Refresh: the AI selloff reaches the scores, and Hormuz hardens
A short week moved five countries. Broadcom's weak AI guidance touched off the Nasdaq's worst day since the April 2025 tariff rout, surfacing US equity-concentration risk in the assets read; renewed US-Iran strikes around the Strait of Hormuz entrenched the energy shock.
Abstract
Since the last pass (3 June) we swept the canon, multilateral bodies plus a deliberately diverse, multi-regional independent press set, and re-scored what moved. Eight sub-factors changed across five countries. State self-reports stayed excluded from scoring; Iran's strait-closure claims, carried by state media, are treated as regime intent, not verified fact. Two themes carried the week, and they rhyme: an AI-driven equity selloff in the United States, and a hardening of the same Hormuz shock that drove the prior pass.
The AI selloff reaches the scores
On 4 June the Nasdaq fell 4%, its worst day since the April 2025 tariff rout, after Broadcom guided third-quarter AI-chip sales to about $16 billion against a ~$17.2 billion estimate and declined to raise its full-year AI forecast. Over two sessions Nvidia fell ~6%, Broadcom ~14%, and Micron 17%, on open "AI bubble" talk. It landed days after Vanguard's VOO became the first ETF ever to cross $1 trillion, a record level of S&P-500 concentration in the same AI-leveraged cluster, and alongside a strong May payrolls print (+172k versus ~80k expected) that lifted Fed rate-hike odds and added to the risk-off.
This is the equity-valuation and concentration risk the site's infrastructure work has been tracking, now showing up in price rather than in argument. It is the same exposure documented in Cheaper tokens, bigger bills and Priced for rescue. On the scores it reads as a near-term assets risk more than a living one: the US financial-stability sub-factor moved from -2 to -3 with confidence up, taking the assets decision from -4.84 to -4.87 and the currency read to -4.22, while the energy-driven inflation sub-factor held at -5 with confidence up on the entrenched oil shock.
Hormuz hardens
The same strait that drove the 3 June pass got worse, not better. Around 6 June US forces struck Iranian coastal radar after Iran launched drones toward the strait, Iran fired missiles at the Gulf, at least three tankers were hit, and the war passed its 100th day; traffic sits near 5% of the pre-conflict ~3,000 ships a month, with Iran reportedly charging tolls above $1 million per ship. Fitch's base case now assumes a roughly five-month closure into end-July, with Brent around $97 to $108, US gasoline rising, and jet-fuel shortages reported.
The prior pass already priced the deep negatives here, so this one mostly raises confidence rather than scores: Iran's long-horizon conflict sub-factor moved -7 to -8 (near held at the -9 floor), taking its living read from -6.17 to -6.19, with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar held on confidence-only patches as their export routes stay blocked. As before, the framework's horizon discipline bites the currency and assets reads harder than the living one, because a strait closure is the kind of shock that must eventually resolve.
Method note
Every changed sub-factor carries its sources in the country file's notes, and the aggregates were recomputed mechanically by the shared scoring engine, so the numbers here cannot drift from what the site serves. As always, this is an analytical framework, not financial, investment, immigration, or legal advice.