You're tuned in to Markets Desk, let's get you caught up on the stories moving the needle right now.
Home Depot delivered a second quarter beat that Wall Street didn't fully see coming, with revenue rising even as consumers continue pulling back from large-scale renovation projects. The story here is resilience in the small-ticket category — paint, fixtures, maintenance work — holding the top line together while the big-ticket remodel cycle stays dormant.
Turning to geopolitics, and this one carries real commodity risk — Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until Washington lifts sanctions and ends what Tehran is calling a blockade. The sixty-day deadline tied to a Memorandum of Understanding signed by President Trump back in June expired Monday without resolution, leaving one of the world's most critical oil shipping lanes in limbo and energy traders watching closely.
And in a story that speaks to where the labor market is quietly shifting, Citadel Securities revealed it accepted just two hundred ten interns from a pool of one hundred fifteen thousand applicants — a rate of roughly zero point one eight percent. The firm's own leadership acknowledged AI is already reshaping what early-career roles look like, and that the bar for human judgment and adaptability has never been higher.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
