Baltic
Dry Index. 3222 -02
Brent Crude 94.21
Spot Gold 4514 Spot Silver 76.19
US 2 Year Yield 4.05 +0.07
US Federal Debt. 39.198 trillion
US GDP 32.175 trillion.
Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.
David Ricardo
All good things must come to an end and with the peace talks to end the Israeli/American war on Iran over and no sign of the Strait of Hormuz opening President Trump flipped out
telling CNBC, “I don’t care if they’re
over, honestly.”
“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a phone interview midday Monday, adding that he felt the drawn-out negotiations had “started to get very boring.”
Well maybe, but most of the world does care, especially the world’s poorest, to whom high priced diesel is starting to impact their ability to buy food at soaring global food prices.
Besides, with supply chain disruption forever as US policy, I suspect it won’t be long before a scramble to take profits in the stock casinos gets underway.
Getting out first always beats getting carried out last.
Asia-Pacific stocks mostly lower as Iran war
uncertainty keeps investors on edge
Published Mon, Jun 1 2026 7:42 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets traded mostly lower
Tuesday, as investors weighed renewed uncertainty over U.S.-Iran peace
negotiations, while Wall Street benchmark indexes climbed to fresh highs
overnight on tech optimism.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was 1.32% lower,
while the Topix declined 1.14%. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.92% and the
small-cap Kosdaq was down 3.13%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.71%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.13%,
while mainland China’s CSI 300 was up 0.1%.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday
shrugged off the possibility that peace talks with Iran could fall apart,
telling CNBC, “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly.”
“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care
less,” Trump told CNBC’s Eamon Javers in a phone interview midday Monday,
adding that he felt the drawn-out negotiations had “started to get very
boring.”
Trump was responding to a question about
reports earlier Monday that Iranian negotiators were considering ending
discussions with Washington and moving to “completely block” the Strait of
Hormuz in response to Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon targeting the
Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
When asked whether Iranian officials had
informed him that they would no longer continue negotiations, Trump replied,
“No, they haven’t.”
S&P 500 futures slipped
0.2%, while Nasdaq 100
futures shed 0.3%. Futures
tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 122 points, or 0.2%.
Overnight on Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose even as oil
prices advanced, with Nvidia leading
technology higher following the launch of a new chip for PCs.
The broad market index advanced 0.26% to
close at 7,599.96, while the Nasdaq
Composite gained 0.42% to close at 27,086.81. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
46.42 points, or 0.09%, and ended at 51,078.88. All three indexes reached new
all-time intraday highs and closed at records.
Asia-Pacific markets today: Kospi, Nikkei 225, Hang Seng Index
Stock futures slip after all three major indexes
close at new records: Live updates
Updated Tue, Jun 2 2026 10:12 PM EDT
U.S. stock futures ticked lower on Monday
night after all three major indexes rose to fresh records during the regular
session.
S&P 500 futures slipped
0.2%, while Nasdaq 100
futures shed 0.3%. Futures
tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 122 points, or 0.2%.
Shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise surged
26% after the technology company issued a rosy
outlook for the current quarter and raised its guidance for the full
year, trouncing the Street’s estimates. HPE’s second-quarter results also
marked its biggest earnings beat since 2018.
A rally in the technology sector, led
by Nvidia following
the launch of a new chip for PCs, propelled stocks higher on Monday. The S&P 500 gained 0.26%,
while the Nasdaq Composite added
0.42%. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average rose 46.42 points, or 0.09%. All three major
averages notched new intraday all-time highs and closing records.
Enthusiasm over the artificial
intelligence trade has resulted in tremendous performance in the equity markets
over the past few weeks. But Katie Stockton, founder of Fairlead Strategies,
says that there are no indications that the equity market rally is over.
“We’ve had nine consecutive up weeks for
the S&P 500, and naturally that does reflect positive momentum. Momentum is
positive now, short term, intermediate term, long term, and we saw a series of
flag pattern breakouts, or essentially sharp run ups followed by brief
consolidation phases that are then resolved higher,” Stockton
said on CNBC’s “Closing
Bell” on Monday afternoon. She noted that Dell was a recent example.
“These run-ups are really explosive.
Unfortunately, that also means they tend to end in dramatic fashion, but we
don’t have indications yet, any confirmed sell signals from our overbought
oversold metrics to suggest that this is over.”
Oil prices also rose on Monday after
Iranian state media reported that the country’s negotiators will stop
exchanging messages with the U.S. via intermediaries. Iran’s
state-affiliated news outlet, Tasnim, also said that the country will move to
fully block the Strait of Hormuz. The report added that “no dialogue will take
place” until Israel fully stops all attacks in both Lebanon and Gaza and fully
withdraws from occupied areas in Lebanon.
In response, President Donald Trump told CNBC’s
Eamon Javers in a phone interview that he “couldn’t
care less” if peace negotiations with Iran are over.
In a later Truth Social post, the president said that he “had a very
productive call” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a
separate post, Trump added that talks with Iran are “continuing, at
a rapid pace.”
Dollar
General, Victoria’s Secret and Signet Jewelers will report
earnings before Tuesday’s opening bell. Traders will also watch out for April’s
reading on JOLTS job openings.
Stock
market today: Live updates
On Wall Street the Great AI Bubble soars on
but see the LIR Technology section.
Wall Street bulls bet US stocks rally will defy
bubble fears
Investors and strategists shrug off
worries that markets could be overheating by betting on huge gains for
AI-linked shares
1 June 2026
Wall Street bulls are betting that a rally
in US stocks has further to run, shrugging off concerns that huge gains for
shares linked to AI are a sign that markets are overheating.
The S&P 500 sailed to record closing
highs 11 times in May, half of all trading days, leaving the US blue-chip index
up about 11 per cent this year. Tech stocks have posted even loftier gains,
with the Nasdaq up 16 per cent.
First-quarter earnings blew past Wall
Street expectations, leading big banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to raise their
S&P targets for the year in recent weeks.
Many investors are betting that AI advances and huge investments in chips and data
centres will turbocharge US growth and continue boosting companies’ bottom
lines.
“We do not believe that we’re in a
bubble . . . A bubble would laugh at the valuations that we’re paying right
now,” said Steve Chiavarone, Federated Hermes’ deputy chief investment officer
for global equities.
“Secular bull markets historically are
20-year events,” he added. “We think we’re in the middle, and we think it’s
accelerating and this market can continue to go higher.”
Companies at the centre of the AI frenzy
have posted eyewatering gains.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index,
which tracks big chipmakers, has soared 81 per cent since the start of the
year, leaving it on course for its best run since 1999.
Sandisk, a maker of data centre storage
products, has surged 600 per cent so far in 2026, while other companies linked
to AI including Micron, Dell Technologies, Intel, Seagate and Western Digital are
up 200 per cent.
Nvidia,
the $5tn chip behemoth most closely associated with the AI boom, has gained 13
per cent so far this year.
The rally in AI stocks has helped push
measures of market valuations higher. The S&P 500 is trading at about 21
times expected earnings over the next year, above the 30-year average of 17,
FactSet data shows.
More
Wall Street bulls bet
US stocks rally will defy bubble fears
In other news, thinking the unthinkable.
What if the Strait of Hormuz didn’t reopen?
The longer the closure, the higher the
risks to the global economy
Jun 1, 2026
When the Suez Canal closed in 1967 after
war broke out between Egypt and Israel, 15 ships got trapped inside the
waterway. They dropped anchor to wait for the hostilities to stop. The conflict
ended quickly. Aptly, it was called the Six-Day War, but the canal remained
closed for eight years.
When the ships were finally allowed to
leave, in 1975, only two remained seaworthy. The rest were so rusted they
became known as the Yellow Fleet.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. So
what if something similar were to happen in the Strait of Hormuz? It’s a
nightmare few contemplate and it’s certainly not my own base case. But nearly
90 days since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran all but closed the oil-and-gas sea
route, it’s worth considering what seems unthinkable but has happened
elsewhere. Call it historical science fiction.
Perhaps it won’t come to this. Washington
and Tehran are talking, via Pakistani mediators, about ending the conflict and
reopening the choke point. But what if a deal was limited initially to a
one-page long memorandum of understanding? Would that clear the strait fully?
Tellingly, the United Arab Emirates has
accelerated plans for a second pipeline bypassing the strait, which it hopes to
put into service in 2027. This is prudent worst-case scenario planning — and a
strong signal that Abu Dhabi thinks the waterway could remain imperiled far
longer than many others believe.
The industry consensus on the reopening is
less apocalyptic. Asking my contacts in the commodity and financial world, most
seem to think Hormuz will reopen next month, at worst in July. Why? Mostly
because the consequences of the opposite happening — much higher energy prices
and serious economic damage — are too painful to consider.
In the 1980s, American economist Herbert
Stein made a famous observation: “If something cannot go on forever, it will
stop.” Today, Wall Street is leaning on a slightly tweaked version of Stein’s
Law: “The Strait of Hormuz cannot be closed forever because it will cause too
much economic damage. Therefore, it will reopen.”
The problem is the closure is yet to do
enough economic harm to either side to force a compromise. For U.S. President
Donald Trump, the war has been relatively cheap so far, at least in terms of
what he cares about most: financial markets.
The S&P500 index is hovering close to
an all-time high, up nearly 10% since the war began. Gasoline prices have risen
but they’re below their 2022 record peak. And the American economy is
galloping, with the estimate for second-quarter growth currently above 4%.
Equally, Iran hasn’t yet suffered the
economic meltdown that would force its hard-line leaders to drop their
negotiating red lines. Unemployment is rising, food inflation is rampant and
the currency is in free fall. Unable to export because of the U.S. Navy
blockade, the regime has started curtailing oil output. But the Islamic
Republic has demonstrated many times before its huge capacity to absorb pain,
more so when the threat is existential.
With both sides dug in, the best hope is
for any kind of deal to emerge, however imperfect. If not, we’re back to
waiting until the economic toll becomes unbearable.
More
What if the Strait
of Hormuz didn’t reopen? - The Japan Times
Oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz might not
return to levels seen before the Iran war
Published Sat, May 30 2026 9:00 AM EDT
The oil market might face a new reality
after the Iran war in which exports through the Strait of Hormuz do not return
to the levels once considered normal, as shipowners now have to weigh the risk
that fighting could abruptly break out in the volatile Persian Gulf.
And Western commercial ships will likely
hesitate to sail through Hormuz if it remains under Iran’s de facto control,
especially if they have to coordinate with the Revolutionary Guard, putting
them at risk of violating U.S. sanctions.
It is a scenario with consequences that
are difficult to foresee given the vital role that Hormuz plays in global
energy markets. Freedom of navigation through the strait was never seriously
challenged until Iran basically closed the sea lane in response to the war
launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28.
Iran’s blockade of Hormuz has triggered
the largest oil supply
disruption in
history, putting pressure on the U.S. to make a
deal as
the threat to the global economy grows by the day. Tehran appears intent to use
this leverage to consolidate control over the strait in a settlement that ends
the war.
Middle East leaders believe that Iran has
already taken control of Hormuz, said Amos Hochstein, who served as a senior
energy and national security advisor to former President Joe Biden.
“No matter what happens, the Iranians will
control the Strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future,” Hochstein told CNBC’s
“Squawk Box” on Thursday. “It
doesn’t even matter what the deal says. Everybody in the region believes that.”
Oil tanker traffic through Hormuz before
the war might represent the high point for transits for the foreseeable future,
said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
“Any end to the conflict that leaves Iran
exercising operational control and influence over the Strait will result in
appreciably lower flows through the waterway in our view,” Croft told clients
in a Thursday note.
Traffic under this scenario might return
to 60% to 70% of prewar volumes with China-affiliated ships moving freely while
passage for Western vessels require bilateral agreements with Iran, said
Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, in a briefing on May 21.
“This doesn’t trigger a recession in the
way that some of the doomsday scenarios that we’ve talked about before might
suggest, but it does not allow the prewar rebound,” Meade said. Lloyd’s List is
one of the oldest shipping industry trade journals in the world.
“It produces something more insidious,”
Meade continued. “A permanently bifurcated strait where access is a function of
political alignment, not freedom of navigation.”
More
Oil exports
through Hormuz might not return to levels before Iran war
Iran attacks damage 20 US military sites since
start of war, satellite images show
1 June 2026
Iran has damaged 20 US military sites
since the start of the war, satellite images and videos analysed by BBC Verify
show, suggesting the attacks are more extensive than publicly acknowledged.
Iran has targeted key facilities across
eight countries in the Middle East since the end of February, causing millions
of dollars of damage to state-of the-art air defence systems, refuelling
aircraft and radars.
Tehran has targeted both US bases and
shared military facilities in retaliation to the US-Israeli strikes across Iran
and Lebanon over the past three months. The Pentagon says it has hit more than
13,000 targets in Iran since the start of Operation Epic Fury.
Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader,
has sought to highlight his military's success in striking US facilities. In a
statement on Tuesday he claimed the Middle East was no longer a "safe
place" for American bases.
While the White House has repeatedly
claimed that Iran's military has been almost wiped out, analysts said that the
damage seen at US facilities suggests that Tehran's counter-attacks have been
more precise and extensive than American officials have previously
acknowledged.
A US defence official declined to comment
on BBC Verify's findings, citing "operational security reasons".
The US has sought to
limit satellite analysis of the conflict by requesting
Planet, a major provider, to impose an "indefinite" restriction on
new images of Iran and most of the Middle East. The company justified the move,
saying that it wanted to ensure its images were not used "by adversarial
actors to target allied and Nato-partner personnel and civilians".
BBC Verify has used satellite imagery from
other international providers combined with older images from Planet to track
the damage caused by Iranian attacks. The facilities are in Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman. The
actual figure could be higher, with some analysts placing the number of bases
hit as high as 28.
Among the valuable hardware damaged were
three state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile batteries systems at the Al
Ruwais and Al Sader airbases in the UAE and Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan.
The US is only known to operate eight of
the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, which are deployed
at bases around the globe and cost around $1bn (£766m) to manufacture. Each
battery needs a crew of about 100 troops to operate it while the interceptors
it fires cost around $12.7m per
round.
More
Iran attacks damage 20 US military
sites since start of war, satellite images show - BBC News
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
Trump
is facing a new inflation warning from the bond market, adding to his midterm
challenges
Updated
5:47 PM GMT+1, June 1, 2026
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The world is getting more uptight about lending money to President Donald Trump’s government —
causing interest
rates to climb in ways that are worsening
affordability pressures, hampering
economic growth and creating a new
risk for Republicans in November’s midterm elections.
The
energy price spike triggered by the Iran war has seeped into the price
of bonds that help fund the U.S. government. Interest rates on a
10-year U.S. Treasury note are topping 4.44%, up from 3.95% before the war
started at the end of February. Average mortgage
rates have climbed to their highest levels in nine months, while auto
sales are slumping.
The
challenge is global in scale, as interest rates have risen for multiple
countries as the world has been adjusting to the prospect of higher inflation,
mounting questions about the sustainability of government debt and a dramatic
surge in investment
in artificial intelligence.
Trump
has tried to assure Americans that he has a plan to trim the roughly $1.8
trillion annual budget deficit. In the past, he has pointed to revenue
from tariffs, payments from foreigners for his “Gold
Card” visa, spending cuts made by the Department
of Government Efficiency, and faster economic growth. Last week, he said
the fraud
task force led by Vice President JD Vance would be the key to
unlocking massive savings.
Economists
say this is probably unrealistic
Economists
say Trump’s strategies to meaningfully curb the deficit are unlikely to deliver
the promised results.
The
cost of servicing the national
debt has tripled since 2021 to more than $1 trillion annually, said
Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“President
Trump signed a tax
cut bill that will likely add $5 trillion to 10-year deficits — and
tariffs are offsetting only a small fraction of those costs,” she said. “Budget
deficits are still projected to soar past $4 trillion annually within a decade
under current policies.”
Deficits
are expected to grow over the next decade as the costs of Social
Security and Medicare outstrip tax revenues.
The
10-year U.S. Treasury rate climbed as high as 4.67% in the middle of May and
has since eased as negotiations
over the Iran ceasefire continued — just as rates initially climbed in
2025 because of Trump’s “Liberation
Day” tariffs and then began to decline once Trump backed off the most
extreme increases.
When
Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, broke down
the math tied to rising 30-year Treasury yields, he estimated that 60% of the
increase had come from the expectation that America will continue its outsized
borrowing and the other 40% was tied to the inflation driven by the Iran war
and Trump’s tariffs.
More
Why
the bond market’s message on US debt matters for midterms | AP News
China’s factory activity beats forecasts in May, private survey shows,
despite softer official data
Published Sun, May 31 2026 9:59 PM EDT
BEIJING — China’s manufacturing activity expanded
faster than expected in May, according to a private survey released Monday,
although growth slowed from the previous month and contrasted with softer
official data pointing to weaker momentum in the sector.
The RatingDog China General Manufacturing
Purchasing Managers’ Index, compiled by S&P Global, came in at 51.8, a
touch above the 51.6 expected in a Reuters poll.
The reading was down from April’s 52.2, indicating
a slower pace of improvement in manufacturing conditions. The 50 mark separates
expansion from contraction.
“While the rate of growth eased, it remained among
the highest observed over the past five years,” said Yao Yu, founder of credit
research firm RatingDog.
New export business saw a slight decline in May,
the RatingDog PMI report said, while employment also “contracted marginally.”
Seasonally adjusted input prices fell in May from
the prior month for the first time in half a year, although costs remained
elevated due to higher prices for raw materials and energy, as well as supply
chain disruptions, the report said.
The private survey of Chinese manufacturers noted
optimism for growth over the next 12 months, based partly on “new product
launches, technological breakthroughs and improved production capacity.”
Because it samples a smaller group of
export-oriented manufacturers, the RatingDog survey often differs from the
official manufacturing PMI, which covers a broader segment of China’s
manufacturing sector.
China’s official manufacturing PMI for May fell to
50 in May from 50.3 in April, in line with expectations and its lowest since a
49 print in February, according to data released Sunday.
Overall, the official PMI suggests “subdued
manufacturing sector growth, increased services activity, and continued decline
in the construction industry,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Sunday.
The mixed manufacturing signals come as China’s
broader economy continues to show uneven momentum.
While China’s retail
sales growth hit a 40-month low in April, official figures
showed overall domestic tourism and spending picked up during an extended May 1 holiday. Chinese hotel group H World said
the 10 most popular destinations by occupancy rate were in smaller cities.
Rates tend to be lower in those regions than major cities.
China’s
factory activity beats forecasts in May, private survey shows, despite softer
official data
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section Updates as they get reported.
Warning, I have no way of verifying
this YouTube presentation, but if even halfway accurate, it sounds like a dot
con style crash is coming. Approx. 9
minutes. “And the walls came tumbling down” comes to mind.
Why Tech CEOs Are Quietly Cancelling Their AI Plans
Why Tech CEOs Are Quietly Cancelling Their AI Plans
See
yesterday’s AI article from Goldie’s CEO, in the “In other news” section.
The stock market just did something eerily similar to the dot-com
bubble top in 2000
Published Mon, Jun 1 2026 7:45 AM EDT
The S&P 500 closed at a record on the last trading day of May,
but only a handful of stocks — focused mostly in the AI area — hit their own
all-time highs.
This strange occurrence echoes what happened at the top of dot-com
bubble 26 years ago.
On Friday, just 20 of the index members hit a record. Of those 20,
just seven were not directly related to artificial intelligence.
Michael Hartnett at Bank of America pointed out in a note to end
last week that it was just 20 stocks that hit new highs at the very top of the
internet bubble in March 2000.
While the widely followed strategist said the “speculative price
action” is likely not over yet, this occurrence is the latest sign that it is
nearing. Hartnett believes central banks and rising interest rates will
ultimately spell the end, giving clients a “post-bubble” road map.
The May stock boom was driven largely by semiconductors,
specifically memory chip makers like Micron
Technology, Advanced Micro Devices, SK Hynix and Samsung, which are all valued at or near a
trillion dollars. AMD soared 46% on the month, Micron jumped 88%, Samsung 44%
and SK Hynix 81%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 25% in April and May, its
best two-month stretch in more than two decades.
Narrow bull
A growing number of strategists and investors are concerned that
if this bull market doesn’t start to broaden out, it will ultimately be its
undoing.
Advance-decline lines, which show the number of stocks rising
compared with the number falling, have exhibited a similar trend, surging at
the end of March and then falling back in a bearish sign since the middle of
April.
“Internals have lagged since the initial April surge,” Ari Wald
wrote in a May 23 technical analysis for Oppenheimer.
Only about 55% of S&P 500 constituents were trading above
their 200-day moving average as of May 20, according to BCA Research.
More
The stock market just did
something eerily similar to the dot-com bubble top in 2000
Florida AG sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over AI safety concerns
and alleged harm to users
June 1, 2026
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a lawsuit in
West Palm Beach against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, over the design and
safety of its AI products.
Florida is the first state to sue the company, with the lawsuit
alleging that OpenAI knowingly ignored warnings that harm users and deceives
parents.
The attorney general referenced the shooting at Florida State
University last year and the murders of two University of South Florida
students in April, stating that in both cases, the suspects used ChatGPT before
the crimes.
Florida
AG sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over AI safety concerns and alleged harm to
users
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than
that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Adam Smith
