Latest / Key Markets & Headlines / Key Markets & Headlines — Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Transcript
- Key markets and headlines for today. The most market-moving story this morning centers on the US and Iran, as the United States has issued a sixty-day license allowing Iran to sell oil on the international market. This move gives Tehran a significant economic lifeline as both countries continue talks aimed at a permanent peace deal. Vice President JD Vance described the first round of negotiations as “very, very good,” highlighting that Iran had agreed to allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, though Iranian officials have challenged that claim and said it “does not reflect reality.” Both sides have agreed to establish a high-level committee to oversee the talks, with working groups focused on nuclear issues and sanctions, and a new communication line to avoid incidents in the critical maritime corridor of Hormuz. The sanctions waiver and the potential for increased Iranian oil exports are weighing on markets, as investors consider the prospect of additional global crude supply and the broader path toward a longer-term agreement. Turning to equities and corporate news, there’s a flurry of activity in the IPO and funding space. Bending Spoons, a Milan-based company known for acquiring struggling software businesses, is seeking to raise as much as one point six two billion dollars in an initial public offering. The company plans to market fifty-eight million shares at twenty-six to twenty-eight dollars each, with Bending Spoons selling thirty-four point four million shares and shareholders offering another twenty-three point six million. If priced at the top of the range, the company would be valued at seventeen point eight billion dollars. Notably, Bending Spoons reported a net income of twenty-seven point five million dollars on revenue of six hundred and one million for the first quarter of this year, a sharp turnaround from a net loss of one hundred and twelve million on revenue of two hundred and fifty-nine million a year earlier. Used-car marketplace Carro is also considering a confidential filing for a US IPO as soon as this month, according to people familiar with the matter. The Singapore-based company, backed by SoftBank, may raise as much as five hundred million dollars. Carro is also weighing a second listing in Singapore, potentially tapping the exchange’s new Global Listing Board, which allows firms valued at more than two billion Singapore dollars, or about one point five billion US dollars, to dual list on the Nasdaq with a single filing. Lime, the electric bike and scooter rental company backed by Uber, is seeking to raise up to one hundred eighty point nine million dollars in its US IPO. Lime is offering six point seven million shares at twenty-four to twenty-six dollars each, while selling shareholders plan to offer an additional two hundred seventy-six thousand shares. At the top end of the range, Lime would have a market value of one point seven billion dollars. The company posted a net loss of fifty-nine point three million dollars on revenue of eight hundred eighty-six point seven million in twenty twenty-five, and reported three point eight million monthly active users, marking more than twenty percent year-over-year growth. In the tech sector, Groq has raised six hundred fifty million dollars in a new funding round aimed at expanding its data center capacity. The company, once a chip startup, is now positioning itself as a provider of artificial intelligence computing after selling most of its semiconductor assets to Nvidia. Groq plans to use the new funds to expand its network of thirteen data centers and quadruple its total capacity to two hundred megawatts by the end of twenty twenty-seven. John Yetimoglu, chief investment officer of Infinitum, commented that as AI moves from experimentation to production, demand for reliable, cost-efficient inference will grow exponentially. Nearfield Instruments, a Dutch maker of atomic force microscopes used by AI chipmakers, has raised three hundred eighty million dollars in Series D funding at a post-money valuation of one point six billion dollars. The round was led by Fidelity, with participation from Temasek, Walden Catalyst Ventures, Innovation Industries, M&G, Invest-NL, QIA, TNO Ventures, and ING. There’s also significant deal activity in the AI chip space. Qualcomm is in advanced talks to acquire Modular, an AI chip startup, in a transaction that could value Modular at about four billion dollars. The deal could be announced in the coming weeks, though it’s not finalized. Modular was founded in twenty twenty-two and raised two hundred fifty million dollars at a one point six billion dollar valuation in September last year. In the world of partnerships and investments, Google has announced an investment of around seventy-five million dollars in movie studio A24. The two companies will collaborate on new tools for artists that use artificial intelligence technology. Google DeepMind’s innovations will be anchored directly within the creative process, with A24 and its filmmakers helping to shape new technology for storytelling. Meta is making headlines on two fronts. First, Meta has announced a nine hundred million dollar investment in India-based fintech company Cred. As part of the move, Cred’s founder Kunal Shah will become the new head of WhatsApp, taking over from Will Cathcart. Meta is buying a twenty percent stake in Cred, which is valued at about four point five billion dollars. The partnership is seen as a way to drive more business activity on WhatsApp, especially in India. Second, the European Union is preparing to ramp up its investigation into Meta, alleging that its products are addictive to children. The European Commission is set to issue preliminary findings accusing Meta’s Facebook and Instagram of using exploitative design techniques to keep young users engaged. No date has been set for the announcement of these findings, but the move signals increased regulatory pressure on the US social media giant. In advertising, Omnicom Media and Netflix have formed a partnership that combines Omnicom’s Acxiom audience intelligence with Netflix’s AI-driven advertising platform. The collaboration will deliver highly personalized and contextually relevant ads within Netflix’s streaming environment. Omnicom provides advertiser-defined audience segments and creative inputs, while Netflix uses its proprietary AI and large language model-based tools to match those audiences with relevant content. This enables the dynamic creation of multiple tailored ad variations, making ads feel more native and engaging. The partnership also introduces closed-loop, first-party measurement, allowing advertisers to track performance across different audience segments, creative formats, and content placements. SpaceX is extending its Colossus infrastructure strategy with a six point three billion dollar AI compute agreement with open-source startup Reflection AI. The contract will run about one hundred fifty million dollars per month starting July first, twenty twenty-six, and will extend through the end of twenty twenty-nine. Reflection will use Nvidia-powered clusters in xAI data centers, joining other tenants like Anthropic and Alphabet. SpaceX is monetizing Colossus by selling high-margin GPU capacity, turning scarce compute into a core strategic asset. Tencent is reportedly negotiating exits from several game studio investments in Japan, including Tokyo-traded Marvelous, as part of a reassessment of its global portfolio. The Chinese gaming giant is evaluating its minority holdings in many studios and, in some cases, preparing to sell stakes back to the original management teams, even if it means incurring a loss. Tencent is navigating a prolonged slump in the games industry while also trying to catch up in the capital-intensive AI race against peers like Alibaba and ByteDance. The company is reviewing its investments to determine which still hold promise and where new bets might be warranted. In the world of retail and consumer, Chewy has been named a best small and mid-cap idea for twenty twenty-six by TD Cowen, which maintains a Buy rating and a thirty-four dollar price target. The analyst sees Chewy as well positioned within the pet retail market, with promising growth and margin levers. As online penetration continues to rise, Chewy is expected to take share from offline competitors such as local pet stores, traditional retailers, and grocers. Nike has been downgraded by Evercore ISI analyst Michael Binetti to In Line from Outperform, with a price target cut to forty-six dollars from fifty-seven. The analyst notes that about two years into Nike’s turnaround, the firm is still seeing unexpected resets lower in the wholesale channel, minimal needle-moving innovation in the pipeline into calendar year twenty twenty-seven, and near-term execution issues, including World Cup delivery problems. Parts of Nike’s core business are still weakening, leading to more cancellations and order cuts than anticipated. The analyst sees a rising probability that Nike will have to lower consensus guidance again in the near term to avoid a worse scenario at its Fall twenty twenty-six analyst day. Roblox shares moved lower after Citi analyst Jason Bazinet reported that the company’s average peak concurrent users during the week of June fifteenth were fifteen point three million, down five percent from last year. The negative growth came despite the release of Grow a Garden 2. Citi believes Roblox’s user trends are tracking to the low end of its second quarter bookings outlook. Shares of Roblox fell nine percent, or four dollars seventy-five cents, to forty-six dollars seventy-eight cents in afternoon trading. Oracle has reduced its workforce by twenty-one thousand employees over the past twelve months, a wider scale than previously known. The reductions include jobs eliminated by the use of artificial intelligence. Oracle’s global headcount shrank to one hundred forty-one thousand full-time employees as of the end of May, compared with one hundred sixty-two thousand a year earlier. The reductions led to about one point eight billion dollars in restructuring costs. The company stated that the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across its operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in further workforce reductions. Stellantis NV Chairman John Elkann is facing a new legal claim from his mother, Margherita Agnelli, who has moved to join a criminal tax case against him as a civil party. Margherita Agnelli is seeking damages for alleged moral and reputational harm over what her lawyers describe as a fraudulent scheme tied to her parents’ succession and the ownership of the family holding company Dicembre. The filing in a Turin court adds another layer to a criminal proceeding that has already entangled the head of one of Europe’s most prominent industrial dynasties. Elkann and his siblings paid one hundred eighty-three million euros, or about two hundred nine million dollars, to Italy’s revenue agency last year to settle a tax probe into alleged undeclared assets from their grandmother’s inheritance. However, the judge in December ordered prosecutors to pursue the case. Margherita Agnelli’s move extends a long-running series of legal skirmishes between mother and son. Her lawyers frame the tax case as part of a broader scheme that they say harmed her personally by excluding her from her parents’ estate. Lawyers for Elkann reject this characterization, saying she was not excluded from her parents’ inheritance but left the family group in two thousand four under settlements she had sought. Sony is returning to the US investment-grade bond market for the first time in nearly three decades. The Japanese conglomerate will sell two tranches of senior fixed-rate bonds, with underwriters sounding out a spread of about seventy basis points over Treasuries for the five-year note and ninety basis points for the ten-year bond. The sale may be priced later today. Sony said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes. This offering is part of a broader rush of high-grade bond sales in the US, as companies move to lock in historically tight credit spreads amid growing expectations that the Federal Reserve may begin to raise interest rates. In other event-driven news, AbbVie has agreed to buy Apogee Therapeutics for ten point nine billion dollars in an all-cash deal to bolster its anti-inflammatory drug portfolio. The purchase reflects a roughly forty-nine percent premium to Apogee’s closing price of ninety dollars thirty-eight cents on Thursday and is expected to close in the third quarter. Apogee’s drug pipeline includes zumilokibart, a promising compound being tested for atopic dermatitis, or eczema. AbbVie’s CEO Rob Michael said the experimental medicines have “mega blockbuster peak sales potential” and are highly complementary to the company’s immunology pipeline. Apollo Global Management is once again limiting withdrawal requests from its largest non-traded private credit fund for retail investors. Apollo Debt Solutions, which has about twenty-five billion dollars in assets, capped withdrawals at five percent of outstanding shares after investors requested to redeem sixteen point eight percent. Redemption requests were higher than the eleven point two percent seen in the prior period. Apollo President Jim Zelter said in May that redemptions from business development companies are likely to continue for the next two quarters, following a turbulent first quarter for the sector. Avis Budget Group is set to receive six hundred fifty million dollars in cash as part of a settlement agreement with Pentwater Capital Management to resolve a lawsuit regarding short-swing profits. The payment is subject to court approval. Earlier this year, Avis surged more than six hundred percent in a single month after Pentwater disclosed a large stake, but shares later fell sharply, which Avis leadership attributed to sales activity from Pentwater. Shares in Avis gained six and a half percent in post-market trading following news of the settlement. Heineken has appointed Rafael Oliveira as chief executive officer, breaking with tradition by hiring an outsider to try to reverse a slump in demand. Oliveira, fifty-one, will step down as CEO of coffee company JDE Peet’s to join Heineken on October first. He leaves after less than two years at JDE Peet’s, as Keurig Dr Pepper, which completed its acquisition of JDE Peet’s in April, plans to split it off as a standalone business by early twenty twenty-seven. Robinhood Markets is seeking to raise two billion dollars in a convertible bond offering, joining a busy market for raising cash. The bonds, due in twenty twenty-nine, will have a fixed zero percent coupon and a conversion premium between sixty and sixty-five percent. Robinhood will use about three hundred million dollars of the offering to buy back common stock, with the remainder intended for purposes including hedging transactions. The company plans to use derivatives to offset any share dilution until at least a targeted one hundred twenty-five percent premium to the last reported sale price on the day of pricing. Morgan Stanley is considering a one point three billion dollar office tower in Dallas, the latest Wall Street firm to bet on Texas as a financial hub. The bank would consolidate several businesses that have been growing in different parts of the city into a seven hundred nine thousand square foot skyscraper at twenty-four oh one McKinney Avenue. Morgan Stanley would invest about six hundred eighty-four million dollars in the property by twenty thirty-one, while the developer would spend around six hundred fifty million to construct the building. The project could create space for as many as four thousand eight hundred jobs by the end of twenty thirty-nine. The Dallas City Council said Morgan Stanley would not pursue the project without economic incentives, so it aims to offer up to eighteen and a half million dollars in economic development grants and a tax abatement of up to ninety percent on business personal property for ten years. Turning to macroeconomic developments, the Argentine government has authorized up to five billion dollars in new dollar-denominated borrowing as the country looks to secure funding backed by multilateral institutions ahead of upcoming debt payments. The decree sets a maximum size for the debt operation Argentina is seeking, with backing from institutions such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. The objective is to reduce the financing costs of the National Treasury through loans granted by internationally recognized financial institutions and backed by partial guarantees from multilateral lenders. Securing this funding is critical for Argentina, which faces bond payments of almost four point five billion dollars next month, and foreign currency debt service expected to exceed twenty billion dollars annually next year. Mexico has raised six point three billion dollars in bonds to fund a buyback of its existing debt, as credit-rating firms warn over the nation’s widening fiscal deficit and the risk to its investment-grade status. The country priced four point eight billion dollars in dollar bonds due in twenty thirty-seven at one hundred eighty-five basis points over similar Treasuries, and sold one point five billion dollars of notes due in twenty fifty-six at one hundred ninety-five basis points over US bonds. Mexico will use the proceeds to buy back dollar bonds due in twenty twenty-seven and twenty twenty-eight, as well as euro-denominated bonds due in twenty twenty-nine. The transaction comes as Mexico faces pressure from major credit-rating companies to narrow its budget deficit or risk losing its coveted investment-grade status. In Japan, currency traders are on high alert for intervention after further weakness in the yen and reports of an online meeting between Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The yen traded at around one hundred sixty-one point five seven against the dollar on Tuesday morning, near its weakest level in four decades. Katayama said this week that authorities will take appropriate action in the currency market whenever necessary, but recent jawboning has done little to stop the yen’s decline. Takeru Yamamoto, a trader at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, said that while intervention concerns have intensified, the underlying yen weakness remains, and dollar-yen could test the one hundred sixty-two level this week. In Washington, President Trump signed executive orders Monday aimed at accelerating quantum research and strengthening US defenses against cyberattacks. The first order launches an effort to create a quantum computer capable of performing important scientific calculations, with officials believing such a computer could be developed by twenty twenty-eight. The order also calls on agencies to work on plans to deploy quantum-enabled sensors and networks in the next five years and supports coordination with allies to protect quantum intellectual property and bolster supply chains. A second order seeks to accelerate US deployment of algorithms that can resist quantum-powered cyberattacks, with migration to post-quantum cryptography standards set for twenty thirty-one at the latest for high-value government assets. Looking at broader equity market trends, small-cap stocks have continued to lead the market for much of the year, according to Strategas. In the Eurozone, there are pockets of outperformance, with Greece and Spain making all-time highs. After last week’s Federal Reserve meeting, a full point rate increase was added to market expectations, also according to Strategas. This signals that investors are now pricing in a more aggressive tightening path from the Fed. In credit markets, there’s continued divergence between funding costs for US and European low-quality issuers, as noted by Apollo. This divergence reflects differing economic outlooks and central bank policies on either side of the Atlantic. That covers the key markets and headlines for today. Thanks for listening.