Tonight's Highlights: Trump Threatens "Heavy Blow" to Iran; US Equities and Crude Markets React Mildly
US equity futures attempted to stabilize and rebound in pre-market trading Thursday following a two-day slide, even as another pre-market social media post from President Trump injected fresh geopolitical noise.
Trump declared that the US would deliver a "heavy blow" to Iran on Thursday night, vowing to "seize Kharg Island and other oil infrastructure nodes" and establish "total control over their oil and gas markets."
While the headlines briefly capped pre-market gains for stock index futures, the indices quickly recovered their footing. As of press time, Nasdaq 100 Index futures (June 2026 contract) edged up 0.83%, S&P 500 futures gained 0.45%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures advanced 0.50%.
Earlier in the session, Nasdaq futures had climbed over 1%, while Brent crude spiked roughly $2.00 on a short-term basis to trade at $93.67 per barrel.
The escalation comes after the US unilaterally announced the conclusion of its latest round of strikes, which briefly prompted some capital to bet that diplomatic channels might reopen.
However, Tehran maintained that the Strait of Hormuz remains fully blockaded.
Iran's Persian Gulf Straits Authority posted on social media that the waterway has been closed temporarily until further notice due to ongoing US-induced regional tensions, instructing permitted vessels to await subsequent orders.
Earlier Thursday, the Iranian Armed Forces explicitly warned that the Strait was closed to all maritime traffic and that any non-compliant vessels would be targeted.
Conversely, the US Central Command issued a statement directly denying that a blockade of the shipping corridor had successfully taken effect.
The geopolitical standoff follows public comments from President Trump on Wednesday, claiming that the US military had recently overseen a covert operation guiding over 100 million barrels of crude and 200 merchant ships quietly through the Strait.
While these metrics remain unverified, media dispatches indicate the vessels likely transited along the Omani side of the channel with their transponders deactivated under US military guidance.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank delivered its first interest rate hike since 2023 on Thursday, signaling that the inflationary pressures triggered by the conflict have become impossible to ignore.
On the data front, the US May Producer Price Index (PPI) quickened to 6.5%—ticking in 0.1% above consensus to touch a more than three-year high.
Crucially, however, core PPI advanced 4.9% year-over-year, coming in below both the 5.4% Wall Street estimate and the previous print of 5.2%.
At the corporate level, enterprise software and cloud titan Oracle Corp. plunged over 9% in pre-market trading after its data center infrastructure budget overshot consensus.
The company projected net capital expenditures of approximately $70 billion for the current fiscal year ending May 2027.
Despite Oracle’s sharp slide, the broader technology sector's recovery remained largely uninhibited.
Concurrently, commercial space plays enjoyed a speculative rally ahead of SpaceX’s highly anticipated public debut on Friday.
As of press time, the Destiny Tech100 fund—viewed as a prominent SpaceX proxy—rallied over 7%, Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile advanced nearly 4%, and EchoStar Corp. ticked up over 2%.
Corporate & Global News
AI Pioneers Float "Citizen Dividend" Proposals; Trump Vows Action:
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed a policy framework Wednesday designed to distribute the financial windfalls of the AI boom directly to American citizens.
He advocated for a public fund to provide capital grants to newborns, young adults entering the workforce, and workers vulnerable to AI-driven displacement.
The pitch mirrors a similar proposal floated by OpenAI in April, which called for a public wealth fund anchored by a diversified portfolio of long-term assets.
In response, President Trump stated Wednesday that he would soon host a summit with 12 to 15 top AI executives to review strategies for corporations to give back to the public, marking his second mention of the initiative in a week.
SK Hynix to Triple Wafer Capacity by 2034: SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won disclosed in a Thursday interview that SK Hynix plans to triple its current wafer manufacturing capacity by 2034 to keep pace with skyrocketing memory chip demand.
He noted that the original expansion blueprint was mapped out to run through 2045, but the conglomerate pulled the timeline forward by roughly a decade, emphasizing that there was no viable way to accelerate the deployment any faster.
OpenAI Reportedly Weighing Aggressive Price Cuts to Defend Market Share: OpenAI is considering aggressive price cuts for its token fees in a bid to poach enterprise clients from arch-rival Anthropic, according to sources familiar with the internal discussions.
The sources noted that management is contemplating deep structural discounts on its pricing architecture, a tactical pivot driven by expectations that Anthropic is preparing to execute a similar price-cutting strategy.