Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
The geopolitical risk premium is back on the table in a serious way. Iran has struck a United States military base in Jordan, killing American service members and crossing what the White House had explicitly called a red line. The U.S. military has responded with consecutive days of airstrikes concentrated near the Strait of Hormuz, raising real fears about disruption to one of the world's most critical oil chokepoints. Energy traders are watching every headline.
Shifting to tech, Meta Platforms has surged twenty-one percent this month alone, and the story behind that move is straightforward — aggressive AI infrastructure investment is convincing the market that Meta is not just a social media company but a serious contender in the artificial intelligence arms race. Revenue expectations are being revised upward accordingly.
And speaking of AI infrastructure, memory chips are quietly becoming the trade of the year. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CES twenty twenty-six that memory is now the single biggest bottleneck in AI data center buildout. Since that statement, both Micron and Sandisk have actually outpaced Nvidia's own stock performance — a reminder that in a gold rush, sometimes the shovel makers win.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
