Good afternoon, you're tuned in to Markets Desk, and here's what's moving the tape right now.
President Trump is vowing retaliation after claiming Iran shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz. The geopolitical flare-up is doing real work in markets — oil risk premiums are back on the table, hopes for a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal are fading fast, and anything tied to Middle East stability is getting repriced in a hurry.
That tension is rippling across Asia. Indian equities are under pressure Wednesday as the Iran headlines compound an already cautious session. Investors are also holding back ahead of U.S. consumer price index data, looking for clarity on where the Federal Reserve stands. When inflation data and geopolitical risk land in the same window, traders tend to step back and wait.
Meanwhile, the AI industry is quietly undergoing a strategic pivot. After years of racing to build the biggest possible models, the focus is shifting hard toward efficiency and deployability. Sara Hooker of Adaption made the case at Fortune Brainstorm Tech that today's dominant systems are essentially frozen in time — and that scaling raw size is no longer the competitive edge it once was. Cost-effective deployment is now the battleground.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
