Massive Mushroom Cloud 'Test' Blast Rattles Uninformed Residents Outside Jerusalem

Futures Flat As Traders Brace For Weekend Iran Escalation US equity futures are flat on the final trading session of the week, with Tech lagging, as traders hold off on big bets ahead of the weekend, with the fragile truce in the Middle East keeping geopolitical risk front of mind. Overnight, the US said Iran talks will continue, a positive step amid the recent escalation near the Strait of Hormuz (then again the market never reacted negatively to the latest strikes in the first place). As of 7:45am ET, S&P futures are...

Russia Weighs $50 Million Plan To Influence Armenia's Election Via Eurasianet, Reuters reported that Russian officials discussed influence operations aimed at weakening Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan ahead of Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary election. One alleged proposal involved temporarily bringing Armenian passport holders living in Russia back to Armenia to vote for opposition candidates. Despite the reported efforts, polling suggests Pashinyan’s Civil Contract Party remains the clear frontrunner as Armenia debates its future relationship with Russia and the West. Russia has mulled an extraordinary measure of exporting humans to Armenia in an effort to undermine...

China Economic Growth 'Downside Risk' Looms; Goldman Warns After July Macro-Miss-Fest China’s July activity data weakened from June, missing market expectations across the board, and signaling a soft start to Q3 amid continued divergence between resilient exports and subdued domestic demand. Originally slated for publication late last night (US time), the data release was delayed for five hours after the statistics agency revised its schedule in a break with recent practice. Industrial production (IP) growth slowed to 4.5% yoy in July from 5.3% yoy in June, reflecting slower export growth and...