Oil plunge 6%, CXMT IPO 466%, Sazerac $15B

Crude fell over 5% on Monday, with Brent off $5.70 a barrel and WTI down $4.80, after Washington and Tehran announced a weekend pause in strikes. The lull sparked hopes for a diplomatic deal that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ease the oil‑supply crunch.

Chipmaker CXMT raised 57.92 bn yuan at 8.66 yuan per share and surged 466% on its STAR Market debut, closing at 49 yuan and hitting a 3.3 tn‑yuan market cap that eclipses ICBC. The jump crowns it the most valuable China‑listed company and signals strong demand for domestic DRAM amid AI‑driven self‑sufficiency pushes.

Corporate executives are raising profit forecasts at the fastest pace since 2011, with 93% of Q2 earnings beating estimates, yet the S&P 500 remains flat as AI‑driven money rotates out. The divergence signals strong fundamentals but a stalled rally, meaning investors should watch for a breakout later this year.

New Fed chair Kevin Warsh pledged the central bank’s independence and a return to 2% inflation, effectively ruling out President Trump's push for rate cuts. He gave no forward guidance, leaving markets to anticipate a possible hike as early as September. The stance shifts the Fed’s policy outlook toward tighter money.

McKinsey’s Global Balance Sheet 2026 report finds households added a record $40 trillion in 2025, raising net worth to $570 trillion. The world’s balance‑sheet of assets swelled to almost $1.8 quadrillion, highlighting unprecedented paper‑wealth inflation and balance‑sheet expansion. Policymakers and investors must confront the growing gap between nominal wealth and real‑economy growth.

U.S. spirits group Sazerac offered $32 a share, about $15 bn, to buy Brown‑Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel's, sparking a clash with Pernod Ricard’s planned merger. The bid tests the Brown family’s control and leaves investors wary, with shares barely edging higher.

United’s Scott Kirby called Delta’s Ed Bastian in 2025 to explore a merger that would have combined the two biggest U.S. carriers. Delta’s leadership ran a quick due‑diligence scan but the proposal never moved forward, signaling that a mega‑airline deal still faces steep antitrust hurdles.

Meta announced a more‑than $50 billion commitment to expand its Richland Parish “Hyperion” campus to 5 GW, creating 7,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent roles. The deal locks Louisiana into the AI infrastructure race, driving local contracts and infrastructure upgrades that could outpace any U.S. data‑center project.

Kuwait Oil Company signed a $16 billion lease‑and‑lease‑back deal for its entire domestic and export pipeline network, creating a joint venture where Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR hold 49% and KOC retains 51% operational control. The transaction delivers $7.85 billion upfront, the biggest foreign direct investment in Kuwait, to fund its goal of 4 million barrels per day by 2035.

A White House official says Chinese startup Moonshot AI used Nvidia's GB300 GPUs housed in Thailand to train its new Kimi K3 model, sidestepping U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips. The move highlights loopholes in the US‑China AI hardware race and fuels calls for tighter remote‑access regulations.

Evangelicals, labor unions and anti‑AI data‑center activists are rallying against the rapid rollout of AI infrastructure, creating a political headache for Donald Trump. Their fears about soaring energy bills and job displacement threaten the industry's growth and could force policymakers to impose tougher guardrails on AI projects.