Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Equities finished the week in the red, though losses were contained. The S&P five hundred slipped seventeen hundredths of a percent, the Dow shed a fifth of a percent, and the Nasdaq one hundred gave back thirteen hundredths. Soft economic sentiment weighed on sentiment heading into the weekend, with futures extending losses after the close.
Shifting to energy, crude oil moved sharply higher after Iran attacked two Abu Dhabi oil vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. September West Texas Intermediate settled up one point four two percent, with RBOB gasoline climbing nearly one point eight percent. The attacks signal Iran's continued willingness to disrupt one of the world's most critical shipping chokepoints, keeping a geopolitical risk premium firmly embedded in oil prices.
Meanwhile, Nvidia disclosed a twenty-one billion dollar stake in SpaceX, held through its investment in xAI, valued at the end of the second quarter. The position underscores how deeply Nvidia is embedding itself across the artificial intelligence ecosystem — not just as a chipmaker, but as a strategic capital allocator with exposure to some of the most consequential private companies on the planet.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
