Market News | Brent Hits $100 for the First Time Since July — Bitcoin Rises With Gold as Crypto Decouples From Equities Again

US Central Command destroyed five Iranian oil tankers Tuesday night, sending Brent above $100 for the first time since July. Bitcoin rose 1.6% to nearly $79,742 alongside gold — moving with metals while the Dow fell 1.2% and European stocks dropped 0.5%. The correlation is unstable: same conflict, same escalation category, opposite behavior from one week ago. KOSPI hit a record on chip strength as SK Hynix jumped 3.5%. ADP weekly employment came in at 12,000. XRP ETFs were the only positive crypto ETF flow Tuesday as Grayscale's fee structure drove the Bitcoin complex to a net $47M outflow. PPI Thursday, CPI Friday, FOMC September 16 — the sequence is locked.Seoul KOSPI Jumps 1.4% to Record on Chip Rally; Hong Kong, Tokyo EaseKOSPI rose 1.4% to 7,051 — a record close — as SK Hynix jumped 3.51% and battery makers surged: LG Energy Solution +6.46%, Samsung SDI +8.3%. Daishin Securities analyst Lee Kyoung-min attributed the move to OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra renewing AI growth optimism. The Korean won firmed to a 23-month high near 1,336 per dollar. Tokyo's Nikkei slipped 0.19%, Advantest -2.84%, Tokyo Electron -0.56%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.17% with the Tech Index -0.8% — Lenovo rebounded 6%+ while Meituan -3.47% and Xiaomi -2%. Taiwan's TAIEX edged 0.16% higher with TSMC -0.2%. Mainland China's Shanghai Composite extended gains to a third session at +0.28%. The KOSPI hitting a record while Hong Kong and Tokyo fell reflects a divergence between AI infrastructure enthusiasm in Korea and the competitive repricing of Chinese AI names.Bitcoin Rises With Gold as Brent Tops $100 and Equities Fall on Iran StrikesCENTCOM destroyed five Iranian oil tankers Tuesday night — Bitcoin rose 1.6% to $79,742 while the Dow fell 1.2% and Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 0.5%. Gold +1.06%, silver +1.33%. The correlation flip is analytically notable: September 2, US strikes sent Bitcoin lower alongside equities; this session, same conflict, same escalation, Bitcoin moved with metals instead. One week of alternating behavior doesn't establish a regime change — it establishes that the equity correlation is unstable enough that a single session shouldn't be read as one. The short covering dynamic: Tuesday's short buildup reversed as open interest declined alongside the spot bounce — no fresh longs arrived. Options traders positioned for upside: the five most-traded Deribit contracts by 24-hour volume are all calls at $80,000-$90,000 strikes. Front-end volatility flat; call-skewed book describes buying upside cheaply, not hedging.AI Chip Stocks Drift Pre-Market as Copper Records and Nvidia's Price Hike Squeeze MarginsMarvell -0.81%, Broadcom -0.42%, Nvidia -0.1%, Micron +0.23% — all inside normal pre-market variance, the market waiting rather than deciding. The backdrop is more informative than the tape: copper hit a record above $6.80, a direct input cost for every data center and power grid the AI buildout requires. Nvidia's Q3 gross margin guidance of 74% — down from 75%, the first sequential decline of the cycle — came alongside a planned Q1 price increase. For the neocloud cohort — IREN's $2.8B in AI contracts, HIVE's $350M GPU cloud deal — contracted revenue is fixed while input costs rise on both copper and Nvidia pricing. The macro layer: Brent above $100 and 10-year yields firmly above 4.8% with 60% September hike odds is a discount rate environment that compresses valuations hardest on long-duration assets — exactly what AI infrastructure equities are.Brent Crude Hits $100 for First Time Since July as XRP ETFs Take the Only InflowsBrent crossed $100 for the first time since July — the most consequential single data point for Friday's CPI and September 16's rate decision. XRP ETFs took nearly $2M Tuesday — the only positive flow in the US crypto ETF market — while Bitcoin ETFs lost $47M net, entirely attributable to GBTC's $66M in redemptions against $41M of inflows across IBIT, BITB, ARKB, and MSBT. The 1.50% vs 0.25% fee differential is the mechanism: allocators are migrating out of the legacy product, not exiting Bitcoin. The same structure drove Grayscale's ether products to shed $34M while Fidelity's FETH took $10M. Bitcoin ETF net assets fell back below $100B to $99.52B. The CLARITY Act Senate procedural vote expected mid-September is the specific XRP catalyst — it jumped 5% when the bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May, and CME's XRP futures share has risen to 17% from 10% in mid-August as institutional positioning builds ahead of the vote.U.S. ADP Weekly Employment Change Rises to 12,000 for Week Ended August 22US weekly ADP employment change came in at 12,000 for the week ending August 22, slightly above the prior 11,750. The figure adds to the week's labor data picture ahead of Friday's CPI — soft weekly readings run alongside August's blowout 162,000 monthly NFP, a combination that keeps the Fed's September 16 decision genuinely data-dependent. Warsh's Jackson Hole framing explained weak monthly gains as a labor supply effect; weekly claims near decade lows have been his counter to the soft monthly prints. At 12,000, the weekly ADP continues the pattern of modest but positive labor market activity that supports the no-recession read while doing little to change the rate hike calculus.