Tech Trashed and Rising Risks 7/23/26

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You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.

**Brian Infercelli** (1:00)
And welcome to The Exchange. I'm Brian Infercelli. Today, big tech getting hit as Google slips and bond yields rise. Every Mag-7 stock not very magnificent today. Tesla down more than 10% as alphabet earnings get an F from investors. All this as oil prices keep moving higher. Back above $100 a barrel overseas. New attacks in the Red Sea spooking investors. How far does this go? Ali Mccroft is here also. How is the rural and suburban consumer really doing? Tractor supply shares a little higher today despite some big earnings misses. That CEO is here as well. We have got a big hour ahead. There's a lot to do. Welcome everybody. Let's begin though with the Iran war. It is now expanding beyond the Strait of Hormuz, hitting the entrance to the critical Red Sea, all on the 12th night in a row of US strikes. Let's get right now to Eamon Javerich in DC from what we know at this hour. Eamon.

**Eamon Javerich** (1:55)
Yeah, Brian, and what a lot of folks are focusing on here is this social media post from the president. Take a look at it. In this post, he is threatening to expand the war to the Houthis in Yemen, responding to their attacks on Saudi ships in the Red Sea. The president says, if they do this again, the US will hold Iran responsible in that the Houthis are a surrogate and or proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran. And of course, the Houthis themselves, who I am very disappointed with, in that they have until now acted very professionally and smart. So take a look at the map just to refresh everybody on where the Red Sea is in relation to the Strait of Hormuz. And what you see is this Bab al-Mendab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea there, just off the coast of Yemen. Yemen is where the Houthis are, the Strait is where the Saudis are trying to get their oil through. You see the Strait of Hormuz to the north east there of the Bab al-Mendab Strait. That's been throttled by Iran, which of course borders it. The Houthis are a proxy force for the Iranians. And the question now is, what will all this do to the long term price of oil, given that we saw this spike overnight after all this talk began?
The question militarily for the United States, Brian, is, can it do anything to stop the Houthis from being able to close that strait? You can go out the Suez Canal in the northern part of the Red Sea, but that adds a lot of complexity and time for oil shippers, particularly trying to get to Asia.
And so, militarily, the question is, the United States has hit the Houthis in Yemen before, can they hit them again enough to keep that strait open? And that's an open question right now.

**Brian Infercelli** (3:39)
Well, you can't go through the Suez with a ship that's over a certain size, called a Suez Max for a specific reason. Eamon, you and I have talked about this in the past. Is there still an understanding of who exactly, or not an understanding of who we are negotiating with in Iran? Again, not to belittle us, I've been talking about this for months.
People I talk to suggest it's not still clear who is actually in charge of Iran, if indeed anybody or one party truly is. What do we actually know right now?

**Eamon Javerich** (4:11)
Well, I think the US knows a lot about who's in charge in Iran, and certainly they know who's been showing up to these on-the-ground negotiations where they've been physically talking to Iranians in hotel rooms and the like. The question is, which factions do those Iranians represent, and how powerful are each of the factions vis-a-vis each other? Are there people who want to come to some deal, and others who are willing to fight on until the bitter end?