Good evening, this is Markets Desk with your closing brief.
Crude oil surged sharply higher Thursday as traders grew increasingly skeptical that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen on schedule. West Texas Intermediate settled up nearly three percent, with gasoline futures climbing even harder, as uncertainty around Iran and Oman's proposed plan kept supply fears front and center in the energy complex.
Turning to currency markets, the Federal Reserve's intervention to sell euros and prop up the yen appears to have caught European officials completely off guard. Christine Lagarde and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent only spoke after Washington had already moved, a sequence that raises serious questions about coordination between major central banks at a genuinely sensitive moment for global currency stability.
Meanwhile, China's export machine kept running hot in July, with shipments rising twenty-three percent and beating expectations comfortably, driven by sustained global appetite for high-tech manufactured components. Imports, however, cooled noticeably, signaling that domestic demand inside China remains the softer side of that equation and bears watching heading into the back half of the year.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
