Baltic
Dry Index. 2818 -98
Brent Crude 92.04
Spot Gold 4203 Spot Silver 64.12
US 2 Year Yield 4.13 -0.02
US Federal Debt. 39.232 trillion
US GDP 32.199 trillion.
If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'.
George Bernard Shaw
If Trump’s hot ceasefire with Iran doesn’t heat up some more today, the big news will likely be the US CPI numbers for May, plus any action on interest rates by the European Central Bank.
Dinosaur Graeme would only point out that a selloff is now taking place in many stocks, several commodities and cryptocurrency.
Raising cash to buy into the SpaceX IPO or something more sinister tied to day 103 of the Strait of Hormuz closure? Where are the hidden losses now piling up?
Caution, they don't ring a bell at the top!
Stock futures slip after U.S. launches
‘self-defense strikes’ against Iran: Live updates
Updated Wed, Jun 10 2026 8:32 PM EDT
U.S. stock futures slipped on Tuesday
night after the U.S. launched
“self-defense strikes” against Iran, in retaliation for the downing of a
helicopter a day earlier.
S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures both shed
0.3%. Futures tied to
the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 161 points, or 0.3%.
Asian markets open lower Wednesday, with
South Korea’s Kospi leading the declines, down over 2%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped
0.71%, while Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was marginally lower.
Oil prices ticked higher after the strike,
and West Texas
Intermediate crude futures were last up roughly 1%, trading around $89 a
barrel.
Tensions in the Middle East ramped up
again on Tuesday evening, after U.S. forces launched strikes against Iran “in
response to yesterday’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter,” U.S. Central
Command said. President Donald Trump had earlier
accused Iran of shooting
down the helicopter, which he said was patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has not directly claimed
responsibility for shooting down the helicopter. However, this latest
development threatens the fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, and
could hinder progress toward a peace deal.
In regular trading Tuesday, chip stocks
sold off again, dragging the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite lower by
0.26% and 0.97%, respectively. On the other hand, the blue-chip Dow rose 86.10 points, or 0.17%.
Tuesday’s rout was an extension of last
week’s pullback, which followed a rally driven by artificial intelligence.
“If we’re talking about the substance of
what we’ve seen over the past few weeks, it’s really been concentrated in that
memory, semiconductor area that’s lifted the market. It’s been the real force
behind everything, and really it’s run so hard that it feels very toppy at this
moment,” said Marta Norton, chief investment
strategist for Empower Investments, on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Tuesday
afternoon.
“So, does this mean that there’s some sort
of fundamental deterioration?” she added. “I’m not so sure about that, but
certainly there seems to be stretched sentiment that we’re getting some sort of
correction too.”
May’s consumer
price index reading will
be released at 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning. The Dow Jones consensus
predicts the index will show inflation running at a 4.2% annual rate and an
expected monthly gain of 0.5%. This would mark the first time the consumer
price index, or CPI, has crossed the 4% threshold since May 2023. It would also
be the highest reading since April of that year.
Chewy reports earnings before
Wednesday’s opening bell.
Stock market
today: Live updates
Tehran targets Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan after
U.S. strikes Iranian assets
Published Tue, Jun 9 2026 12:44 PM EDT
Iran reportedly targeted Gulf countries
after the U.S. launched attacks on the Middle Eastern nation earlier on Tuesday
stateside.
Jordan’s military said it intercepted five
Iranian missiles, according
to AP,
while Bahrain sounded alarms and Kuwait
fired air defenses in response.
U.S. forces on Tuesday evening launched
strikes against Iran “in response
to yesterday’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter,” U.S. Central Command
said.
The “self-defense strikes” are “a
proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” Centcom said in an X
post.
In a post later on
Tuesday stateside, Centcom said that it had completed its military action,
having hit Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar
sites near the Strait of Hormuz.
The latest clash undermines the U.S.
ceasefire with Iran — which remains nominally active despite numerous outbreaks
of fighting — and could put even a temporary peace deal even farther out of
reach.
The strikes were ordered by
President Donald Trump, who said earlier
Tuesday that Iran shot down an American helicopter that was patrolling
the Strait of Hormuz, and that the
U.S. would retaliate.
The two pilots involved in the attack “are
safe and uninjured,” Trump wrote in a Truth
Social post.
“Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
----
Iran has not directly claimed responsibility for shooting down the
helicopter, and Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported that no offensive
military operations had been carried out in the strait in the last 24 hours.
“Foreign forces in proximity to our
territory are at constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain
accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire,” Iranian Foreign Minister
Abbas Araghchi said in a statement on X on Tuesday afternoon, prior to the U.S
strikes.
“To reduce risk, best solution is for them
to leave,” Araghchi said, adding, “We prefer language of diplomacy but speak
other languages too.”
More
Tehran targets
Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan after U.S. strikes Iranian assets
Stock Market News, June 9, 2026: Dow ends the day
higher, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq close lower due to tech selloff; oil
prices fall after Trump says Iran deal could be reached in 'two or three days'
Investors rotated out of tech stocks and
into more defensive sectors on Tuesday
9 June 2026 at 5:45 pm New York Time
Subscription required.
Oil choppy after U.S. completes Iran strikes
following Apache helicopter attack
Published Tue, Jun 9 2026 9:39 PM EDT
Oil prices rose on Wednesday after the
U.S. launched military strikes against Iran, raising concerns that renewed
hostilities could threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. crude oil futures for
July delivery added 0.74% to $88.89 per barrel, paring gains after jumping over
1%. Brent futures, the
international benchmark, for August delivery, rose 0.82% to $92.20 per barrel.
The U.S. military said
it had completed strikes against Iranian military targets near the Strait
of Hormuz.
U.S. forces carried out strikes on Iran on
Tuesday night after an American Army Apache helicopter was shot down a day
earlier, according to U.S. Central Command. Centcom described the operation as
a defensive and measured response to what it called Iranian aggression.
President Donald Trump said earlier
Tuesday that Iran had brought down a U.S. helicopter conducting patrols near
the Strait of Hormuz and indicated that the U.S. would retaliate.
“The two pilots involved in the attack are
safe and uninjured,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nevertheless, the United
States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
Rystad Energy said the shutdown of 11.8
million barrels a day of production across six Gulf producers has created
the most severe oil
supply disruption in
modern history. The consultancy estimates cumulative production losses have
reached 1 billion barrels and warned that each additional month of conflict
could erase another 350 million barrels of output.
Oil price: U.S.
completes Iran strikes after Apache helicopter attack
In other news. Well, if he says so.
Trump says Iran deal could be reached in ‘two or
three days’ and Strait of Hormuz will reopen ‘immediately’
Published Tue, Jun 9 2026 3:40 AM EDT
U.S. President Donald Trump said on
Tuesday that a deal to end the war in Iran could be reached in “two or three
days,” and that the critical Strait of Hormuz would reopen “immediately” after
such a deal.
Speaking to reporters after attending the NBA
Finals in
New York, Trump said that the two parties are in the final stages of a “very,
very good deal that will not in any way allow nuclear weapons”.
The fragile ceasefire in the Middle East
frayed over the weekend, as Iran and Israel traded strikes for the first time
since it came into effect in mid-April.
The Islamic Republic fired missiles toward
northern Israel after accusing Jerusalem of violating the truce through its
strikes on Lebanon, which included an attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs on
Sunday. Israel said it carried out a “large-scale strike on strategic defense
systems” in response.
Iran’s military then announced it had
ceased strikes against Israel, but Tehran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told
CNBC that it would resume hostilities if the Israel Defense Forces continue to
attack Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said the war
against Iran and
its Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah “has not yet ended,” insisting both are
weaker than ever.
Trump has previously promised an imminent
resolution to the conflict, only for hostilities to resume later. He initially
said fighting would last four to six weeks. It crossed the 100-day mark on Sunday.
Trump told reporters that the pilots of a
U.S. military Apache helicopter that went down on Monday near the Strait of
Hormuz “are fine.”
He added that there was “nobody injured”
and that the administration would release a report on Tuesday. The cause is
unknown.
Before the confrontation between Israel
and Iran deescalated on Monday, Trump posted to Truth Social that negotiations
were still “proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.”
He added that an ongoing U.S. blockade of
Iranian ports in the Gulf of Oman will not be lifted “until a ‘Final Deal’ is
reached.”
Trump says Iran
war deal could be reached in 'two to three days'
Trump claims Iran peace deal imminent for 38th
time as promised breakthrough fails to materialize again
President Donald Trump claims a peace deal
with Iran is only "two or three" days away, promising it will halt
Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions and immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz to
global shipping despite saying the same thing 37 times in the past
11:50 ET, 09 Jun 2026 Updated 12:12 ET, 09
Jun 2026
President Donald Trump claimed that a
peace deal with Iran is just "two or three" days away, asserting it
would prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons and reopen the Strait
of Hormuz.
However, this is not even the first or
second time the president has made
such a claim. It is, in fact, the 38th time that the president claimed a deal
was coming. In April, the president commented that the two countries were
"very far along," but needed two weeks for “the Agreement to be
finalized and consummated.”
He concluded by saying that “it is an
Honor to have this long-term problem close to resolution.” Of course, there was
no resolution; the president did spend the next two months hinting that a deal
was on the verge of happening.
----Including the time during the
ceasefire, the president has reportedly announced a deal with Iran
approximately 38 times. Trump's deal-touting began in March, just a month into
the war.
The president has maintained that line
across the month right up until Monday night. Speaking to reporters at Madison
Square Garden on Monday, Trump revealed that Washington and Tehran had been
going "back and forth." He stated, "They were going back and
forth [with strikes], and now they both agreed, through me, to stop, and now
we're in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal."
Trump maintained that the proposed
agreement would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and would reopen
the Strait of Hormuz. "The strait will open up right away," he
insisted, adding, "It'll open up immediately upon signing."
More
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians.
The
May inflation numbers are due out Wednesday morning. Here’s what to expect
Inflation
numbers out Wednesday are expected to cross another unpleasant threshold as the
cost of living continues to climb for U.S. consumers.
If
the Wall Street consensus is correct, the consumer price
index is
expected to show inflation running at a 4.2% annual rate off an expected 0.5%
monthly gain in May. That would mark the first time the CPI has passed 4% since
May 2023 and would be the highest reading since April of that year.
Of
course, much of the rise in the headline number, which was at just 2.4% a year
ago, can be attributed to the energy surge resulting
from the Iran war.
However,
even core prices, which exclude food and energy, are projected to post a 2.9%
annual reading after rising 0.3% in May, according to Dow Jones.the
Inflation
burst
In
fact, worries are accelerating that the burst of inflation
is broadening,
as the jump in oil prices starts to spread through the economy and raise expectations that
inflation isn’t dissipating anytime soon.
“It’s
not just an oil story, it’s a money supply story, and it’s increasingly an AI
story,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab.
“So this is a broader inflation problem than just energy, meaning that we
probably still have somewhat sticky inflation.”
Sonders
added that “a lot of this skittishness” from investors is about inflation, so
“something worse than expected probably doesn’t sit well with the equity
market.”
The
Trump administration has made the case that inflation will come down quickly
once the fighting in the Middle East settles down.
However,
Sonders advised against counting on that with so much damage already done to
supply.
“Even
if there would be a quick resolution to the war, you probably wouldn’t see oil
prices come down to prior lows, because there’s been so much disruption to
production,” she said. “That’s not something that a switch can just be turned
back on.”
Annual
headline inflation was 3.8% in April while the core rate stood at 2.8%.
The
Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the report at 8:30 a.m. ET.
The May inflation
numbers are due out Wednesday morning. Here's what to expect
U.S.
Winter Wheat Conditions Are the Worst Since 2006
Published
on June 9, 2026
According
to the latest data from the USDA, the nation’s winter wheat crop is in its
worst condition since 2006.
In
its Crop
Progress report released
Monday, the department rated 46% of the crop poor or very poor, which is the
highest combined percentage since June 2006.
It’s
yet to be seen whether this season’s crop will surpass 48% poor or very poor,
the highest percentage of poor or very poor winter wheat recorded by the USDA
since as far back as the fall of 1998. That percentage was reached in June
2006.
One-fifth
of the U.S. winter wheat crop was rated very poor, and about one-fourth was
rated poor. Most of the rest was rated fair (29%) or good (21%). Only 4% was
rated excellent.
The
condition of the crop across the top 18 states has been in a steady decline
since the first Crop Progress report of the season was released on April 6.
States
With Worst Wheat
For
five of the top 18 winter wheat-growing states, at least 57% of their crop was
rated poor or very poor according to the latest data. Here’s a closer look.
Nebraska
Nebraska
farmers planted 900,000 acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2026, according to
USDA’s Prospective
Plantings report.
Nebraska’s
winter wheat is in the worst shape of all top states. In the latest Crop
Progress report, USDA rated 82% of the crop poor or very poor. Fourteen percent
was rated fair, and 4% was rated good. None of the crop was rated
excellent.
Colorado
Colorado
farmers planted 2.05 million acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2026,
according to the Prospective Plantings report.
USDA
rated 65% of Colorado’s winter wheat poor or very poor. Twenty-eight percent
was rated fair, and just 7% was rated good/excellent.
Texas
Texas
farmers planted 5.7 million acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2026,
according to the Prospective Plantings report.
USDA
rated 65% of Texas’s winter wheat poor or very poor. Twenty-three percent was
rated fair, and 12% was rated good/excellent.
----Kansas
Kansas
farmers planted 7 million acres of winter wheat for harvest in 2026, according
to the Prospective Plantings report. That’s the most of all top winter-wheat
growing states.
USDA
rated 57% of Kansas’s winter wheat poor or very poor. Twenty-nine percent was
rated fair, and 14% was rated good. None of the crop was rated excellent.
U.S. Winter Wheat
Conditions Are the Worst Since 2006
China’s May shipments to U.S. clock 5-year high growth at 35% as overall
exports jump on tech boost
Published Mon, Jun 8 2026 10:45 PM EDT
China’s trade growth held up better than expected
in May, as surging AI-related exports helped buffer the economy against
disruption from the Iran war, with U.S.-bound shipment logging the strongest
jump in five years.
Overall exports rose 19.4% from a year earlier in
U.S. dollar value terms, customs data showed Tuesday, accelerating
from the 14.1% gain in April. Economists polled by Reuters had pegged growth at
15%.
“The war is boosting demand for green exports, such
as electric vehicles, batteries, solar products, and AI-related technology
goods,” said Sheana Yue, senior economist at Oxford Economics, expecting the
outperformance in high-tech product export growth to persist.
Overall exports of integrated circuits soared 110%
in terms of value from a year earlier, in part driven by unit price surges.
Outbound shipment of high-tech goods surged 50% in May from a year ago, while
imports jumped 47% by value.
Shipments to the U.S. soared nearly 35.4% in May
from a year earlier, the highest growth since March 2021, according to Wind
Information, extending a rebound following a long streak of double-digit
declines for the most of last year, pressured by President Donald Trump’s
tariffs.
China’s tariff disadvantage vis-à-vis Southeast
Asia nations has also narrowed, providing a tailwind for exports, said Tianchen
Xu, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Any additional tariffs
imposed on Chinese goods under Trump’s Section 301 review will likely be
smaller than those facing rival exporters, giving Chinese manufacturers a
further competitive edge, Xu added.
Import growth momentum continued to build,
expanding 27.4% in May, picking up from the 25.3% rise in April, beating
economists’ forecast for a 25% growth. That boosted the trade surplus to $105.4
billion in May.
In the first five months this year, China’s import
growth has accelerated sharply, rising 24.5% from a year earlier, outpacing
15.5% export gains over the same period, narrowing the trade surplus from a
year earlier.
The import surge has largely been driven by higher
input costs and narrowly concentrated in select categories, particularly
semiconductor chips and gold, but “hardly a sign of rebalancing,” according to
economists at Bank of America Global Research.
“With weak overall demand and ongoing domestic
substitution, genuine trade rebalancing remains distant,” BofA economists said,
adding that the export boom has reduced Beijing’s urgency for meaningful policy
stimulus.
China’s economy has shown signs of faltering
following a strong first-quarter. Growth
slowed across the board in April, with industrial
production and retail sales posting their weakest gains in years. In May, the
official gauge on manufacturing activity also slowed to
50, the threshold separating expansion from contraction.
Stockpiling and AI boost
Chinese exporters have so far weathered the fallout
from the Middle East conflict, with overseas buyers rushing to lock in supplies
before energy costs climb further. But economists have warned the tailwind may
be short-lived — once overseas stockpiling momentum fades, sluggish domestic
consumption will be unable to fill the gap.
More
China's May
exports, imports top forecast as AI boom offset Iran war drag
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.
Electric vehicle giant BYD predicts 80% of China car sales will
soon be electric
Published Tue, Jun 9 2026 2:52 AM EDT
At a time when electric vehicle sales growth in China has been
slowing, BYD expects
the country’s EV market to expand — quite in contrast to smaller rival Nio that
recently said the industry’s “golden
era” was over.
“With all the innovation technology introduced to the market,
China’s market very quickly will push to ... close to 80% in EV penetration,”
BYD’s Executive Vice President Stella Li told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal on Monday.
Thanks to state support and a flood of car options, the
penetration rate of hybrid and battery-only vehicles has grown rapidly in just
a few years, exceeding half of new
passenger cars sold in 2024 and a record 62.9% last month,
according to the Chinese Passenger Car Association.
The U.S. electric car penetration rate remains at
just around 10%, while that figure is roughly 25% globally, the International
Energy Agency said last month.
U.S. tariffs of 100% on China-made electric cars have restricted
local sales. BYD along with some other firms was put on the
Pentagon’s list of Chinese military-affiliated companies on Monday. The EV
maker did not respond to a request for comment.
But BYD is optimistic about the domestic market, banking on
improved battery technology.
Domestic demand for BYD’s EVs now stands at around double what the
company can currently deliver, Li said, thanks to its fast-charging
technology that is reportedly capable of achieving a 70% charge in just
five minutes.
Sales of gas-powered cars in China plunged by 39% in
May from a year ago, the CPCA said Monday, citing the impact of
higher oil prices amid ongoing hostilities in the Middle East.
Looking ahead, Li expects the next phase of competition to likely
center on driver-assist features.
BYD on May 28 expanded insurance coverage for “L2+”
driver-assist users, which Li said could boost customer utilization by 5 percentage
points to at least 95%. The company also revealed its own driver-assist
chip.
For now, Li said BYD would largely use Nvidia’s
driver-assist chipsets, even as the automaker employs roughly
7,000 engineers for semiconductor development. That’s just a fraction of the
over 869,600 workers the automaker employs, as per its 2025
annual report.
More
Electric vehicle
giant BYD predicts 80% of China car sales will soon be electric
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks
(usdebtclock.org)
Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation.
Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton Friedman
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