Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and money.
German equities are under pressure today as the DAX drifts lower on renewed geopolitical risk, with Iran striking U.S. bases in Jordan and Bahrain in retaliation for a prior American attack on the Islamic Republic. Risk-off sentiment is keeping European traders cautious, and the move is rippling through broader global sentiment.
Turning to tech, SoftBank shares have shed roughly a fifth of their value over the past week, and the story behind that slide is OpenAI. Concerns are mounting that OpenAI has missed ambitious internal growth targets, and potential creditors backing SoftBank's funding commitments are getting nervous. The Japanese conglomerate, which was recently displaced as Japan's most valuable company, is now paying a steep price for its deep exposure to that bet.
Meanwhile, the AI spending boom is showing its first real signs of fatigue in the corporate suite. Companies including Coinbase and Deloitte are actively testing new limits on AI expenditure after a period of aggressive adoption. Executives are describing genuine sticker shock, and the era of uncapped enterprise AI budgets appears to be giving way to something far more disciplined.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
