☕️ Oil rises as US-Iran truce expires

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🛢️ Oil rises as US-Iran truce expires

⚖️ Meta faces $200B penalty in states' trial

📈 30-year Treasury yield hits 19-year high

🎮 Alibaba sells its gaming arm for $2B

💵 Treasury proposes stablecoin rules for 2027

Plus: 🌍 9 macro news, 🏢 12 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• Crude oil prices climbed Monday after Iran ruled out extending its memorandum of understanding with the U.S., with a two-month deadline for a nuclear deal expiring the same day.
• U.S. crude futures rose 0.76% to $83.03 a barrel, while Brent, the international benchmark, gained 0.92% to $89.33, reflecting fresh doubts over diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
• A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran would shift to offense rather than defense if talks fail, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the expiring 60-day deadline was "not relevant" since negotiations never began.

• Meta faces a possible $200 billion penalty as a federal child-safety trial opens in Oakland on August 18, with California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey the first of 29 states to put consumer-protection claims to a jury.
• The states allege Meta misled families and designed Facebook and Instagram features to hook young users while collecting under-13 data without consent; Meta puts its maximum exposure at $1.4 trillion, near its roughly $1.5 trillion market value.
• Beyond money, the states seek nationwide deletion of children's data and models trained on it, plus removal of infinite scroll, autoplay and beauty filters, with an advisory jury and a judge's final ruling possible in October 2026.

• The 30-year US Treasury yield climbed more than 4 basis points to 5.311% on Monday, its highest since June 2007, as a selloff in long-dated government bonds deepened and some strategists warned it could run further.
• The move traced back to Japan, where weaker growth alongside rising inflation pushed up long-term government bond yields and spilled into US markets, with the UK, China and Japan all cutting their Treasury holdings in June.
• Strategists see yields reaching 5.60%-5.70%, citing global fiscal worries and a risk that resilient US growth keeps inflation above target, potentially forcing more Fed rate hikes than markets expect despite softening retail sales and labor data.

• Alibaba agreed to sell its gaming unit Lingxi Games to private equity firm Trustar Capital in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, with shares rising 1.92% after the announcement.
• The sale advances Alibaba's push to shed non-core businesses and pour resources into AI and cloud computing, extending a stretch of divestitures worth over $4.6 billion since late 2024, including retail chains Sun Art and Intime.
• Lingxi, whose main title "Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition" was built with Japan's Koei Tecmo, keeps its current leadership, while Bloomberg pegged the minimum deal value lower at $1.5 billion, citing different sources.

• The U.S. Treasury opened public comment on rules to implement last year's GENIUS Act stablecoin law, kicking off the process to bring the framework into force when it takes effect on January 18, 2027.
• Under the law, companies generally cannot issue dollar-pegged payment tokens in the U.S. without a federal or state license, and foreign issuers face limits unless they can comply with U.S. legal orders and reciprocity deals.
• The proposed rules clarify when a stablecoin counts as "issued" in the U.S. and who counts as selling to a U.S. person, ahead of a July 18, 2028 ban on offering unlicensed tokens; comments run 60 days after publication.

🌍 Macro News

• Canada rushes to reach a US deal before Wednesday's 50% tariffs hit. LINK
• Austria fined Bitpanda €70,000, its first penalty under EU crypto rules. LINK
• Copper futures rose 1.7% in London, nearing January's record high. LINK
• Gold rose 9% in August to about $4,400 on safe-haven demand. LINK
• Wells Fargo now expects a Fed rate hike before year-end. LINK
• The dollar fell to a two-month low as rate-hold bets grow. LINK
• China added eight banks to its digital yuan network, now 30 total. LINK
• CFTC review may delay CME's October launch of AI compute futures. LINK
• Foreign holdings of US Treasuries fell $72.1 billion in June. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• HIVE's BUZZ HPC unit signed a $350 million GPU cloud contract. LINK
• Alphabet plans to move all Pixel manufacturing from China by 2027. LINK
• Uber invests in Zipline to expand drone deliveries for Uber Eats. LINK
• Synchrony partners with OpenAI to enable payments inside ChatGPT. LINK
• Paramount Skydance asks court to block states opposing Warner Bros merger. LINK
• ByteDance and the MPA signed a first-of-its-kind AI copyright agreement. LINK
• L3Harris ousted CEO Christopher Kubasik over a code-of-conduct breach. LINK
• Monzo chairman Gary Hoffman steps down after a shareholder revolt. LINK
• Google pays $10 million for Spirit Airlines' business data. LINK
• IREN delivered its first Microsoft AI cloud deployment under a $9.7 billion deal. LINK
• Kraken expands US stock trading to customers across the EEA. LINK
• Andreessen Horowitz faces a DOJ probe over rival board seats. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Goldman names 20 stocks set to benefit most from AI labor savings. LINK
• Top AI-spending firms spent $7,400 per employee on AI in July. LINK
• Tokenized stocks' share of real-world assets tripled to 15% since January. LINK
• DeFi's real-world assets in use are nearing $4 billion, up sixfold yearly. LINK
• Oxford Economics warns chokepoint delays, not closures, pose the bigger trade risk. LINK
• China wasted a record 360 terawatt-hours of clean power in early 2026. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

📚 Finance Resources

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