🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING: The Pentagon’s estimate for the Iran war has now reached $37.5 BILLION.
Hegseth was asked what the war had cost the United States as it entered its fifth month.
His answer was blunt:
“The estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion.”
Five months in, tens of billions spent, and there is still no clear end in sight.
LATEST: Over 1 million transactions made by agents on the XRP Ledger.
But, what I saw is what RippleX thinks is the future of this.
The number is more than 10 million, and could be as high as 100 million in the coming few years, according to Ayo Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX.
It's not the million dollars that really changed things.
It's XRP Ledger that's being adopted as an infrastructure that AI agents can use over and over again, without waiting for a human to click anything, at machine speed.
Apple took the top spot with Nvidia still green.
$AAPL: $4.92T
$NVDA: $4.86T
No flush in Nvidia. No bad quarter. Nobody leaning on the bid.
Just the kind of damage you miss if you are staring at candles instead of the blotter. A PM sells a slice into strength. Another desk crosses a block. Apple keeps getting marked up while Nvidia trades fine, which is exactly why nobody panics.
Then the risk meeting changes. Nvidia is still near the highs, but the position feels crowded. Every new buy needs an explanation. Every bounce gets used to come down a little.
The price is holding. The room already moved.
Books already going thin and Logan is out here saying rates may need to go higher. She votes in July. Feels like people are skipping that part.
Everyone is still carrying some version of the cut trade. Long crypto, long duration, buying dips because the Fed eventually folds. Yields twitch and Binance spot bids just disappear. BTC sits there for a second, alts get smoked 6% to 8%, funding resets, late longs selling into air.
We spent all year getting used to rates staying flat and cuts getting pushed back. Not this. Another hike was barely in anyone’s head and people are still bidding like last month’s setup is alive.
Next CPI is close enough. Still way too many people long.
Cape calc is open again because one U.S. strike on Iran’s grid could put the Houthis on Bab al-Mandab.
Owner wants a new war risk quote before he commits north. Chartering is asking what the Cape does to laycan. Arab Light buyer in the Med is already pushing on price because nobody wants to eat another twelve days and the bunker bill.
The hedge still assumes the original arrival window. The ship does not.
If she turns south, margin starts bleeding immediately. If she keeps going, you are betting the cargo on a strait the Houthis only need to close once.
Claims printed 208,000. The 10-year ripped higher before my feed had even caught up.
NQ sold first. Bitcoin just sat there for a second, then started giving back the move. The cut trade got thinner almost immediately.
There still is not enough labor pain for Powell to move. People keep waiting for layoffs to crack or hiring to finally roll over. Anything ugly enough to force his hand.
Did not get it.
Now growth names are back under the weight of higher yields, and the Fed can keep waiting while everyone else pays for the delay.
The screen does not need to crash. It can just take a little more out of your tech long every day while the cut slips another meeting.
South Korea just hit the brakes on new single-stock leveraged ETFs after the KOSPI crashed 20% in July, its worst monthly drop in nearly two decades.
What stands out to me is how concentrated the damage became.
Leveraged ETF flows were blamed for magnifying moves in Samsung and SK Hynix, two stocks that already account for more than half of the index.
Now regulators are blocking new products and raising the ₩10M minimum deposit required to trade leveraged chip funds.
Leveraged equity exposure still climbed to a record ₩60T, around $40B, before the restriction arrived.
The FSC had already warned that halting existing trading could create even bigger side effects.
That is the trap now.
South Korea is not just trying to stop speculation. It is trying to reduce leverage without triggering the next wave of forced selling.