Market Intelligence Brief

USD/JPY was last quoted at 162.31 as of Wednesday evening JST, with EUR/JPY at 185.40, both little changed on the day but still near multi-month highs against the yen. The dollar broadly softened overnight as Treasury yields rose on Middle East risk premium even as rate-cut odds firmed on the cooler CPI print, a combination that has kept USD/JPY rangebound rather than breaking cleanly higher. Neutral

Japan's benchmark surged for a second straight session Wednesday, closing at 68,755, up 1.49%, on chip-equipment strength tied to ASML's guidance raise; TOPIX also advanced on the day. Full Japan market coverage, including the BOJ Watch block and stock-specific moves, is below. Bullish

US index levels for Wednesday's close aren't yet confirmed as of this writing, but the tape traded higher into the New York close on the cooler CPI/PPI combination, with the Dow and S&P outperforming the Nasdaq, which lagged as the IBM-triggered AI-hardware selloff hit high-beta names hard even as cybersecurity stocks (CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet) rallied in relative-value rotation. Mixed

Treasury yields moved higher Wednesday as Middle East tensions flared and the dollar softened, per Barron's live coverage. JGB yields stayed elevated against the BOJ's loose policy band; a firm daily reading wasn't confirmable from official sources as of publish time. Neutral

Headline CPI fell 0.4% month-on-month (consensus: -0.2%), pulling annual inflation to 3.5% from May's 4.2%; core CPI was flat on the month versus an expected 0.2% rise, holding the annual core rate at 2.6%. PPI fell 0.3% month-on-month, reversing May's 0.6% surge and pulling annual producer inflation to 5.5%. A mid-June Hormuz ceasefire (since broken) and the accompanying ~21% oil-price plunge to roughly $77 a barrel drove much of the disinflation, with gasoline prices down 12.0% doing most of the work, per Kiplinger and Benzinga. CME's FedWatch tool now prices an 86% chance the Fed holds rates at its next meeting. Bullish

Kevin Warsh testified before Congress for the first time as Fed Chair, saying the FOMC has "no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation" and cautioning against declaring "mission accomplished" on the cooler CPI print, per CBS News. He sidestepped senators' questions on the frequency of his contact with the Trump administration while insisting on the Fed's independence, per The Washington Post. The Fed held its policy rate at 3.50%-3.75% at its June meeting. Mixed

Bitcoin traded at $64,742.02 as of Wednesday evening JST, up 3.27% on the day, even as retail chatter described the price action as choppy. Bullish

Crude climbed to its highest level in roughly a month as the Iran-US confrontation intensified and shipowners weighed avoiding the strait altogether; an exact settlement price wasn't independently confirmable as of publish time. America's refiners are positioned to be among the biggest beneficiaries if the standoff persists, per MarketWatch. Bullish

SpaceX shares fell as much as 2.9% to $132.15 Wednesday, marking a fourth straight down session and putting the company's market cap at roughly $1.75 trillion — well off the $2.6 trillion peak reached during its post-IPO run last month. The stock surged nearly 50% in its first 3 trading days before losing almost a quarter of its value since, with a $4.9 billion prior-year net loss and Thursday's 13th Starship test flight both weighing on sentiment, per Bloomberg. SPCX is also one of retail traders' most-discussed names today, per this morning's retail data — see below. Bearish

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup all reported quarterly results this week, with Bank of America topping Wall Street estimates and JPMorgan's headline print boosted by a one-time gain, per Barron's. Bullish

Micron (MU) jumped to the top of Reddit's most-mentioned list overnight — 634 mentions, up from 303 a day earlier and rank 3 to rank 1 — directly tracking today's China-competition selloff story, while IBM cooled off to rank 2 (377 mentions, down sharply from 950) as the shock of Tuesday's crash faded from the conversation, per ApeWisdom's Reddit mention tracker (WSB, r/stocks, r/investing). SpaceX (SPCX) is the one name showing up prominently across independent sources at once: rank 4 on both ApeWisdom's mention tracker and Robinhood's Investor Index of top holdings by conviction (as of July 1), lining up with today's IPO-price-break story above. Sandisk (SNDK) also jumped notably, from rank 9 to rank 5 in mentions, tracking the broader memory-stock volatility. On the Japan side, JPX's weekly individual-investor data for the week of June 29–July 3 showed TSE Prime retail investors net sellers by roughly ¥638 million — a modest amount, not a meaningful skew — while Matsui Securities' bull-bear ratio showed no standout reading, with Kioxia (285A) topping the list at a roughly even 50.0% buy ratio. Neutral

The US carried out 2 waves of strikes Wednesday against Iranian military assets used to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran struck 3 tankers in the strait Tuesday. Iran claims more than 30 civilians have been killed in the US campaign and says it retaliated against American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. The UN's top maritime official is now warning ships to avoid Hormuz transits altogether as some shipowners refuse US-military escort, and Tehran is threatening to halt all Middle East energy exports if the blockade continues, per NPR and Zero Hedge. The US Treasury separately froze more than $130 million in Iran-linked crypto wallets, per Unchained. Bearish

Anthony Gordon put England ahead in the 55th minute, but Argentina scored twice in the final 8 minutes — Enzo Fernandez in the 85th and Lautaro Martinez in the 92nd, both assisted by Lionel Messi — to advance 2-1. Argentina now faces Spain, which beat France 2-0 in the other semifinal, in Sunday's final, per CNN. Bullish

Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Tuesday imposing a 1-year moratorium on new hyperscale data-center construction, citing utility-bill and water-use concerns, per The Washington Post. President Trump blasted the move on Truth Social Wednesday, calling data centers "LIQUID GOLD" for state economies and demanding New York "change its Policy, IMMEDIATELY," warning the investment will simply flow to Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Arizona instead, per CNBC. Bearish

Ukrainian President Zelensky dismissed Defense Minister Fedorov following a military leadership meeting, while Bulgaria withdrew from the international coalition supporting Ukraine, according to Reuters coverage circulating via r/worldnews. Separately, a full blackout hit Russian-occupied Kerch in Crimea following fresh Ukrainian strikes. Bearish

Lebanon and Israel concluded a sixth round of US-mediated negotiations, with a US official saying Israel has agreed the IDF will withdraw from pilot zones within days, per Al Jazeera. Bullish

The Bank of Japan's policy rate remains at 1.0% following its most recent hike, with no scheduled meeting this week. The 10Y JGB yield stayed firm against the BOJ's loose yield-curve-control band amid the broader global rate backdrop, though an exact daily reading wasn't independently confirmable as of publish time. No fresh hawkish or dovish signal emerged from BOJ speakers overnight. Neutral

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang landed in Tokyo Wednesday for Sega's 30th-anniversary celebration — a symbolic stop after Sega's 1996 investment kept Nvidia solvent — ahead of a sovereign-AI infrastructure partnership with SoftBank and the Japanese government due Thursday, per Digitimes. Japan's inbound tourism fell 2% in the first half of 2026 to 21.1 million visitors — the first decline in 5 years — almost entirely a function of Chinese arrivals plunging 56.4% year-on-year, even as visitor spending hit a record high, per Nikkei Asia. Japan's crypto reclassification bill cleared the Upper House Wednesday, paving the way for spot bitcoin ETFs and cutting the top crypto tax rate from 55% to 20% starting 2028, per CoinDesk. Full Japan-market depth, including chip-equipment names Advantest (6857), Tokyo Electron (8035), and Lasertec (6920), runs in today's Japan Intelligence Brief. Bullish

China's economy grew 4.3% year-on-year in Q2, the slowest pace since late 2022 and below the 4.5% consensus, primarily on a deepening property-investment slump and soft domestic demand — retail sales rose just 1% year-on-year in June. Yet June exports surged 27% to a record $412 billion on AI-chip demand, pushing the trade surplus to $125.62 billion, the second-largest on record, per CNN and TechTimes. New home prices continued falling in June, though the pace of decline narrowed, while new bank loans came in below forecast — further evidence of weak domestic credit demand. Mixed

SK Hynix's US-listed ADR, which surged 13% above its offering price on its July 10 debut, has since triggered leveraged-ETF launches from Leverage Shares, ProShares, GraniteShares, and Kurv Funds this week, per Seoul Economic Daily. KOSPI-listed Samsung Electronics (005930) denied a report Tuesday that it was exploring a US listing of its own. Both remain the key leading indicators for Japan's chip-equipment supply chain. Bullish

A new Nikkei Asia analysis frames China's recent Pacific submarine-launched ballistic missile test as a deliberate probe of the Trump administration's response threshold, while the EU issued a new strategy paper accusing Beijing of actively working to reshape the global order, per SCMP. Bearish

IBM plunged 25% Tuesday — its worst day since at least 1968 — after CEO Arvind Krishna said the company had "faltered" as enterprise clients redirected spending from software toward servers, storage, and memory ahead of expected AI-infrastructure price increases; the print missed revenue estimates by roughly $660 million and erased close to $68.8 billion in market value, per Yahoo Finance. The fallout hit enterprise software broadly (Atlassian, ServiceNow, Adobe) and fed directly into Wednesday's Micron/Dell/HPE/Super Micro selloff detailed above. Bearish

Apple filed suit against OpenAI in federal court, alleging OpenAI's hardware chief Tang Tan — a former Apple VP — directed job candidates still at Apple to bring "actual parts" to interviews, and that a former Apple employee who joined OpenAI stole a company laptop, per CNBC. Full depth on the AI-hardware race runs in today's Tech Intelligence Brief. Mixed

Fresh off its second 2026 guidance raise, ASML has discussed charging TSMC more for EUV systems and telling some customers, including Chinese chipmakers, to expect 10% higher DUV pricing — TSMC is pushing back, per The Information via Techmeme. Bullish

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab released Inkling, a 975-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 41 billion active parameters and a 1-million-token context window, betting that customizable open-weight models will outperform one-size-fits-all offerings from the biggest labs. Full coverage in today's Tech Intelligence Brief. Neutral

Anthropic is scheduling meetings between prospective investors and executives with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan involved, ahead of a potential IPO as soon as October at a valuation building on its last $965 billion mark, per Bloomberg. Bullish

Testifying before the Senate for the first time as Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh said he meets "often" with the Trump administration but declined to detail the frequency or substance of those contacts when pressed by Democratic senators, per CNBC. Mixed

President Trump gave his "Complete and Total Endorsement" to MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for Minnesota governor on Truth Social, while separately demanding New York reverse its new data-center moratorium immediately (see World News above). Neutral

The Trump administration's Attorney General nominee faced pointed questioning from senators over the Epstein files and a prior IRS settlement during his confirmation hearing Wednesday, per Yahoo News. Neutral

The Depository Trust Company began limited production trades of tokenized Russell 1000 stocks, US Treasurys, and major index ETFs Wednesday, with more than 50 institutions involved and a full commercial launch planned for October, per CoinDesk. Bullish

Japan's Diet gave final approval Wednesday to legislation reclassifying crypto as a financial instrument under FIEA, cutting the top tax rate on crypto income from 55% to a flat 20% starting 2028 and opening the door to spot bitcoin ETFs, which regulators are targeting for a Tokyo Stock Exchange launch by 2027-2028, per CoinDesk. Bullish

Perpetuals DEX Ostium halted trading after security firms identified a multimillion-dollar oracle manipulation attack, the latest in a string of DeFi exploits, per Decrypt. Bearish

The Treasury Department moved to freeze more than $130 million in crypto assets tied to Iran as the Hormuz standoff escalates, per Unchained. Neutral

Nolan's IMAX-shot epic, starring Matt Damon, is drawing strong early notices from critics, cementing it as one of the year's most anticipated theatrical events, per The Hollywood Reporter. Bullish

A batch of new in-game paintings added to GTA Online has the fanbase combing for hidden references to the long-awaited GTA 6, per Kotaku. Neutral

Actor Eric Stonestreet described the couple's MSG wedding as both private and heavily secured for attendees, per The Hollywood Reporter. Neutral

A hacker who breached Suno's systems accessed source code allegedly showing the company scraped more than 2 million clips from YouTube Music alone, plus large volumes from Deezer, Genius, and podcast feeds, using a third-party scraping service — evidence now feeding active record-label litigation against the company, per 404 Media via TechCrunch. Bearish

Former partners Uber and Waymo squared off at a DC Council hearing this week over autonomous-vehicle legislation — Uber is pushing a hybrid human-plus-robotaxi model and a $1 million licensing fee plus $0.15-per-mile tax that would hit Waymo's pure-driverless model hard, while Waymo backs the bill as written, per TechCrunch. The DC outcome could set a template for state-level robotaxi regulation nationally. Mixed