Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the needle this hour.
The Strait of Hormuz is back in crisis, and markets are watching closely. Iran's military closed the waterway just days after signing a memorandum of understanding with Washington, citing Israeli attacks on Lebanon and what Tehran called American bad faith. Trump responded by threatening to impose U.S. tolls on ships passing through the strait, framing America as, in his words, the guardian angel of the Middle East. Shipping companies, not governments, will ultimately decide when those lanes are truly safe enough to transit, and that uncertainty alone is enough to keep oil traders on edge.
Turning to equities, Robinhood is making a serious push to evolve beyond its retail trading roots and into a full-service financial platform. The company's core pitch remains democratizing access to investing, but the strategic ambition now runs deeper, spanning banking, credit, and wealth management. Whether the stock reflects that ambition at current levels is the question investors are wrestling with.
And on the AI infrastructure trade, the case is building that inference, meaning the compute required to actually run AI models in real time, is on track to eclipse data center build-out spending within just a few years. One company is being positioned as a potential dominant player in that shift, drawing comparisons to Nvidia's grip on training hardware.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
