MARKET SNAPSHOT
U.S. stocks settled slightly lower. Oil futures settled higher for a fourth straight session on the threat of further escalation in the Middle East. Treasury yields rose, while the dollar declined. Gold and silver closed higher.
MARKET WRAPS
EQUITIES
U.S. stocks edged lower Wednesday while investors braced for a wave of major earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended flat. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.6%. According to preliminary data, there were 1193 advancing issues and 1540 declining issues on the NYSE.
Earlier Wednesday, equities were mixed across Asia.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.7% amid relatively muted trade for the index's dominant chip makers, with SK Hynix closing 0.3% lower while Samsung Electronics nudged 0.6% higher.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.2%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 1.0% as technology stocks slumped, with Tencent sliding 6.8% and leading a broader plunge in Asian gaming stocks.
In China, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.1% and the Shenzhen Composite Index declined 1.1%. The ChiNext Price Index ended 3.2% lower.
Meanwhile, Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Benchmark Index rose 0.3%, and New Zealand's S&P/NZX 50 Index added 0.8%.
COMMODITIES
Continuing strikes by the U.S. and Iran and the threat of further escalation sent oil futures higher for a fourth straight session.
President Trump said on Truth Social that the U.S. will bomb one bridge or power plant, including in or near Tehran, any time Iran fires as vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz. The market is trying to weigh "does Trump really want to do that next level of escalation?" said Rabobank senior energy strategist Joe DeLaura.
If the U.S. starts hitting power plants and infrastructure, Iran will start attacking power plants or desalination plants in Saudi Arabia and U.A.E., hitting their critical water supplies, he said. "If we continue to see this kind of escalation then we're going to see a very big hike because we're going to be developing into a much wider and much deeper war."
WTI settled up 3% at $86.83 a barrel and Brent rose 3.4% to $94.07.
Precious metals settled higher, with sentiment shifting to a more optimistic outlook.
"Prices are in an upswing that could continue until the end of the year, " said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities. Cardillo added that for gold, central bank buying is starting to return after taking a pause, giving similar support for when gold ran up to record highs last year. Cardillo set his near-term price target at $4,375 a troy ounce, also noting that next week's Fed meeting may provide more clarity to how interest rate hikes could materialize going forward.
Front-month gold closed up 1.9% to $4,146.90/oz. Front-month silver climbed 2% to $60.019/oz.
TODAY'S TOP HEADLINES
Trump Says U.S. Will Bomb Iran's Power Plants, Bridges if Tehran Strikes Ships
WASHINGTON-President Trump threatened to destroy Iranian infrastructure if Iran attacks vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, in the latest sign he is planning to escalate the conflict.
Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday that the U.S. will "bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT," including infrastructure in or near Tehran, every time Iran shoots at a ship in the strait.
The president's comments are the latest indication that the two countries might return to full-scale war. On Tuesday, he said U.S. military forces would likely attack Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, the underground site where Israeli intelligence believes Iran has buried advanced nuclear-enrichment centrifuges, "pretty soon."
Global Economy Is Suddenly Fighting an Energy Stranglehold on Three Fronts
The global economy suddenly finds its energy supplies threatened on three fronts simultaneously: the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Black Sea. The world goes into these disruptions with the lowest levels of oil reserves in years.
Conflict in the Middle East broadened this week with Tehran-backed Houthi militants turning tankers back from the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The Red Sea maritime chokepoint, which has become the biggest export route for Saudi Arabia's crude following the Strait of Hormuz closure, accounted for roughly 12% of the world's seaborne oil flows before the war.
Another disruption: Ukraine has mounted sustained attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and ships in the Black Sea. A barrage of strikes in the waters near the port of Novorossiysk, which handles nearly a third of Russia's oil exports, has paused flows through a pipeline that delivers Russian and Kazakh oil to the Black Sea.
Google's Red-Hot Cloud Growth Drives Second-Quarter Revenue Gains
Google parent company Alphabet posted 24% revenue growth in the second quarter, fueled by its booming cloud business, but the company's free cash flow turned negative as it continued to spend heavily on data centers for artificial-intelligence computing.
Alphabet's sales came in at $119.8 billion, exceeding analyst expectations. Its cloud business brought in $24.8 billion and its search business brought in $63.3 billion. Net income for the April-June period was $112.1 billion, also ahead of analyst expectations.
Alphabet's shares were roughly flat in after-hours trading.
Tesla's Second-Quarter Revenue Surged Amid $5.8 Billion Spend in AI, Robotics
Tesla's free cash flow fell for the first time in more than two years as the electric-vehicle maker supercharged spending with $5.8 billion in capital expenditures to expand its footprint in artificial intelligence and robotics.
The company reported negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion for the second quarter.
Revenue grew to $28 billion, up 26% from the year before. Revenue from its automotive business increased 23% from the year prior. Tesla's energy business revenue, which comes from selling industrial and residential battery storage, was $3 billion for the quarter, up 13% from the year before.
IBM Lowers Its Growth Outlook as Sales of Data Center Mainframes Sink 42%
IBM is warning investors that its full-year revenue growth will be lower than it had previously forecast.
When the company published its second-quarter earnings Wednesday, it confirmed the disappointing results that it previewed last week in a rare move that erased about $67 billion in stock market value.
Big Blue's infrastructure revenue of $3.8 billion was down 7% from a year earlier. That unit was pulled down by lower-than-expected sales of data center mainframes, which fell 42%.
Paramount Wins EU Approval for $81 Billion Warner Bros. Deal
Paramount's $81 billion bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery was approved by the European Union on Wednesday after the companies offered concessions related to film distribution in Europe.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said its approval was conditional "upon full compliance with the commitments offered by Paramount."
In order to ease regulators' concerns, Paramount offered commitments including that it would terminate its stake in United International Pictures, its film distribution joint venture with Universal Pictures, in the European Economic Area within 13 months from the deal's closing.
AMD and Anthropic Sign Major Chips-and-Investment Deal
Advanced Micro Devices and Anthropic have signed a deal for tens of billions of dollars' worth of artificial-intelligence servers, strengthening AMD's competitive position against industry leader Nvidia and supplying Anthropic with much needed computing power.
Under the terms of the agreement, Anthropic will purchase up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's latest-generation chips, called the Instinct MI450, starting in the first half of 2027. AMD will also invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic-its first check into the AI firm-as certain deployment milestones are met.
"We have very much wanted to be a major part of their infrastructure," AMD Chief Executive Lisa Su said, adding that the companies' engineering teams have been working together for some time.
OpenAI's Planned Cloud Spending Hits $750 Billion as Computing Efforts Ramp Up
OpenAI is scaling up its data-center ambitions-and its budget for spending on them.
The artificial-intelligence company has raised its projected spending on computing power to around $750 billion through 2030, up from a projection of roughly $600 billion earlier this year, according to a person with knowledge of its projections.
The increase reflects new agreements with cloud-computing providers as OpenAI races to lock up the enormous amounts of computing capacity it needs to develop and run its AI models. OpenAI's spending on cloud computing has become a central focus of Chief Executive Sam Altman's leadership team and has been a source of tension between him and his chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, ahead of the company's planned initial public offering.
Expected Major Events for Thursday
01:30/AUS: Jun Labour Force
05:00/SIN: Jun CPI
08:00/TAI: Jun Industrial output
08:20/TAI: Jun Money Supply
09:59/CHN: Jun FDI Foreign Direct Investment
23:00/AUS: Jul Australia Flash PMI
23:30/JPN: Jun CPI (Nation), CPI ex-food (Nation)
23:30/JPN: May Final Labour Survey - Earnings, Employment & Hours Worked
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 22, 2026 16:58 ET (20:58 GMT)
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