☕️ SpaceX falls below $135 IPO price

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🚀 SpaceX falls below $135 IPO price

🏦 Fed's Cook ready to act on inflation

🇧🇷 US hits Brazil with 25% tariffs

🇪🇺 Iran conflict clouds ECB's rate decision

🏭 TSMC's Q2 profit jumps 77% on AI boom

🏦 DTCC starts live tokenized stock trades

Plus: 🌍 9 macro news, 🏢 9 corporate news, 💰 10 deal flow, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• SpaceX slid below its $135 IPO price for the first time on Wednesday, hitting a record low after falling 2.1% to nearly $2 under the offering price, leaving the stock down roughly 11% since its June 8 debut.
• The decline reflects growing investor caution toward AI-linked companies, with Miller Tabak strategist Matthew Maley saying the drop below the IPO price suggests the stock rose on "speculation" and "froth" rather than real fundamentals.
• The skepticism may center on SpaceX's AI spending, which hit $7.7 billion in the first quarter—about 75% of total capital expenditure—following its all-stock purchase of Elon Musk's xAI in February; Musk's net worth stands at $856.8 billion, down from $1.45 trillion.

• Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said she is "prepared to act" if inflation does not slow soon, signaling openness to a rate hike while granting "a bit more time" to see how price pressures develop.
• Cook said risks are now "strongly weighted toward higher inflation," citing the AI investment boom, tariffs, and the U.S. war with Iran, with inflation still well above the Fed's 2% target and the job market broadly stable.
• Her comments echo Governor Christopher Waller and feed investor bets on a possible hike as early as this fall, though two mild inflation reports this week muddied the outlook ahead of the Fed's July 28-29 meeting.

• The US will impose 25% tariffs on most Brazilian imports starting July 22, closing a yearlong probe into what Washington calls unfair trade practices and ending failed negotiations, though beef, orange juice, aircraft, and energy products are exempt.
• The action, taken under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to bypass Congress, targets Brazilian orders that pushed US tech firms like X, Meta, and Google to remove content, plus weak patent enforcement and ethanol barriers.
• President Lula called the tariffs groundless and vowed countermeasures and a WTO challenge, noting a $14.4 billion US goods surplus with Brazil last year; a separate US forced-labor probe could add a 12.5% duty next week.

• Renewed U.S.-Iran strikes have pushed Brent crude back above $85 a barrel from around $70 last week, throwing the European Central Bank's July 22 rate decision into doubt as investors reprice for a possible hike.
• The ECB, which cut rates four times in early 2025 before reversing with a 25-basis-point hike to 2.25% last month, faces a bind: the eurozone imported 57% of its energy in 2024, yet the economy already shrank 0.2% year-on-year in the first quarter.
• Markets now see a roughly 20% chance of a hike next week but expect two more 25-basis-point increases by spring, lifting the deposit rate to 2.75%, with ING warning Europe's inflation peak "might not be in sight yet" if oil keeps rising.

• TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a 77.4% year-on-year surge in second-quarter net profit, beating analyst forecasts as demand for artificial-intelligence chips drove a fifth straight record quarter.
• Revenue climbed 36% to NT$1.27 trillion (from NT$933.79 billion a year earlier), with the most advanced chips — 7-nanometer and smaller — accounting for 77% of wafer revenue, the segment tied most closely to AI computing.
• The results reflect strong orders from major customers including Nvidia, Apple and Broadcom; shares of Asia's most valuable company rose 1.23% on the day and are up more than 58% so far this year.

• DTCC, the infrastructure that clears and settles most US stock trades and custodies more than $114 trillion in securities, began running its first live trades of tokenized stocks and Treasurys on Wednesday, ahead of a full launch in October.
• Nearly 40 firms including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Vanguard and the New York Stock Exchange are taking part, testing blockchain settlement across collateral, repo, equities and margin, with JPMorgan tokenizing part of its Invesco QQQ holdings.
• By tokenizing assets it already holds rather than building a new venue, DTCC could set the reference point rival platforms plug into, dwarfing today's onchain market for tokenized stocks and Treasury funds, which is worth only a few billion dollars.

🌍 Macro News

• Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh testifies before Senate Banking Committee on economy and rates. LINK
• Bank of Korea raises benchmark rate to 2.75%, first hike since 2023. LINK
• Japan reclassifies cryptocurrencies as financial products, enabling lower separate tax rate. LINK
• Trump drops Hormuz shipping toll demand, cites new Gulf investment pledges instead. LINK
• Ukrainian drone strikes strand 135 million barrels of Russian crude at sea. LINK
• UK economy grew 0.1% in May after April's contraction, ONS reports. LINK
• US gasoline prices near $4 a gallon as crude surges on Iran tensions. LINK
• India approves $22 billion in incentives to boost domestic chip manufacturing. LINK
• South Korea to modernize state-asset law, adding digital assets and IP. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab releases its first public AI model, Inkling. LINK
• China clears Apple Intelligence launch after deal to use Alibaba's Qwen AI. LINK
• Anthropic moves toward a possible IPO later this year, bankers arrange meetings. LINK
• OnePlus to exit US, European and Indian markets amid weak demand. LINK
• Microsoft trains sales staff to win AI clients from OpenAI, Anthropic. LINK
• Csquare raises $1.05 billion in IPO ahead of NYSE debut as CSQR. LINK
• Buffett says he, not Greg Abel, drove Berkshire's new Alphabet stake. LINK
• Revolut wins preliminary Dubai approval to run crypto operations in UAE. LINK
• Nubank names Livia Chanes as new Latin America CEO, centralizing regional oversight. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• New York Fed finds banks' nonbank units handle a quarter of shadow finance. LINK
• Study finds only 27.6% of US stocks beat the market since 1926. LINK
• PJM power grid falls 6.8 gigawatts short of 2028 supply needs. LINK
• Standard Chartered says world is re-dollarizing despite falling dollar reserve share. LINK
• Private fusion investment hit record $4.48 billion in 2025, up 69%. LINK
• Core Scientific's CoreWeave AI deal yields strong returns, but Bernstein calls it rare. LINK

💰 Deal Flow

• Walden Robotics exits stealth with $300 million seed, $1.1 billion valuation. LINK
• Emergent hits $1.5 billion valuation after $130 million Series C funding round. LINK
• BRINC raises $125 million to put 911 response drones on police rooftops. LINK
• Gorilla Technology shares fall 28% after $125 million convertible note sale. LINK
• Lumin Digital raises $115 million to expand banking software platform's capabilities. LINK
• SWISSto12 raises $70 million to expand into multiple orbital satellite markets. LINK
• Senra Systems raises $65 million to modernize wire harness manufacturing process. LINK
• Israeli startup Oak raises $60 million seed to tackle corporate identity management. LINK
• Munich's microagi raises $55 million, Germany's largest-ever startup seed round. LINK
• ABB agrees to buy Rotork for $5.5 billion, expanding automation lineup. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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