Your Daily Money Briefing

The Dow Dropped 1,100 Points Yesterday. The Peace We Told You About Monday Is Already Over.

Four things that actually moved money today. No fluff, no hedging, just what happened.

Remember Monday's Peace? Iran Just Launched a Surprise Attack.

Three days. That's how long the pause lasted. Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces Tuesday, and Trump didn't mince words: Iran "is going to get a beating." Oil ripped more than 7% back over $90 a barrel. The Dow fell over 1,100 points Wednesday — 2.2% gone in one session. And to make it worse, the Fed held rates steady, but three FOMC members voted against that decision, wanting a hike instead. That's a genuinely split Fed, in public, in the middle of a war flaring back up.

Duck it — we told you Monday not to assume this was resolved just because stocks stopped reacting to headlines. Three days later, here we are. This conflict has broken every "it's cooling down" story we've written about it since June.

Stop expecting a clean resolution here. Plan your gas budget, your travel, your portfolio around volatility staying, not around it ending.

30-Year Treasury Yields Just Hit a Level Not Seen Since 2007

Not since before the financial crisis has the U.S. government had to pay this much to borrow money for 30 years. That's the mortgage-rate math working against you in real time. Meanwhile the Nasdaq 100 has now dropped 11% from its record high — the technical line for a "correction." Chip stocks led the slide again, this time on SK Hynix's earnings: profits beat last year, but missed what Wall Street wanted, and that was apparently enough to trigger another dump.

"Beat last year, missed the estimate" getting punished this hard tells you exactly how nervous this market already was before Iran reignited things yesterday.

Microsoft +8.3%. Meta -9%. Same Earnings Night.

Microsoft's cloud business, Azure, grew at its fastest pace in four years — the stock jumped 8.3% premarket. Meta walked out the exact opposite door: a weak revenue forecast and free cash flow that cratered 91% year-over-year, sinking the stock 9%. One analyst called it "a tale of two AI investment strategies," and that's the cleanest summary you'll get. Both companies are spending huge money on AI. Only one of them is currently showing Wall Street a return on it.

Duck it — "we're investing in AI" stopped being enough to keep a stock up months ago. Now the market wants proof, and it's grading each Magnificent Seven name on its own report card, not the group curve.

Futures Are Actually Green This Morning. Don't Get Comfortable.

Dow futures up 140 points. S&P 500 futures up 0.5%. Nasdaq 100 futures up 1.1%. After yesterday's beating, that's a real bounce — mostly Microsoft doing the heavy lifting. But it's happening in the same 24 hours as active fighting between the U.S. and Iran and yields sitting at multi-decade highs. This isn't calm. It's a market catching its breath mid-round.

One green morning after a 1,100-point red day is not a trend. It's a bounce. Treat it like one.

This is a market news summary, not investment advice. Economic and financial conditions are subject to change — please make your own decisions and consider talking to a licensed financial advisor before acting on anything here.

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