Finance

Corporate earnings updates from two tech giants heavily influenced trading momentum. Amazon soared roughly 15% on the back of accelerating cloud-computing revenue, giving the retail and cloud provider its largest single-day market value gain on record. In contrast, Apple shares plummeted over 7% after providing a lackluster near-term revenue forecast, acting as a significant drag on the technology sector.

An ongoing war with Iran sparked sharp swings in oil prices during July, with Brent crude recently rising past $88 per barrel. The surge in energy costs has pushed the average cost of regular domestic gasoline higher, feeding investor fears that stubborn inflationary pressures will persist.

The bond market reacted strongly to internal policy rifts at the Federal Reserve, where three officials dissented in favor of immediate interest rate hikes to combat persistent inflation. Consequently, the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield surged to a 19-year high, creating an unhealthily steepened yield curve as investors lost confidence in the central bank's inflation-fighting trajectory.