Market Report.
📈 On Friday, in the face of widespread optimism, we noted in our reports that Israel was the key to a ceasefire between the US and Iran. If the conflict began at Israel’s instigation, it cannot end without Israel’s cooperation, and the conditions demanded by Iran are unacceptable to Israel.
Well, we can now see the weak point in the negotiations: Israel’s objections.
💥 Israel announced yesterday morning that it would renew strikes on Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement that they had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to strike Hezbollah targets in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital. Israel had previously curtailed attacks on Beirut for weeks at the request of the Trump administration.
⚠️ Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi warned that the ceasefire is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, and its violation on one front is a violation on all fronts. He said the United States and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.
⛔ Iran suspended all negotiations in response to the Israeli announcement. Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, reported that Iran’s negotiating team is stopping the exchange of texts and messages with the United States through Pakistan. Tehran said talks will not resume until Israeli operations in Lebanon stop and Israeli forces withdraw from occupied Lebanese territory.
📞 Axios reported that President Trump made an expletive-laden phone call to Prime Minister Netanyahu, after Israel escalated military operations in Lebanon and planned a strike on Beirut.
🗣️ According to U.S. officials briefed on the call, Trump told Netanyahu: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” Trump also accused Netanyahu of ingratitude, referenced his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial, and yelled: “What the fuck are you doing?”
📋 The quotes are a U.S. official’s summary of Trump’s words, not a verbatim transcript. No confirmation or denial came from the White House or Netanyahu’s office in the initial coverage.
✋ Trump pressured Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with Hezbollah and successfully halted the planned Beirut strike, at least temporarily. Netanyahu later signaled strikes could resume if Hezbollah attacks continued.
Trump is losing patience with the deadlock in the conflict.
📣 To give an accurate picture of the situation, we will quote President Trump’s social media post from a few hours ago.
📝 “If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting “I surrender, I surrender” while wildly waving the representative White Flag, and if their entire remaining Leadership signs all necessary “Documents of Surrender,” and admit their defeat to the great power and force of the magnificent U.S.A., The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal (WSJ!), Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the Fake News Media, will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America, it wasn’t even close.
📰 According to CNN, Iran used the tenuous ceasefire to excavate multiple missile sites that were bombed during Operation Epic Fury.
🏗️ Iran cleared the entrances to 50 out of 69 targeted tunnels using basic construction equipment, along with 18 distinct missile production sites. It also repaired roads that had been cratered by bombing to prevent launcher movement, with almost all craters filled and two sites fully repaved.
🚀 U.S. intelligence now estimates that Iran still has over 75 percent of its missile launchers fully available, and constant drone production has continued throughout the ceasefire.
🇺🇸 President Trump has touted the near annihilation of Iran’s arsenal and claimed the rest could be taken out in a day, but peace talks have stalled and the White House shows no urgency to resume bombing. Both sides have settled into a long conflict centered on the Hormuz blockade, each betting on outlasting the other in absorbing economic and political pain.
💡 At the outset of this conflict, we highlighted a theory backed up by Netanyahu’s own words: the possibility that Israel might stand to benefit from the current situation. Netanyahu openly suggested during one of his speeches that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz would not be a problem if export routes were to be rerouted to run directly to the Mediterranean via Israeli territory – naturally, in return for a corresponding toll.
🌍 Israeli goal in the Middle East could be to redirect the transit of global energy resources through its own territory. Control over hydrocarbon supply routes increases the economic and political power of the countries along those routes, and Israel seeks to exploit this dynamic.
🛣️ The idea would be to shift oil exports toward a pipeline route across the Arabian Peninsula to Israeli territory and then through Israeli Mediterranean ports to Europe and Africa.
🛢️ Large oil fields have been discovered in the Israeli sector of the Mediterranean Sea, including the Leviathan field with 1.5 billion barrels of oil, and on the Golan Heights with exceptionally thick layers. This adds to Israel’s interest in controlling regional export flows.
🔒 Israel could insist on an external blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to persuade oil-producing countries that transporting oil via a pipeline through Israeli territory is necessary.
💸 Meanwhile, the financial cost to the U.S. was estimated at 35 to 50 billion dollars per day, alongside rising fuel prices and reputational risk.
📺 President Trump told CNBC he does not care if peace negotiations with Iran are over, saying “I couldn’t care less” and describing the talks as having “started to get very boring.” Speaking by phone yesterday, 2026, he said he thought the Iranians were stalling for time and handled the negotiations poorly.
⛽ He predicted oil will “drop like a rock” in the very near future, citing roughly 1,700 loaded tankers that will act like an “oil gusher.” He insisted Americans will accept higher gas prices once they understand the war is about preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb, though he maintained prices will drop quickly once the conflict ends.
🤝 Trump called on NATO allies to “come in and help us out” since Europe depends on the Strait of Hormuz while the U.S. has more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. However, he said NATO had been “very, very weak and very sad,” offering to help only after the war is over. He stated, “We don’t need NATO,” criticizing Europe as having lost its way on immigration and energy.
Good news in Europe.
🤖 A Reuters AI-assisted analysis of 175 euro zone earnings calls found that only about one third of large companies are raising prices in response to the Iran war. This is a stark contrast to the nearly two thirds that did so after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
📊 Price increases are concentrated among industrial and raw-material firms directly exposed to energy and raw material costs.
📉 The difference reflects a weaker economic backdrop. ECB policymaker Olli Rehn noted that the labour market is less tight, growth is more subdued, and there is no strong fiscal stimulus this time. Inflation was already elevated before the Ukraine war but was just 1.9 percent at the start of the Iran conflict.
⚠️ However, price pressures are still building in some sectors and it is too early to sound the all-clear. Transport firms are adding fuel surcharges that may feed into broader business costs over time, with studies suggesting it can take two to fifteen months for sectoral price rises to filter into overall consumer inflation.
Corporate News:
💻 Nvidia and Microsoft unveiled a new PC processor called the RTX Spark superchip at the Computex conference in Taiwan. CEO Jensen Huang said it would mark a reinvention of the PC, with agentic AI running across all new computers with the chip. The product is expected to hit the market in the fall.
📈 Anthropic confidentially filed its IPO prospectus, setting up a potentially historic share sale. The company’s revenue run rate ballooned to $47 billion, up from $10 billion in 2025, and it recently closed a funding round at a $965 billion valuation.
🌐 SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said the AI revolution is 50 times bigger than the dot-com era. The company announced a 45 billion euro investment, equivalent to about $53 billion, to build AI infrastructure in France. This is part of a larger 75 billion euro program to build 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in the country.
The bubble is here.
📉 According to CNBC, Only 20 stocks in the S&P 500 hit new all-time highs on Friday, the last trading day of May, even as the index itself closed at a record. Most of those stocks were tied to artificial intelligence. Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett pointed out that exactly 20 stocks also hit new highs at the very top of the internet bubble in March 2000.
📈 The May rally was driven largely by memory chip makers. AMD surged 46 percent on the month, Micron jumped 88 percent, Samsung gained 44 percent, and SK Hynix rose 81 percent. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 25 percent over April and May, its best two-month stretch in more than two decades.
⚖️ Market breadth has been extremely narrow. Advance-decline lines fell back in a bearish sign from mid-April, and only about 55 percent of S&P 500 constituents traded above their 200-day moving average as of May 20. BCA A poor breadth is often a sign of underlying market vulnerability.
🔮 Hartnett believes the speculative price action is likely not over yet but is nearing its end. He expects central banks and rising interest rates to ultimately burst the bubble. He advised clients to prepare a post-bubble roadmap, recommending long bonds and a combination of defensive sectors or areas that dramatically underperformed in the final months of the bubble.
Market View.
🧠 Yesterday, there was an interruption in the steady flow of gains in US equity markets. The announcement of a suspension of negotiations between Iran and the US could have knocked the market down, yet we now see the market continuing to rise like a zombie. Mini S&P 500 futures are reaching 7,600 points, and Nasdaq futures remain above 30,500 points, practically a step away from their all-time highs.
💵 The US Dollar Index remains aggressively range-bound. Yesterday, it rose again towards the top of its range, practically reaching 99.40, before pulling back to the current 99 points. This produced zigzag movements in the major pairs against the dollar, which have now stabilised once more at levels similar to yesterday’s, with EUR/USD around 1.1650 and GBP/USD around 1.3480.
📈 In Europe, DAX 40 futures have started positively, climbing to 25,170 points, while Euro Stoxx 50 futures are moving towards the 6,070-point area.
🛢️ The crude oil market saw a sharp upward move on yesterday’s bad news, with spot Brent approaching $97.80 per barrel, but it has since pulled back again to the current $94.45.
🥇 Gold futures prices are once again clustering around the resistance and former support zone of $4,550 per ounce, currently trading at $4,565 per ounce.
₿ Bitcoin lost support around the $72,500 level and has fallen to the current $70,200.
