Monday, July 13th, 2026
Pre-market futures are down at this hour, led by the tech sector on the Nasdaq, which has shed -372 points at this hour, -1.24%. The Dow is -97 points, -0.18%, the S&P 500 -33, -0.43%. The small-cap Russell 2000 is -12 points lower currently, -0.41%, and the only index of the four not to have made gains on Friday.
News from South Korea’s newly minted SK Hynix SKHY stock is sending shares down -10% presently, and taking memory-chip makers like SanDisk SNDK down -6% with them. SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung announced today that 2027 is expected to bring the most severe memory shortage in the industry’s history, which would bring a real bottleneck to the free-flowing AI trade. SK Hynix happens to be the top memory provider for top AI stock NVIDIA NVDA.
Elsewhere, the war in Iran heated up over the weekend, with the U.S. bombing targets in Iran for a second-straight night. Sources say bombs have dropped inland of the Strait of Hormuz region of Iran. The Islamic state has responded by launching bombs at neighboring Gulf states and working to re-close the Strait of Hormuz (while President Trump insists the U.S. "will probably be running" the Strait).
Traffic through the Strait has reportedly decreased more than -50% already since this latest bout of aggression. We’re only half-way through the 60-day Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) peace agreement between the two countries, by the way.
Spot oil prices are up as a result, as one might expect: $74 per barrel (/bbl) on WTI and $79/bbl on Brent crude. WTI oil prices were at pre-conflict lows ($67/bbl) one short week ago. Bond yields are climbing as well: +4.58% on the 10-year and +4.23% on the 2-year, which happens to be an 18-month high on the shorter bond yield. The yield curve has now tightened again, after looking like it was moving back toward 40 bps.
Big-News Tuesday Ahead: Big Bank Earnings, CPI Inflation Rate
Q2 earnings season begins in earnest Tuesday morning, when no fewer than five of the nation’s top financial institutions reports quarterly results. These include Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated JPMorgan JPM and Goldman Sachs GS, and Zacks Rank #3 (Hold)-rated Citigroup C, Bank of America BAC and Wells Fargo WFC. Citi is expected to bring the highest earnings growth of the group, while BofA is expected to have grown +15.7% on the top line.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June also comes out ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell — expected to bring to bear something we haven’t seen since the Covid pandemic: a negative month-over-month Inflation Rate. Expectations are for headline CPI to come in at -0.2% from +0.5% posted for May. Clearly this is a result of the mid-June reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which brought the cost of crude oil -21% — -10% at the gas station. Year over year is expected to come back below +4%, where it breached in May for the first time in three years.
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