emilyvuong

🇺🇸The first U.S. ship departs from Hormuz
📌 Maersk confirms that the Alliance Fairfax vessel—an automobile carrier flying the U.S. flag—has left the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz under the escort of the U.S. military.
📌 CENTCOM says that 2 U.S.-flagged commercial ships successfully transited Hormuz as part of the Project Freedom operation. Maersk has only confirmed 1 ship so far; the identity of the other has not been disclosed.
📌 The ships transited safely with no damage, and the crew were not injured.
📌 Iran is facing increasingly fewer options—responding with enough st

U.S. oil exports just hit a record high of 6.4 million barrels per day.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil imports continue to decline to record lows.

📍Tether bought an additional 6 tons of gold in Q1/2026, raising the total holdings to a record 132 tons, worth approximately $19.8 billion.
Previously, Tether purchased an additional +21 tons of gold in Q4/2025 and +26 tons in Q3/2025. In just 12 months, Tether's gold holdings have doubled.
In terms of value, this figure has nearly tripled.
In 2025, Tether bought more gold than all central banks except Poland.
In Q1/2026 alone, only four central banks bought more gold than Tether: Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and China.
Tether is directly competing with central banks in the gold

📍Inflation PCE rises sharply for the first time since 2023
📌 Headline PCE increases +0.7% MoM and +3.5% YoY - the highest since May 2023.
- The strongest increase in nearly 3 years causes Wall Street to reconsider the story of “disinflation moving in the right direction.”
- The main contributor to the rise is gasoline and energy goods. Spending on gasoline and other energy goods increased to $81.3 billion - the highest among March expenditure categories.
📌 Core PCE is also quite bad: up +0.3% MoM and +3.2% YoY - exactly as expected but higher than the previous month.
📌 Supercore

📌 The BoJ can intervene in the exchange rate, Yen experiences the most volatility in 3 years
Previously, a weak Yen was seen as a trade-off to support exports, and although the BoJ occasionally issued warnings, it maintained low interest rates to protect growth and the bond market.
When USD/JPY surpassed 160, the line between supporting the economy and fueling inflation was blurred.
Japan relies heavily on imported energy, so when Brent rose to $125 while the Yen continued to depreciate, the cost shock was doubled: oil became more expensive in USD, and even more so when converted to Yen

One year ago, Anthropic was valued at around $61.5 billion, now it has risen to nearly $1 billion. Since the beginning of 2024, Anthropic's value has increased by approximately 50 times.
Anthropic has become the fastest value-creating company in modern technology history.
In an era where AI foundation models attract capital, talent, customers, and redefine software productivity, SaaS, services, and software outsourcing are all being revalued. This is why FPT's stock also plummeted uncontrollably.
The future story no longer lies in ordinary personnel but returns to ideas.

The battle in Iran has, up to this point, burned $25B of the U.S.—a figure reported to the U.S. Congress by Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s financial controller.

📍The Fed maintains interest rates at 3.5%-3.75%, but the FOMC minutes are more hawkish than the previous meeting.
📌The Fed keeps interest rates steady in the 3.5% - 3.75% range, as expected by the market. The FOMC minutes include some adjustments:
- Last time, the Fed said inflation was still "somewhat elevated."
- This time, the Fed changed it to “elevated.”
- The Fed states that inflation has increased partly due to recent global energy prices.
-> The Fed admits that oil prices have an impact on inflation.
📌A clearer stance on the Middle East,
- Last time, the Fed said the i

🇺🇸Thom Tillis speaks out in support of Kevin Warsh becoming Fed Chair
📌 The DOJ has just announced that it is ending its investigation into Powell for "abuse of power" ( excessive coordination with the Ministry of Finance), "monetary policy mismanagement" ( keeping interest rates low for too long) and not supervising Fed officials trading securities during QE 21-22.
This investigation is just a legal ploy to force Powell to step down.
📌 Thom Tillis is a member of the Banking Committee (Uỷ ban ngân hàng), which is one of the groups that decides on individuals put forward for Fed appoi

The Ethereum Foundation just unstaked $48.9M $ETH.
Likely unstaking to sell.

📌OpenAI GPT-5.5 & DeepSeek V4 launched simultaneously
🇺🇸OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 (23/4/2026)
- GPT-5.5 codenamed "Spud," called by Greg Brockman "a new layer of intelligence aimed at more agentic and intuitive computing."
- GPT 5.5 is strongest in agentic tasks: programming, computer use, office work, and scientific research.
- API price: $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens. The Pro version is much more expensive: $30 and $180.
- GPT-5.5 Thinking leads most agentic tests (Terminal-Bench, OSWorld, CyberGym), while GPT-5.5 Pro excels in BrowseComp (90.1%) a

Raising nine-figure capital with a valuation of billions of dollars, but revenue is still less than a child's lemonade stand.
Not including Move, Starknet, Wormhole, 0G, Polyhedra…

Rumors of Pentagon Email proposing "punishments" against NATO leak
An email drafted and circulated internally by Elbridge Colby - the top policy advisor at the Pentagon - has been leaked. The proposed NATO sanctions in the email:
- Suspend Spain from NATO (for refusing to allow use of Rota, Morón bases and closing airspace)
- Reconsider the UK’s stance on Falkland sovereignty to pressure London
- Exclude "difficult" countries from key NATO positions
- The Pentagon does not deny the email, stating it will ensure the President has "reliable options"
Reactions from NATO members:
- N

Nearly 17% of the total U.S. stock market is held by "old-timers" over 70 years old.
Meanwhile, the under-40 group accounts for only about 3%.

Google invests $40B into Anthropic.
Netizens are making memes, saying this deal was advised by Gemini.

📌 Iran - The US opens an indirect negotiation channel through Pakistan
- Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has arrived in Islamabad
- Pakistan acts as an intermediary, conveying messages between the two sides
- No direct contact between the US and Iran, still behind-the-scenes diplomacy.
📌 Ghalibaf still does not participate in this round of negotiations.
📌 The US continues to add entities to the OFAC list ( The Office of Foreign Assets Control ):
- Iranian oil shipping vessels
- Intermediary businesses
- Related refining and petrochemical chains
- China’s Hengli Petrochemical oil refining gro

📍 Trump continues to escalate tensions with Iran
📌 Trump orders the Navy to shoot down any Iranian ships conducting mine-laying operations in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. triples mine-clearing efforts and deploys additional ships and forces to the entrance of Hormuz.
📌 Trump declares that there is no need to reach an agreement with Iran to achieve the goal.
📌 The U.S. blocks two super tankers carrying Iranian oil from leaving Hormuz, inspecting the unflagged ship Majestic X transporting Iranian oil in the Indian Ocean.
📌 Trump says Iran is under great pressure as oil revenues de

The crypto market recorded an inflow of $1.4 billion in the past week, the highest since the beginning of the year.

📌 Trump Fires U.S. Secretary of the Navy
A statement from the White House, John Phelan - the U.S. Secretary of the Navy must step down, effective “immediately.”
📌 Hung Cao - a Vietnamese-American temporarily holds the role of acting secretary. He previously served as Under Secretary).
Note: American media reports that Hung Cao holds the position of Acting Secretary of the Navy, meaning he is temporarily overseeing the Department of the Navy, not an official post approved by the Senate.

🚨 China has just imported the highest amount of silver ever recorded for March.
In March 2026, China imported 836 tons of silver, driven by industrial silver demand and individual investors.
Chinese individual investors are shifting towards buying silver.