Markets

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow corridor between Iran and Oman through which roughly one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade ordinarily passes, has gone almost quiet.

The margin between a Federal Reserve rate hike and a hold just got a lot thinner. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in July after falling 0.4 percent in June, pulling the annual rate

Novorossiysk, Russia's largest Black Sea grain export hub, went quiet on the morning of 13 August 2026.

Sydney homeowners had a costly July. Cotality's national Home Value Index dropped 0.7% in July 2026, the largest single-month decline since December 2022, with Sydney leading the fall at 1.4% for the month.

SpaceX posted $7.8 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, a 92% increase on the same period a year earlier, the largest revenue figure of any company in a debut quarterly report as a public company.

Watch the new-orders line and you know where China's factories are heading before output figures arrive. In July 2026, that line dropped to 48.5, the weakest new-orders reading since 2023, and the headline manufacturing PMI followed it down to 49.2, the first sub-50 reading in five months.

The number that matters most from the Bank of England's latest meeting is not 3.75, it is three. Three members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted against holding Bank Rate, preferring an immediate rise.

Total net sales came in at $109.42 billion, up 16 per cent on the same period a year earlier, and net income of $29.79 billion was up 27 per cent from $23.43 billion. By any measure those are exceptional numbers for a June quarter. The market's reaction was to sell the stock.