WS #12622

Markets opened mixed on Wednesday with the Nasdaq down over 100 points (-0.52%) as caution builds ahead of key earnings from Tesla and Alphabet after the bell. The US-Iran conflict continues to escalate, with President Trump threatening to strike Iranian bridges or power plants for each ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has reportedly struck US bases in Jordan with missiles and drones, and the Pentagon reports nearly 100 US troops injured since July 7. Oil remains elevated with Brent above $95, and Saudi oil is being rerouted via the Red Sea port of Yanbu to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. In AI infrastructure, AMD announced a $5B investment in Anthropic and a deal to supply up to 2GW of GPUs, while OpenAI raised its projected cloud spending to ~$750B through 2030 and committed $20B to a Georgia data center. The US is reportedly set to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium on its own soil under a new nuclear agreement. The US-Iran conflict is ESCALATING, with no ceasefire signals and new threats of collective punishment. The AI infrastructure buildout theme remains STABLE with continued large-scale commitments.