Daily Commentary

MarketMinder’s View: In the latest out of the Strait of Hormuz, new maritime data suggest last week’s Houthi militia blockade forced nearly a dozen ships to reverse course. Not great for those vessels, and perhaps renewed uncertainty contributed to last week’s higher Brent crude prices (per FactSet). Yet as the article also explains, many ships are adapting. “On Thursday, [maritime data firm] Kpler found, 43 ships crossed the strait, up from 35 the day before, when the Houthis claimed they had targeted two Saudi oil tankers with missiles and drones.” Just as we saw with Houthi-led Red Sea disruptions in 2024, tankers are still braving the Strait and utilizing different tactics to make the trip. Some are turning off their location transponders to avoid detection. Others are re-routing through the Suez Canal. Yes, the latter means slower, costlier shipping—but goods are still getting to their final destination. For some recent perspective, tankers re-routed around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope back in 2024, and the disturbance barely registered on a global economic or market scale. Don’t overlook corporations and governments’ ability to adapt to these challenges to ensure business carries on as usual.

MarketMinder’s View: This article mentions a few publicly traded companies, so please note MarketMinder doesn’t make individual security recommendations. First, the data: “The value of core capital goods orders, a proxy for investment in equipment that excludes aircraft and military hardware, increased 0.9% last month after an upwardly revised 1.9% gain in May, Commerce Department figures showed Monday.” While June’s growth slowed from May, there is still plenty to cheer in this report. First and foremost, today’s orders are tomorrow’s production, so positive order growth suggests businesses were still investing in physical equipment last month—an input in GDP’s nonresidential investment (i.e., business investment) category. Secondly, the titular “core” gauge of orders strips out volatile aircraft and military hardware orders, suggesting strength didn’t solely rely on war-related demand. These backward-looking data are old news to forward-looking stocks, but this is another example of America’s economy proving more resilient than expected despite feared headwinds like the war in the Middle East.

MarketMinder’s View: There is growing evidence the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) will allow US-listed companies to opt out of quarterly reporting requirements, requiring only semi-annual reporting ahead. And, as evidenced by this article, many see less information as a negative for investors and stocks alike. Others, however, posit the potential change as a tailwind via lower compliance costs and more US listings. We don’t follow either of these. We suspect this change’s effects will be minimal. Consider UK stocks, which experienced this shift in 2014. About 90% of these companies continued reporting quarterly because of investor demand—just because companies can change their reporting requirements doesn’t mean they will. On the other side, we reckon the benefits here are well overstated. As Bloomberg’s Alison Schrager covered in an OpEd last fall, compliance and regulatory costs are already up following Sarbanes-Oxley, and reporting audits aren’t a huge slice of that. Hence, we doubt this change would materially boost companies’ margins. For more on this, please see our September 2025 coverage, “Fine Solution Seeks Material Problem.”