Good morning, you're tuned in to Markets Desk.
The U.S. military has resumed strikes against Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz, and President Trump followed that action by posting AI-generated videos to social media claiming an attack on Kharg Island. The combination of real military escalation and fabricated content is muddying the information environment at a moment when oil traders are watching the Strait extremely closely.
Turning to the ad market, new research alleges that Temu spent as much as nine hundred sixty-two million dollars on Meta advertising that helped fund a network of fake creators across Instagram and Facebook. The scale here is striking — nearly a billion dollars flowing into a platform while allegedly financing inauthentic accounts, raising serious questions about Meta's ad verification systems and the integrity of its creator ecosystem.
And on the pharma side, CANbridge Pharmaceuticals swung to a loss in the first half of two thousand twenty six despite posting higher revenue, driven by stronger sales of Hunterase and Livmarli. The market read that earnings quality as a warning sign, pushing shares lower — a reminder that top-line growth without a clear path to profitability rarely satisfies investors for long.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
