014they don\u2019t want ships using the Strait for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran recognized that if it didn’t attack these vessels, it would risk being perceived as having lost the Strait as a tool of leverage,\u201d according to Macquarie\u2019s Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry.<\/p>\n
Iran’s threats against ships that pass through the Strait without paying tolls all but force the U.S. to continue its strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran’s strikes violated the one MOU [memorandum of understanding] provision Washington considered non-negotiable: keeping the Strait open,\u201d Alpine Macro\u2019s Dan Alamariu argued in an email to Fortune. \u201cWith Iran again choking the Strait, the U.S. has zero incentive to \u2018play nice\u2019; the closure negates President Trump’s main motivation to deal: the lower oil prices he needs ahead of the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n
One solution: \u201cDomestic fallout is still too early to call, but Trump could pin the talks\u2019 failure on JD Vance, a leading MOU public proponent,\u201d Alamariu said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s oil-price problem is real. While the U.S. and China still have a decent amount of oil in their national reserves, those reserves are nonetheless declining as the months go by. The U.S. strategic Petroleum Reserve is now at its lowest point since 1983, this chart from Alpine shows:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
THE MARKETSStocks hit pause in hopes of better news from the Gulf<\/p>\n
The price of Brent Crude oil declined today, perhaps in reaction to a surprising dearth of headlines from the Middle East this morning. While some explosions were reported in Iran, the U.S. did not say it engaged in further strikes. One U.S. official told Bloomberg that talks between Tehran and Washington are continuing.<\/p>\n
S&P 500 futures were down 0.17% this morning. The index rose 0.81% yesterday.\u00a0
\nIn Europe, the Stoxx 600 was flat in early trading, as was the U.K.\u2019s FTSE 100.
\nAsia: South Korea\u2019s KOSPI was up 2.52%. Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 was up 1.2%. India\u2019s Nifty 50 was up 1.01%. China\u2019s CSI 300 was down 1.96%.\u00a0
\nBrent crude was $76 per barrel this morning, down from a peak of $79 yesterday.
\nBitcoin rose to $64.1K.<\/p>\n
Wars are \u201cgood buying opportunities for stocks,\u201d top analyst says<\/p>\n
Yikes. Ed Yardeni and Elias Griepentrog of Yardeni Research had a cold, cold reaction to the resumption of fighting in the Gulf. In a note to clients titled \u201cWar! What Is It Good For?\u201d they said, \u201cHistory shows that geopolitical crises, including wars, often have been good buying opportunities for stocks. That was true during [this year\u2019s] Gulf War III, as the S&P 500 bottomed on March 30 and rose 18.3% through yesterday’s close. The ceasefire in the war between Iran and the US ended abruptly today; will that present another buying opportunity? We think so.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
MORE FROM FORTUNE<\/p>\n
Stitch Fix\u2019s CEO inherited a broken tech darling. He\u2019s fixing it like a traditional retail exec – Phil Wahba<\/p>\n
Vietnam is paying women to have more babies\u2014but there\u2019s a catch: they have to be on baby no. 2 to qualify for the cash bonus – Orianna Rosa Royle<\/p>\n
The Raising Cane\u2019s co-CEO has seen those World Cup fans praising the chicken and sauce. He\u2019s \u2018pretty grateful\u2019 to have \u2018chicken fanatics\u2019 worldwide – Catherina Gioino<\/p>\n
Asia\u2019s founders are decamping to the U.S. as the region suffers a protracted venture funding slump – Angelica Ang<\/p>\n
49% of young adults live at home, up 12 points since 2019. An economist says the fallout will reshape marriage, kids, and home-buying – Catherina Gioino\u00a0<\/p>\n
SHOPPING FOR BARG-AI-NSCustomers increasingly pick AI models based on price, Amazon CTO says<\/p>\n
Companies worried about mounting AI bills are increasingly shifting to cheaper, open-source models, Amazon\u2019s chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, told Fortune\u2019s Bea Nolan. That\u2019s bad news for OpenAI and Anthropic\u2014which are both heading toward IPOs later this year\u2014because it suggests that their customers see AI models as interchangeable commodities that can be arbitraged based on price.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see a shift happening between the cheaper open-source models and the bigger expensive models,\u201d Vogels said.<\/p>\n
While the best models deliver superior results, second-ranked models are often adequate for more basic tasks at a lower cost. \u201cCost is a very important part of your architecture, you need to take that into account,\u201d Vogels said. \u201cDo you really need to have the biggest, highest\u2011end model to solve this? The answer is no, you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
THE AD BIZReddit’s ad grab: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snap, and X take a hit<\/p>\n
Social media is often a toxic pit of bad-faith AI slop, but there\u2019s one corner of it that bucks the trend: Reddit. \u201cThe front page of the internet\u201d continues to baffle, surprise, and delight users no matter how obscure their interests are. And it\u2019s paying off in terms of ad revenue, according to John Colantuoni and his team at Jefferies. A straw poll of ad agencies showed that Reddit was\u00a0 \u201cgaining additional share of social budgets,\u201d they said in a note seen by Fortune. Agency sources said LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snap, and X were the platforms losing ad dollars to Reddit. Jefferies estimates Reddit will make $3.2 billion in revenue this year. <\/p>\n
CHART OF THE DAYThe World Cup runneth over for America\u2019s bars and restaurants<\/p>\n
Spending at restaurants and bars in cities that hosted World Cup games rose 5.3% versus the previous year, on average, according to Bank of America\u2019s Aditya Bhave. In cities without World Cup matches, spending rose just 3.8%.<\/p>\n
NUMBER OF THE DAY$1 trillion<\/p>\n
The amount of additional annual spending on the military that would occur if European countries hit their NATO commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defense, according to an estimate by Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry at Macquarie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY<\/p>\n
OpenAI’s No. 2 executive stepping down over health issues – Axios<\/p>\n
Todd Blanche: \u2018underdog\u2019 turned Trump enforcer – FT<\/p>\n
Inside NATO\u2019s extraordinary 48 hours that revealed Trump\u2019s grip on global diplomacy – CNBC<\/p>\n
Iran Hatched Fresh Plot to Kill Trump, Israel Told U.S. – WSJ<\/p>\n
Pubs Have 275 Million Reasons to Hope England Beats Norway – Bloomberg<\/p>\n
New Air Force One Lacks Defensive Countermeasures of Previous Model, Officials Say – NYT<\/p>\n
ONE MORE THINGBlame Harry Styles for rising interest rates in Europe<\/p>\n
Above: Harry Styles fans in Amsterdam waiting to see their idol\u2014and generating inflation in the process. Photo via Getty Images.<\/p>\n
The European Central Bank recently raised interest rates Europe-wide by 25 basis points, to 2.4%, to fight off inflation in the services sector, Fortune\u2019s Preston Fore reports. Harry Styles was partly to blame, according to Carsten Brzeski of ING. The minutes of the ECB\u2019s last meeting say that services inflation ticked up to 3.5% in part because of \u201cconcert-related hotel prices in the Netherlands.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That, notes Brzeski, was a reference to Styles\u2019 10-day residency at a massive arena in Amsterdam, which jacked up the price of hotel rooms city-wide for an extended period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Wall #Street #worried #President #Trump #good #options #war #Iran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\ud83d\udcec Would you prefer to receive this information in your email inbox every morning before…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[1003,16433,66,376,166,1087,5699,1601,2807,721,2806,684,1385],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}