📈 Strait of Hormuz transits quadruple | Australia's data centre race heats up

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The Big Picture

• Hormuz transits quadruple as ceasefire holds and OPEC boosts output. Ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz have quadrupled over the past, though numbers remain well below pre-war levels. Iran and Oman have proposed jointly administering the waterway and collecting passage fees, while OPEC+ has announced plans to boost oil production as energy markets show tentative signs of recovery. (FT | NBC | Al Jazeera)
  
  

• Australia and Fiji sign new defence alliance. The two nations have agreed upon a new defence alliance on top of their existing security pact. The treaty is backed by more than $1 billion in Australian government spending over a decade, covering education, health and infrastructure investment in Fiji. (ABC)
  
  

• Auction clearance rates remain below 50% for second consecutive week. Less than half of all properties taken to auction sold last week, with the preliminary national clearance rate edging up marginally from 49.2% to 49.8%. Brisbane was the weakest market, with a clearance rate of just 23.8%, down sharply from 39.3% the prior week and a dramatic fall from 69.6% at the same time last year. (ABC)
  
  

• NSW confirms Australia's third state with H5N1 bird flu case. New South Wales has become the third Australian state to confirm an H5N1 bird flu case. Six infections have now been confirmed across three states since Australia became the last continent to record a mainland H5N1 case last month. (Reuters)
  
  

• South Koreans call for leveraged ETF crackdown. Lawmakers and politicians from South Korea are calling for single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung and SK Hynix to be delisted due to the amplified volatility of the product. Former Presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo declared that it was turning the Kospi index "into a casino." (Bloomberg)

Companies in the news

• Australia's data centre race heats up. Anthropic has issued a confidential tender seeking at least 1.4 gigawatts of Australian data centre capacity costing up to $21.6 billion. Meanwhile, Firmus Technologies is pushing ahead with three Tasmanian facilities despite concerns about whether the state's power grid can support them. (AFR | ABC)
  
  

• Bet365 accepts AUSTRAC agreement over anti-money laundering failures. Bet365 has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking with AUSTRAC after "serious gaps" were identified in the online bookmaker's anti-money laundering systems. The action follows a 2024 investigation into Bet365 and comes as AUSTRAC also pursues Federal Court action against Ladbrokes-owner Entain. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Vault Minerals surges 12% on takeover bid. Genesis Minerals has made a binding $5.6 billion takeover offer for Vault Minerals, valuing the gold miner at a 14.5% premium to the existing deal with Regis Resources. Vault shares jumped 12% on the news while Genesis fell 3.2%, with Regis given five business days to match the offer. (AFR)
  
  

• EasyJet agrees to $10 billion takeover. EasyJet has agreed in principle to a takeover proposal from US investment firm Castlelake. The airline operates across 35 European countries and employs more than 19,000 people, making it one of the continent's largest low-cost airlines. EasyJet shares have fallen more than 30% in the past year, partly due to the impact of the Iran war on the travel sector. (BBC)
  
  

• Foxconn revenue surges 40% on AI demand. Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported a 39.8% year-on-year rise in second-quarter revenue to $78.71 billion. The growth came form strong AI demand as Foxconn is Nvidia’s biggest server maker and Apple’s leading iPhone assembler. (Reuters)

FIFA clears suspended US striker to play after Trump call

FIFA has suspended American striker Folarin Balogun's one-game ban, clearing the him to play in the US's World Cup Round of 16 match against Belgium after receiving a red card in the previous round.

The decision follows reports that President Trump personally phoned FIFA President Gianni Infantino to request a review, with Trump subsequently posting "thank you to FIFA for doing what was right". Though the ruling has prompted outrage from Belgium and football pundits around the world. (ABC)

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Gold Is Not the Safe Haven You Might Think It Is

When the Iran war started in late February, investors expected gold to go up as global uncertainty took over. It did not. For Jordan Eliseo, General Manager at ABC Bullion, that reaction was completely predictable. Jordan joined us on a recent episode of Equity Mates Investing to explain why the popular understanding of gold as a safe haven gets one critical thing wrong: the timeframe. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

The stat that reframes how one may think about gold comes from the GFC. When Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, gold did not surge. October 2008 was actually one of gold's worst months in 20 years. And yet, over the full three year window of the GFC, the gold price almost tripled.

Jordan's point is that the only asset that is genuinely safe from one day to the next is cash. But zoom out to a one, five, or ten year view and cash is almost guaranteed to lose purchasing power to inflation. Gold's protective qualities operate over a medium to long term horizon, not overnight.

The same pattern played out at the start of the Iran conflict. Gold had already run hard in the six months prior and was due for a correction. When the war started, investors scrambled for liquidity and gold, being one of the most liquid assets in the world, was one of the easiest things to sell quickly.

As Jordan put it, if you owned gold expecting it to spike the moment a crisis hit, you were measuring it against the wrong timeframe. If you owned it because you wanted protection over the next decade, nothing about the recent pullback changes that thesis.

• On Get Started Investing Jess is joined by Julie Bullen, Financial Advisor from Fox & Hare to chat all things superannuation and comparing investing inside super vs outside. Julie specialises in helping 20 - 45 year olds to make big financial decisions, so if that’s you and you’ve been neglecting your super then be sure to tune into this episode. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)