Daily Briefing — July 18, 2026 | China's AI Shock, Oil's Iran Problem, and a Fed Chair Talking Tough

This weekend edition of Slotly News unpacks a Friday session that hit global markets from two directions at once. Chinese startup Moonshot's release of its Kimi K3 model — the largest open-weight AI system yet, benchmarking close to leading US models — triggered a fresh semiconductor selloff that left the sector's key ETF down more than 17% for the month and briefly flipped the world's most valuable company crown from Nvidia to Apple. We trace how that pressure moved from Wall Street through Tokyo, Shanghai, and into Frankfurt and Paris.

Separately, escalating US-Iran conflict pushed Brent crude up more than 10% on t...