Tom Lee: South Korean stock market may be in the final stage of bottoming out

US President Trump discussed Iran, stating that an agreement can be reached.

Local time on July 31, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) stated that "the Iranian government's renewed claim that it has closed the Strait of Hormuz is false." CENTCOM added that "the Strait of Hormuz remains open for merchant vessel traffic; Iran does not control the strait," noting that "thousands of ships have transited this international waterway over the past four months." Earlier on July 31, Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Administration issued a statement saying that due to the U.S. military's continued aggressive operations in the relevant waters, the Strait of Hormuz is currently not normally navigable. (Source: CCTV)

According to Fortune, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told attendees at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2026 that the present is the best time in history to launch a company, advising young entrepreneurs not to overthink due to rapid technological shifts or fear of failure. When facing challenges, he suggested asking himself: “How hard can it be?” Huang emphasized that entrepreneurs don’t need all the answers from day one; the core is being willing to confront reality and continuously learn. In NVIDIA’s early days, the company bet on the wrong graphics technology. When the team lacked solutions, he purchased three technical textbooks and gave them to his engineers. He noted that as long as one retains a learning mindset, specific technologies themselves are not the most critical factor. That said, Huang doesn’t believe success comes easily. He revealed he still works seven days a week and has long worried about the company collapsing; this sense of vulnerability, uncertainty, and insecurity has never faded. His advice: don’t imagine all difficulties in advance, lest anxiety derail action, but let challenges arise gradually and solve them one by one. Data shows U.S. business applications hit a record 3.23 million in the first half of 2026, up 12.1% year-over-year. However, startup risks remain high: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates nearly half of businesses cease operations within five years of launch.

Political analyst Nate Silver said that due to the ongoing unpopular Iran war and surging natural gas prices, President Trump’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest point since his second term this month. He noted, “The timing aligns closely with the rebound in natural gas prices and the resumption of hostilities in Iran.” As the war nears its sixth month, data from the American Automobile Association (AAA) shows that as of Friday morning, the average U.S. gasoline price stood at around $4.11 per gallon, up from roughly $3.15 a year ago. According to polling averages from Decision Desk HQ, Trump’s overall average approval rating was 40.6% as of Friday morning, while his average disapproval rating reached 57.5%. A Quinnipiac University poll found that 60% of U.S. voters oppose the war, the highest opposition rate recorded since the conflict began on February 28. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said they oppose deploying U.S. troops to Iran. An AP-NORC poll also showed that 64% of Americans consider the war “not worth it”; among them, 87% of Democratic voters, 37% of Republican voters, and 68% of independent voters hold this view. (Jin10)

FTX creditor representative Sunil announced in a post that FTX’s creditor distributions have been deposited into creditors’ accounts. Earlier reports noted FTX will launch its fifth round of creditor compensation on July 31, with plans to disburse roughly $900 million to creditors in the "Convenience" and "Non-Convenience" categories under the firm’s restructuring plan. With this round of distributions, the FTX Recovery Trust’s total compensation disbursements since FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 will reach approximately $10 billion.

OpenAI stated in a post that the value of AI infrastructure lies not in scale itself, but in delivering more powerful intelligence to more users at lower cost. The company is building a full ecosystem spanning infrastructure, models, platforms, and products, driving adoption growth via more powerful models, then using revenue, real-world feedback, and demand data to support next-generation research and infrastructure investments. OpenAI yesterday cut prices for GPT-5.6 Luna by 80%, bringing its input and output costs to $0.20 and $1.20 per million tokens respectively; GPT-5.6 Terra saw a 20% price reduction, with costs set at $2 and $12 per million tokens for input and output respectively. GPT-5.6 Sol’s Fast mode boosts processing speed by up to 2.5 times while maintaining the same intelligence level, priced at twice the cost of its standard mode. The company noted that GPT-5.6 Sol has helped optimize model production service software, reducing end-to-end service costs by 20% and boosting speculative decoding efficiency by over 15%. Currently, OpenAI’s models serve over 1 billion active users and more than 2 million enterprises. Its goal is not merely to build more computing power or larger models, but to deploy appropriate capacity based on credible demand, making useful intelligence more powerful, more affordable, and accessible to a broader user base.