Everyone's Watching Bessent, No One's Trading
Markets opened in wait-and-see mode as the Treasury Secretary prepares to unveil what everyone's calling the 'toughest' Iran sanctions yet. Meanwhile, chips are down and oil's playing limbo.
The Nasdaq opened lower Tuesday, dragged down by chip stocks doing their best impression of a sector that just remembered valuations exist. Tech sagged enough to offset falling yields—a neat trick that would normally have the algos buying hand over fist. Instead, everyone's glued to their screens waiting for Treasury Secretary Bessent's Iran presser.
Oil's already voting with its feet, dropping ahead of what CNBC's calling the "toughest" U.S. sanctions on Iran. Axios noted that oil markets are now actively tuning out Trump's Truth Social proclamations, which is either a sign of market maturity or exhaustion. Possibly both. When the crude pits stop flinching at presidential social media, you know the real policy is about to land.
Elsewhere in the everything-is-fine department: YMTC's filing for a .9 billion IPO on the Shanghai exchange, New York added 30,640 tech workers over three years (eat it, San Francisco), and kids are apparently still outlearning AI. MIT Tech Review admits we don't know why, which is either comforting or terrifying depending on how many neural net startups are in your portfolio.
The S&P and Nasdaq slipped while the Dow—bless its boomer heart—actually rose. Fund managers have been buying something amid all this uncertainty, though Morningstar's keeping the good stuff behind a slideshow. And if you're wondering whether the FDA will ever issue that generative AI guidance everyone keeps promising, the agency's digital health leader says it's coming. Sure. Any day now.