Event day: PPI 8:30am ET · Warsh Senate testimony 10am · TSMC earnings tomorrow
If you read nothing else
Iran hit two UAE supertankers overnight (one crew member killed), and oil spiked toward $81 before easing back — the war is now three-plus weeks old and testing the blockade in earnest.
June CPI cooled sharply to 3.5% y/y — the first month-over-month price decline in six years — and Fed Chair Warsh testifies before the Senate today after warning yesterday against "complacency"; PPI lands at 8:30am.
Kospi ripped 6.2% higher as Samsung and SK Hynix extended their bounce from Monday's crash, setting up TSMC's Thursday earnings as the week's real referendum on AI capex.
🗞The Front Page
Bangkok's deadliest fire in 17 years — death toll climbs to 30.
The blaze at the Rong Beer Na Ladprao music bar, which broke out late Saturday night, has now killed 30 and left dozens critical among more than 70 injured. Investigators are looking at locked exit doors and flammable foam decor in a low-ceilinged, enclosed space.
Per NPR and ABC News, July 14
Iran strikes two UAE supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz; one sailor dead.
Cruise missiles hit the Mombasa and Al Bahyah in the southern Strait; an Indian crew member was killed and eight others injured (six Indian, two Ukrainian). The US answered with a third straight night of strikes on Iranian military targets. It's the sharpest test yet of Washington's reimposed naval blockade and 20% Hormuz cargo toll — which the UN's IMO says has "no legal basis."
Per The National and CNBC, July 14
Fallout grows from the ICE shooting in Biddeford, Maine.
Homeland Security now confirms the man killed Monday, 26-year-old Colombian national Johan Sebastian Guerrero, was not the target of the arrest warrant the agents were serving — and was authorized to work in the US. No body-camera footage exists. About 200 people rallied in Biddeford demanding answers.
Per NBC News and CNN, July 13-14
A dozen state AGs sue to block the $110B Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
California, New York and ten other states filed in the Northern District of California, arguing the deal — already cleared by the DOJ — would violate the Clayton Act by concentrating theatrical distribution and cable licensing. Paramount calls the suit "a fundamentally flawed application of antitrust law."
Per the Washington Post and Deadline, July 13
🤖AI & Tech Watch
Gemini 3.5 Pro still targeting Thursday's GA (July 17), after Google scrapped the old architecture for a full rebuild.
The relaunch reportedly brings a 2M-token context window and a "Deep Think" reasoning layer aimed at closing the math/reasoning gap with GPT-5.6 and Fable 5. Google hasn't confirmed the date on the record.
Per TechTimes and BigGo Finance
GPT-5.6's flagship variant stays locked behind a government-approval wall.
OpenAI is restricting broad access to roughly 20 government-vetted partners, citing cybersecurity-benchmark thresholds that could otherwise enable automated exploit discovery — a restriction that ironically hands Google an opening: a broadly available Gemini beats a benchmark-topping model most people can't touch.
Per TechTimes
TSMC reports Thursday (July 16, 2am ET) — the real test of the AI-capex story.
Guidance calls for $39.0-40.2B revenue at 65.5-67.5% gross margin; Street models $3.81/ADR versus $2.47 a year ago. TSMC has beaten for eight straight quarters. Given Monday's Kospi chip rout and Tuesday-Wednesday's violent rebound, this print is the tie-breaker on whether AI infrastructure demand is decelerating, plateauing, or still accelerating.
Per Yahoo Finance and TipRanks
🏢Company & Corporate
▲ Samsung and SK Hynix extend their bounce — Kospi +6.24% Wednesday.
Both chipmakers climbed roughly 3.6-3.7% as Seoul's benchmark surged past 7,284, building on Tuesday's rebound from Monday's historic crash. Reads as relief on cooler US inflation, not yet resolution of the underlying demand question TSMC settles Thursday.
Per Korea JoongAng Daily and Bloomberg
Paramount-WBD: DOJ cleared it, a dozen state AGs now want to stop it.
See front page — the suit seeks an injunction before the deal can close, alleging a 27% combined share of key distribution and licensing markets.
🌏Markets Overnight
Nikkei 225
67,743 (+0.74%)
Kospi
7,284 (+6.24%)
Hang Seng
23,970 (-1.0%)
NQ (Sep)
29,929
ES (Sep)
7,602
2Y Yield
4.19%
10Y Yield
4.58%
DXY
100.79 (-0.13%)
WTI Crude
~$80 (+2.9%)
Gold
$4,022
Bitcoin
n/a — no clean same-day print
Asia closed mixed-to-strong: Tokyo staged a V-shaped recovery (down over 1% intraday before closing +0.74%) on a chip-stock rally, Seoul ripped 6.2% as Samsung and SK Hynix kept bouncing, and Hong Kong slipped on renewed Hormuz jitters. US futures are firm into the cash open — QQQ +0.50% premarket to ~$723 — after June CPI's surprise cool-down took some air out of rate-hike bets even as oil spiked on the tanker strikes. Yields eased post-CPI (2Y off 7bp to 4.19%, 10Y off ~2bp to 4.58%, both dated 7/14 — one session stale into today's PPI). Gold holds most of Tuesday's gain near $4,022; DXY softer at 100.79. BTC: the gated crypto feed 403s on this plan and no clean same-day quote surfaced in search — flagged rather than guessed.
📰Themes Running the Cycle
Day 13Iran: succession, Hormuz & the war that won't stay ended.
New since yesterday: Iran struck two UAE supertankers overnight (1 killed, 8 hurt) even as it quietly resumes moving its own crude out through Hormuz with transponders dark — six sanctioned supertankers slipped through in the past week. The blockade Washington announced Monday is now being actively tested from both directions.
Day 13Higher-for-longer, now with a new Fed chair.
New: June CPI came in at 3.5% y/y (first m/m decline in six years, core flat), well under the 3.8% consensus. Warsh testified before the House yesterday pledging vigilance despite the good print ("3.5% is still a long way from 2%"); he repeats before the Senate Banking Committee at 10am today, with PPI landing first at 8:30am.
Day 13AI capex goes physical.
New: the Kospi chip leg fully reversed — Samsung/SK Hynix up another ~3.6-3.7% Wednesday after Tuesday's bounce, erasing most of Monday's historic crash. TSMC's Thursday print (2am ET) is now the clean tie-breaker on whether that demand story is real. Gemini 3.5 Pro still pointed at Friday's GA; GPT-5.6's top model remains gated to ~20 government partners.
QQQ pre-open pin: VWAP 723.01, session range 721.80-724.82, gamma positive/pinning (call wall 730, put wall 700, max pain 720). VIX 16.36, VIX1D 10.57 — the tape is pricing a very quiet day despite the overnight Hormuz escalation.
🔭So What for the Forest
Two forces are pulling in opposite directions this morning: a genuinely dovish CPI print that argues for calm, and an oil market that just had its sharpest single-session repricing of the entire three-week Iran war. VIX1D at 10.57 says the options market is siding with the CPI story and shrugging off Hormuz — which is exactly the setup where a headline (another tanker, a blockade escalation) can produce an outsized gap the pin doesn't expect. Warsh's 10am testimony is the other live wire: any daylight between his "not complacent" tone and the market's rate-cut hopes could move the 2Y more than PPI itself. Kospi's chip rebound and Thursday's TSMC print matter for the AI-adjacent names in the forest specifically — a soft TSMC guide would hit the same names that just breathed a sigh of relief.
🚀The Good Stuff
America's 250th birthday produced its finest cultural artifact yet: the kids' mullet pageant at Minnesota's Clay County Fair.
Amid the pig races and tractor pulls in Barnesville, young contestants Reed Moszer and Paul Maier took home trophies for business-in-front, party-in-back haircuts styled in full stars-and-stripes regalia for the semiquincentennial. Judged, apparently, with the gravity the occasion deserves.
Per MPR News, July 14
Starship's 13th test flight is set for Thursday.
SpaceX targets a 90-minute window opening 6:45pm ET, aiming to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites and relight a Raptor engine in space before another controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean — six of the satellites carry cameras specifically to film the heat shield's performance on reentry.