Zero Rss

Stellar 10Y Auction Stops Through Thanks To Surge In Foreign Demand

After yesterday's mediocre 3Y auction, moments ago the Treasury held a stellar 10Y reopening (of cusip QQ7). 

The sale of $39 billion in 9 Year-11 Month paper priced at a high yield of 4.538%, up from 4.468% last month, and 0.1bp through the 4.539% When Issued. This was the first stop through following 4 sequential tails for the tenor.

The bid to cover rose from 2.402 to 2.565, well above the six-auction average and the highest since Sept 25.

Internals were impressive: indirects surged to 78.21% from 63.95%, which was one of the 5 highest on record; the last time we saw such feverish foreign demand was in Sept 25.

And with Directs sliding to just 9.5%, the lowest since January, Dealers were left with 12.32%, far below the 21.39 recent average.

Overall, this was a stellar 10Y auction, a big improvement to yesterday's 3Y (which wasn't bad), and a sign from the bond market at least that today's CPI was nothing to be concerned about. 

 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 13:32

Goldman Breaks Down Build America 250 Impact On Construction Stocks

The Build America 250 bill is a proposed transportation infrastructure funding package covering federal projects between 2027 and 2031 and would succeed the Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which expires in the coming months.

Goldman analysts, led by Ben Rada Martin, stated that the Build America 250 bill has cleared House committee approval with limited amendments, providing greater clarity around $580 billion for highways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure.

One main point from the Goldman note is that Build America 250 is not another IIJA-style boom. For the Federal Highway Administration, Martin sees only about an 8% nominal increase relative to IIJA levels, after IIJA delivered a more than 50% federal funding uplift.

Martin pointed out that bridge funding jumped by about 29%, while rail and transit programs face reductions. He expects public highway spending to grow by 6% in 2026 and 5% in 2027, though much of that reflects inflation rather than real volume growth. After adjusting for construction cost inflation, he expects flat-to-slightly negative volume trends.

"Nominal uplift, with a mix shift to bridges, transit sees cuts: We go through the 1,000-page draft document and amendments to date, with the recent bill implying a broad continuation in spending with a category mix shift toward bridges (+29%), while rail and transit administrations see cuts," Martin wrote in a note published on Monday.

Highways in detail - Limited expansion, especially net of inflation

Goldman's prediction model indicates that public construction should continue to grow, but at a slower pace after a very strong 2021 to 2025 period.

Martin said the stock impact of the Build America 250 bill on construction-linked companies is viewed as neutral to slightly negative.

Engineering and Construction - Neutral/Mix:

• US (GVA, AECOM, J): We view the bill as broadly net neutral for GVA (diversified civil contractor), as funding implies flat to modest real volume declines. For Jacobs and AECOM (engineering and design firms), we see a modest negative impact, reflecting cuts to rail and transit. While state and local infrastructure accounts for ~25–30% of revenue for both companies, we believe they are relatively overweight transit versus traditional infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, tunnels).
• EU (Ferrovial): The bill is likely to be neutral for Ferrovial's construction division - with Webber and Ferrovial Construction largely exposed to the broad US infrastructure segment, across bridges, highways, waterworks, and energy. When it comes to future infrastructure projects (P3), Ferrovial could benefit from lower government infrastructure spend, given lower crowding out effects increasing private market opportunities and ROI.

Lightside building materials

• (EU - Sika, SGO) - Neutral: Construction Chemicals are used in more complex engineering projects and in greater quantities in infrastructure refurbishment. Hence, we see the uplift in funding towards Bridge renovations as a positive, while see this to be offset by lower funding in transport and transit related categories. Sika is the most exposed with US Infra representing c.7% of Group (GSe).

Heavyside building materials - Neutral/Mixed:

• Cement (EU - Buzzi, Heidelberg, Latam - CX) - Neutral: Cement in our view is relatively project agnostic between bridges and highways. Hence, we see neutral implications, with strong Bridge spend offset by lower transport funding and limited uplift in nominal highway spend.
• Aggregates (EU - Heidelberg, Latam - CX) - Slight negative: Given only a small nominal funding increase for highways (key aggregate end-market), and expectations of continued pricing growth (c. +MSD) and inflation in the category, we believe levels of volume growth may be muted. While other spend categories of growth (Bridges) are less aggregate intensive.

The understanding here is that Build America 250 keeps federal infrastructure spending ongoing, but it should not be viewed as a new infrastructure supercycle.

Professional subscribers can read the full GS construction note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 13:00

The IPO Boom: Where Will The Money Come From?

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The media hype surrounding SpaceX’s upcoming mid-June initial public offering (IPO) is immense. The company recently filed its S-1 with the SEC, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and a capital raise of up to $75 billion. Some believe its valuation could rise to $2 trillion after the IPO. In its wake, Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT) confidentially submitted IPO registration statements to the SEC. Expectations are that both AI model companies will enter the market within the next 3 to 6 months, with rumored valuations approaching or exceeding $1 trillion each. Stripe, the quickly growing payments company, is rumored to be on the IPO docket as well, with a valuation that could exceed $150 billion. Consequently, the coming IPO boom will have wide-reaching impacts.

The IPO market, which has been stagnant for the last four years, is bubbling with excitement. The headlines surrounding the IPOs are hyperbolic, banker fees are enormous, and social media is teeming with bullish sentiment on how high the new shares may trade after going public.

While IPO boom talk is great for clickbait, nobody is asking the most important question. Where will the money come from?

Putting Context To The IPO Boom

To understand the size of the coming IPO boom, some historical context is necessary. Prior to the pandemic, the US IPO market raised approximately $30 billion per year. In late 2020 and throughout 2021, the SPAC boom led to a surge in IPO offerings. Since then, however, as we share below, IPO issuance has been relatively lean.

The 2026 pipeline is shaping up to be the second-largest in at least the last ten years. SpaceX alone is raising up to $75 billion per its SEC filing. Add OpenAI’s expected cash raise of $60 billion, Anthropic at $15 to $20 billion, and Stripe around $10 billion, and the pipeline of known IPOs coming to market is approximately $160-$165 billion. Moreover, the total market valuation of these deals could surpass $4 trillion. Assuming no other deals come onto the market, the four deals would be larger than the last four years’ worth of deals combined.  

Dilution vs. Capital Absorption

Some pundits are using the word “dilution” to describe the impact of the IPOs on the market. While not necessarily misused, the term is most often used to describe what happens when a publicly traded company issues new shares in the market, diluting the value of existing shares. Simply, existing shareholders who do not buy new shares see their ownership percentage decline.

Given that the expected stock offerings are IPOs rather than add-on offerings by a publicly traded company, the term “dilution” is not appropriate to describe the upcoming offerings. The more accurate term is capital absorption.

Capital absorption is the process by which large new stock offerings pull money out of existing financial markets, as investors sell existing holdings or redirect cash to purchase newly issued shares. While it is true that someone must buy the shares being sold to fund an IPO purchase, that buyer, in most cases, is simply recycling existing market capital rather than introducing new money. Thus, while an IPO is not dilutive to the stock being offered, it is dilutive to the financial markets, as the total investible dollars, in theory, remain unchanged; they just get spread out a little more thinly.

Where Does IPO Capital Come From?

IPO capital comes from three primary sources, each with consequences for existing market participants.

The first is institutional rebalancing. A large asset manager running an equity portfolio that wants meaningful exposure to a new IPO must trim existing positions and potentially use existing cash or raise new funds to create room for the new holding. While selling by any manager is unlikely to create a ripple in the market, because the stocks, bonds, and other assets they sell vary widely, simultaneous selling across thousands of institutional portfolios can have an impact.

The second is retail liquidation. Similarly, individual investors who want to participate in an IPO need cash to do so. Some of that cash may come from savings, but like most institutional accounts, they will raise cash by selling existing equity holdings. Keep in mind that every retail investor who liquidates an S&P 500 index fund to buy SpaceX or another IPO is, de facto, a seller of all of the stocks in the index.

The third source is capital from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and foreign institutional investors, who are expanding their equity holdings. Often, their funds represent new money entering the financial markets rather than a rotation within them. The participation of these funds might reduce the impact of IPOs on other stocks and financial assets.  

The net effect of all three sources is that existing holdings largely fund new ones. At the scale being contemplated in 2026, that rotation is large enough to create a meaningful headwind across financial markets.

Index Inclusion Impacts

The direct capital absorption from the IPOs themselves is significant, but it may not be the largest structural effect. The more consequential impact comes from index inclusion.

Passive index funds and other passive strategies do not choose their holdings. When a stock is added to the index they track, they must buy it in proportion to its weight in the index. Typically, this is a minor event, as most IPOs are small enough that inclusion is minimal. The 2026 IPOs are different.

Consider the top ten S&P 500 holdings shown in the table below. SpaceX at $1.75 trillion, combined with Anthropic and OpenAI at roughly $1 trillion each, represents approximately $3.75 trillion in total market weight. That is nearly equal to Apple’s entire market capitalization, the second-largest stock in the index. An S&P 500 index fund adding all three IPOs would need to proportionally reduce the weight of every other holding in the portfolio to make room for those additions.

Fortunately, the impact will happen in waves over time. SpaceX’s inclusion will trigger the first wave of forced rebalancing. Anthropic and OpenAI, expected to follow within months, each trigger their own.

Index Inclusion Timing

The impact of index inclusion, as discussed above, depends heavily on timing, and the timeline is accelerating in ways that are concerning for existing index investors.

Index providers have a financial incentive to include these large companies quickly. The more assets that track their indexes, the more licensing revenue they generate. An index that excludes the most valuable and talked-about companies in the market risks losing relevance and assets to competing benchmarks. That incentive is resulting in a significant rewriting of the rules by the indexing companies.

Nasdaq reacted first. In early May 2026, it revised its methodology to allow any newly listed company with a market cap in the top 40 to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days, eliminating the minimum float requirement entirely. Under those rules, SpaceX could be a Nasdaq 100 constituent before most investors have had time to assess its first earnings report.

The S&P 500 is moving more slowly but in the same direction. S&P Dow Jones Indices has proposed cutting the seasoning window from 12 months to 6 and waiving the four-quarter profitability requirement for companies above a certain market-cap threshold. Even under that accelerated timeline, a mid-June SpaceX IPO would not reach S&P 500 eligibility until around December 2026. Thus, the largest wave of forced passive buying may still be months away.

The market impacts begin at the IPO and may be felt for many months after.

Summary

Think of the stock market as a jar full of marbles. For the new SpaceX and other marbles to fit in the jar, either the jar must be enlarged, or some of the other marbles must shrink. 

Given the current monetary environment, the jar, or available capital, is unlikely to grow significantly. The Fed is no longer providing the flood of liquidity that enabled the easy digestion of the SPAC boom in 2020 and 2021. Rates are higher, savings rates are lower, and the equity market is already trading at elevated valuations. Simply put, there isn’t much extra liquidity.  Thus, the other option is for the collective market cap of everything else to decline.

In reality, there will be some shrinkage of marbles and an enlargement of the jar. The extent of both will help determine how the IPO boom is received and its impact on other stocks. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 12:40

Number Of US Home Sellers Hits Highest Level In 6 Years In May: Report

Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times,

Homebuyers held more leverage over sellers in May, with sellers outpacing prospective buyers in 35 of the nation’s 50 most populous metropolitan markets, according to a June 9 report from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The number of sellers reached its highest level since 2020.

Home sellers outnumbered buyers by nearly 47 percent for the month, up slightly from 46.4 percent in April, but retreating slightly from the peak of 49.5 percent in December 2025, Redfin researchers said.

The numbers are in stark contrast to 2021, when there were 36.4 percent fewer sellers than buyers as mortgage rates under 3 percent sparked a buying frenzy.

A typical buyer’s market has 10 percent more sellers than buyers, which gives prospective buyers greater negotiating power since there are an abundance of homes from which to choose. 

“While the gap between homebuyers and sellers has narrowed slightly since the end of last year, house hunters still have far more negotiating power and less pressure to make rushed decisions,” Redfin senior economist Asad Khan said.

“Buyers in most of the country can be selective and ask for concessions, while sellers still need to price competitively to stand out.”

There were more than 1.48 million sellers in May, up by 0.4 percent from the previous month and the highest number of home listings since 2020, Redfin noted. On the other side of the equation, just 1.01 million buyers were looking for new residences.

Sellers entered the market in greater numbers in April in part due to a slight easing in mortgage rates, but buying demand compressed in May as mortgage rates crept higher, Redfin noted. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for the week ending June 4 was 6.48 percent, Freddie Mac reported. At the end of May, however, that rate hit a year-high at 6.53 percent. 

Existing home sales increased by 3.2 percent in May, while total for-sale inventory ticked up by 3.2 percent, the National Association of Realtors reported. Homebuying may be slightly slower through the final two quarters of the year, however, as interest rates are expected to remain unchanged until the summer of 2027, Goldman Sachs researchers said. Elevated mortgage rates reduce homeowner affordability.

Multiple Sun Belt metros lead the nation in seller imbalance. The strongest buyers’ market was Nashville, Tennessee, which had 17,494 hopeful sellers versus 7,614 prospective buyers, an imbalance of 129.8 percent.

Miami, Florida, had 122.3 percent more sellers than buyers (19,426 to 8,740), followed by three Texas cities: Austin at 116 percent (18,281 to 8,462), Houston at 110.8 percent (45,968 to 21,809), and San Antonio at 107.5 percent (19,552 to 9,423).

Buyers outnumbered sellers in a handful of markets, creating more favorable conditions for purchasers, Redfin stated. Nassau County, New York, had 38.3 percent more buyers than sellers, Milwaukee had 29.1 percent, and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, had 24.9 percent. Sellers in those markets can benefit from higher sale prices, multiple bids, fewer concessions, and reduced time on market, according to Freddie Mac.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 12:00

Taiwan Test Fires US Mobile Launchers Into Waters Directly Facing China For First Time

China's PLA military has long been known to intimidate and threaten the self-ruled island of Taiwan, mainly with large military exercises which sometime encircle it partially or completely, or else with a heavy naval boat presence in the Strait of Hormuz.

Taiwan's military often reacts by scrambling its own fighter jets to closely monitor the PLA maneuvers - seen as a natural defensive and reactive move. But this week, in a rare moment, Taiwan is finally doing some proactive flexing of its own.

EPA-EFE

"Taiwan fired U.S. mobile missile launchers into the strategic waters directly facing China for the first time, sending a message of resolve to Beijing and Washington," The Wall Street Journal reports.

This involved over 30 test rocket launches via truck-mounted High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. Importantly, the launch site was an area near a river mouth on Taiwan's western coast.

"This is sending a message to the Chinese that they are going to get hit hard if they try to come across the strait—and will end up with far fewer ships than they started with," Grant Newsham, a retired US Marine colonel who served in several Indo-Pacific roles, told WSJ.

The WSJ continues with further context:

The drill was the highlight of two days of military exercises showcasing Taiwan’s preparations to combat an amphibious invasion. China considers democratically self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and hasn’t ruled out potentially using force to absorb the island.

...Such exercises also serve as a signal to Washington that Taiwan is committed to defending itself and deserves U.S. support, with a $14 billion U.S. arms package currently on hold.

Back in April, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed cross-strait relations: "All sons and daughters of China share the same Chinese roots and the same Chinese spirit. This originates from blood ties and is deeply embedded in our history – it cannot be forgotten and cannot be erased," he said at the time.

Officially, Biejing seeks a 'peaceful reunification' of the independent island to the mainland, while many Washington officials fear it could at any point launch an outright invasion and political takeover.

WATCH: Taiwan conducted its first HIMARS live-fire on its western coast, the primary PLA invasion corridor.

32 of 36 planned rockets fired; 4 misfires under investigation.

Previous HIMARS drills were on the east coast. pic.twitter.com/9Z1xPWMgIK

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 10, 2026

But the reality remains that any PLA direct military intervention would likely be in response to a provocation, and wouldn't just materialize out of thin air. Beijing has at times warned that the growing billions of dollars in arms that Washington has been providing Taiwan could be just such a provocation. 

Xi's China has also been very alarmed at the growing (direct) US military footprint in its own backyard, given the presence of American military advisers, said to be present in some of Taiwan's small islands which lie close to the Chinese mainland.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 11:05

Peacefire

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Welcome to the ‘peacefire’. After Israel and Iran were pulled back from the brink of new war by Trump on Monday, Wednesday morning Asia time saw him then strike Iran, and it fire at US bases in the Gulf, in response to Tehran downing a US Apache helicopter. It appears the US hit radar and missile/drone facilities around and in the Strait of Hormuz while Iran didn’t hit anything due to its missiles being intercepted.

Looking at the areas the US struck in Iran last night, one plausible explanation is that they targeted the infrastructure Iran uses to control shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. In effect, they may have hit the “toll booth” and related facilities — including military/security… https://t.co/xq6OwcEQbV

— Anas Alhajji (@anasalhajji) June 10, 2026

It seems both sides can now attack each other on a limited/proportional scale under a ‘ceasefire’ while peace negotiations continue… which Trump says are now in the “final throes”, and cynics point out such finality is always thrown further into the future.

The latest suggestion there is that Iran may dilute its highly enriched uranium stockpile rather than destroying or handing it over, which would be a serious US climbdown if so; that’s as Trump elsewhere mused that he might set up a Marshall Plan for Iran – but would want half their oil in return.

On Iran, TRUMP tells @ABC: “Somebody's going to have to build all that infrastructure, new bridges, new this, new that, new power plants… they're talking about a trillion dollars, probably more… that's why we'll probably get involved in rebuilding.”

“But, we’ll get half their…

— Akayla Gardner (@gardnerakayla) June 9, 2026

Yet allowing Iran to keep its nuclear potential is not going to be acceptable to Israel, meaning no long-term peace in the region whatever the US decides. Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack Hezbollah, so far to no promised retaliation from Iran. As noted yesterday, that points to Iran’s failure to link Lebanon to its own conflict and to force Israel to stop hitting its proxy there. It goes without saying that the latest US strikes against it further underline that Tehran is not as in control of all elements of this crisis as some media and analyst takes would have it: this ‘peacefire’ arguably suits the US more than Iran.

Furthermore, note oil had slid ahead of the latest attacks after the US energy secretary said Hormuz transits are ‘meaningfully’ climbing. Crucially, there is evidence suggesting the US Navy is ushering more oil through Hormuz, with transponders off, than official data on ship movements show. Indeed, both the UAE and Kuwait are now offering crude to Asia again, while Saudi jet fuel supply to Europe is higher than before the Hormuz closure (first discussed here "As Gulf States Plan Bypass Pipelines, US Military Is Quietly Helping Ships Cross Hormuz"). That may not get much fanfare, but it is extremely significant if so.

Of course, oil then climbed after the US strikes on Iran - and a Hormuz reopening date beyond what we already expected (September) was just flagged. Trump had echoed our thinking when talking about Labor Day, September 7, as a possible reopening date, but yesterday Vice-President Vance noted it could take “weeks” or even “months” to get to a deal - but one will “absolutely” happen before the mid-term elections. That means November! Of course, if more oil is getting out of Hormuz, how destructive that extended closure timeline will prove for the global economy is unclear – but the tail risks aren’t eliminated.

Elsewhere in geopolitics, Taiwan’s opposition leader told the US and China not to use her country as ‘pawn’. Recall Bloomberg yesterday claimed a $10 trillion price tag if problems emerge there. How many plan Bs are being put in place on that risk basis?

In geopolitics-adjacent geoeconomics, the EU wants to use African solar power for its own energy future – which will logically require not just up to €100bn in investment there, and Africa not wanting that power for its own economy, but an EU ability to physically protect such installations in a region plagued by Islamist attacks and Russian influence in places. That could therefore cost more than €100bn.

Meanwhile, Germany announced the planned Franco-German fighter jet scheme dead, and Airbus flagged plans for a German-led alliance to replace it. There are also suggestions the UK will be forced to cut its contribution to a proposed UK-Italy-Japan fighter jet and cancel its new Navy destroyers if they don’t further hike taxes, which would be politically damaging. Who could have known that massive rearmament is very expensive and tricky to coordinate?

In related technology issues, Brussels has ordered Meta to open up WhatsApp to rival AI agents, as the White House reined in its new AI-testing unit while Anthropic released the new ‘Mythos-class’ model to the general public ‘with guardrails’. That’s as the Wall Street Journal notes Wall Street is enthusiastically funding AI in any way possible, and Europe’s ASML warned the EU against politically directing chip supplies as part of its AI plans.

In markets, the Korean KOSPI was down 4.5% today after being up 8.2% Tuesday after being down 8.3% on Monday (and 5.5% on Friday).

The US 10-year yield was at 4.53%, not yet at the level requiring a new Iran deal story from Axios.

Wall Street is embracing the crypto it once feared, according to Axios - as Reuters notes, ‘Under the Trump crypto playbook, the family always wins. Investors don’t.’

Now back to the ‘peacefire’.  

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 10:50

Oil Prices Extend Gains After Another Big Crude Draw, Cushing 'Tank Bottoms' Loom

Oil prices are higher this morning on renewed fighting between the US and Iran (and Trump rhetoric), while API reported a major crude inventory draw (for an eighth week in a row).

Additionally, in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook released on Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported the closure of the Strait is depleting global inventories, keeping prices high.

"Global oil markets remain highly volatile as very limited shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has caused oil producers in the Middle East to reduce crude oil production by more than 11 million barrels per day (b/d) in May compared with pre-conflict levels. This drop in production has resulted in large global inventory draws to meet demand. Under our assumptions, we expect global oil inventories will fall by an average of 6.3 million b/d in 2Q26 and by 7.6 million b/d in 3Q26," the agency said.

So this morning, all eyes are on the official data to see just how fast those inventories are depleting...

API

• Crude -9.1MM

• Cushing -1.1MM

• Gasoline -1.2MM

• Distillates +1.3MM

DOE

• Crude -7.23mm

• Cushing -801k

• Gasoline +186k

• Distillates -200k

Following API's reported a huge crude draw, the official data showed a seventh straight week of crude inventory declines. Gasoline stocks saw a build for the second week in a row...

Source: Bloomberg

Cushing 'tank bottoms' are looming...

Source: Bloomberg

US gasoline stocks are barely off their lowest levels since 2014 for this time of year...

Source: Bloomberg

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve saw another huge drawdown this week for a total of 66.2 million barrels since the Iran 'mini-war' started (16% of the pre-war total)...

Source: Bloomberg

Rig counts continue to rise with US crude production just shy of record highs...

Source: Bloomberg

US crude and product exports dipped last week but remain notably elevated from pre-war levels...

Source: Bloomberg

WTI was hovering just below $90 ahead of the official data

Despite the higher tensions, crude futures are down by more than a quarter since their peak at the end of April, aided by a combination of a plunge in Chinese imports to multiyear lows, record American oil exports and large releases of emergency reserves.

The retreat is a sign that oil markets are, for now at least, coping with the disruption and physical markets look well supplied.

“At the moment the market is trying to find some equilibrium,” Wael Sawan, Chief Executive Officer of Shell Plc, said on the sidelines of the Wall Street Journal CEO Council in London.

“It’s more driven by short-term headlines. And so if I look at the reality, we’re of course drawing down on those inventories fast.”

"While diplomatic efforts remain ongoing, the latest military exchanges have reintroduced a geopolitical risk premium into oil markets," Reuters quoted Priyanka Sachdeva, senior market analyst at Phillip Nova, as saying.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 10:40

From Token-maxxing To Token-panic: Citrini Warns AI Goldilocks Narrative Hitting A Wall

When the world and their pet rabbit was buying the hype and extrapolating trends to infinity and beyond, we dared to highlight a few 'economic' realities of the new 'tokenomics'.

From Singularity To Tokenomics: The AI Narrative Just Hit A Serious Snag

Was Amazon's Tokenmaxxing Fiasco Behind Claude's $500M Mystery Bill?

From Singularity To Tokenomics, Part II: The Subsidy Just Ran Out - And GitHub Users Went Splat

This morning we got confirmation of this AI reality questioning from none other than Goldman Sachs Partner, Rich Privorotsky, who highlighted that Token Spend had 'peaked'...

And now, Citrini Research - who infamously issued a less than utopic view of the world under AI back in March - has written a follow up on the status quo of the AI ecosystem, noting that in just weeks we’ve gone from tokenmaxxing to tokenpanic.

In March, we and many others were writing about the astounding growth in token consumption driven by the release of agents and more intensive models.

This was enough to send the infrastructure trade sharply higher – the market value of the semiconductor industry doubled in two months.

But that goldilocks narrative is beginning to hit a wall. The corollary of explosive token usage is explosive cost to customers, which is coming just as the US labs and hyperscalers are turning up the dial on monetization. The public story is increasingly turning to corporate pushback.

The first real signs of this shift were from the much-discussed report of Uber burning through its entire AI budget in just four months.

Then there was the anonymous report of a $500 million oopsie.

In the past week, the idea has turned into a media avalanche.

According to The Economist’s reporting, Anthropic’s ARR has increased 5x since the start of the year, reaching $45 billion in May.

Great for the lab, but it also means the “AI Opex” line item on P&Ls is going through the roof.

The issue is not just Anthropic. Sam Altman also confirmed that all of a sudden cost is a huge issue (and acknowledged the virality of the idea).

“Probably the second biggest theme is just around cost. People are really saying, it’s kind of become a meme now, but, “My company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1. Can you make this more efficient?” We are continuing to push on that more with models. I think we’ll have a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend, but that went from, at the beginning of this year, an issue that never came up. I know. People were totally happy with the amount they were spending, to all of a sudden, a huge issue.”

Microsoft’s AI Chief added to the unflattery this week after cancelling Claude Code licenses in May.

“Anthropic is extremely expensive, and I think many people are urgently looking for alternatives”

This cost concern didn’t just come out of nowhere.

First, agents and more advanced reasoning models use orders of magnitude greater tokens.

Corporates have widely distributed these tools and encouraged their use just as the average user was gaining the ability to casually run enormous bills.

Second, prices for frontier models are increasing as providers are flipping to usage models and preparing for public market debuts.

In a unified front – OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google – have all implemented pricing shifts towards usage/tokens, as they simply can’t afford to endlessly subsidize their products for power users.

• April 2: OpenAI changed Codex pricing to align with API token usage instead of per-message pricing

• May 19: Google changed Gemini subscriptions from “daily prompt limits” to a “compute-used” model.

• June 1: Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot transitioned to usage based billing

And what does a rate sheet mean really if you have no idea what your usage burns in practice?

Claude’s Opus 4.7 & 4.8 have the same “list price” as prior versions, but use a “new tokenizer” that may use up to 35% more tokens for the same fixed text.

Is this an existential problem or just the VC playbook at unimaginable scale?

Subsidize demand, gain market share and lock-in, then monetize. After all, companies are spending a trillion in capex to make trillions in revenue, right?

Well either way we’ve reached Monetization, and maybe not by choice. As fast as lab revenue is growing, the fundraising has grown even faster.

The money going towards building and running AI has exploded. The deepest pockets in the world – hyperscaler cash flow, venture capital, sovereign wealth, public credit, private credit, public equity – are footing most of the bill. Eventually, customers have to start picking up the tab.

Free-AI is ending. Tokenomics is beginning.

What happens when underlying costs of compute become more transparent and directly traceable to outcomes? The ROI debate is about to be answered in real time, across millions of users and use cases.

For the median user, maybe not a whole lot changes. But science projects, freewheeling agents, and curiosities will either get cut or offloaded to open source models. Companies will restrict AI functionality and invest in oversight and observability. Budget constraints will pit AI spend against headcounts. Providers will become more competitive on pricing and will begin to optimize physical and digital architecture for efficiencies.

In many (most) situations, good enough will do. The cost of running open-source, discount, or mini models is going down while their capabilities only improve. This week saw another batch of open source models like Nvidia latest Nemotron family which includes advanced general-purpose models as well as highly efficient, compact versions optimized for local deployment and specialized agentic uses. As the frontier continues to advance, inference costs drop precipitously for a fixed level of intelligence. Why rent a Ferrari when a Vespa does the trick?

Of course, frontier models with highly specialized functions can continue to command an intense premium, but will serve a smaller segment of the market. A top lawyer can still bill at thousands per hour, even if millions of other workers are making minimum wage.

But even across the high end, the gap between US and Chinese offerings is worth noting. Qwen 3.7 and Deepseek V4 are still behind Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5 in terms of benchmarks, but they are 10x - 25x cheaper.

Since releasing V4 Pro and V4 Flash in April, Deepseek has shot past Anthropic to the top of the charts on OpenRouter in terms of tokens processed.

Meanwhile, Cursor, one of the most used coding agents, released their new model that was post-trained on compute provided by xAI after their $10 billion deal. The base model is a different Chinese open source model by Moonshot and it was trained on data Cursor gets from its customers. The results are even stronger than Deepseek, it’s comparable to 4.7 and 5.5 for 10x lower cost per task and is one of the fastest frontier models.

There are obvious other “considerations” for large US enterprises that may prevent a mass exodus to Chinese alternatives. Plus, greater integration into workflows adds to lock-in. But there is a growing trend of application layer companies that will continue to post-train on open source base models for specialized workflows like coding and legal.

But what does this mean for the AI trade?

First, to be clear, revenues for labs and hyperscalers are going to grow. Token usage for top Anthropic models continues to go higher. Regardless of the pushback, frontier models can certainly create meaningful value especially in high-stakes fields like tech and finance, and there are still plenty of levers to pull in the monetization phase. The entire point is for them to start making money.

Likewise, this won’t fix near-term compute constraints.

But we do think that cost and efficiency only become more important as the bills get bigger. Themes of local inference, miniaturization, smart routing, observability, price competition, and efficient model architecture will grow. Competitive pressures and price competition are likely to stay.

Subscribers can read the rest of Citrini's note here...

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 10:20

10 Reasons You Shouldn't Ignore This Week's Sharp Reversal And Selloff

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Today’s reversal and selloff may end up being just another volatile session in an ongoing bull market. But I think investors would be making a mistake if they dismissed it outright, because it might not be. Sharp reversals often reveal underlying stress that has been building beneath the surface long before it becomes obvious in the major indices.

Here are ten reasons today’s move deserves attention.

1. Valuations Are Historically Extreme — The market is entering this period of volatility from one of the most expensive starting points in history.

The Shiller CAPE ratio recently pushed above 40x, a level only seen during the dot-com bubble and the post-pandemic liquidity boom. Meanwhile, total U.S. market capitalization sits around 237% of GDP, putting Buffett Indicator readings near all-time highs.

History doesn’t tell us exactly when valuations matter. It does suggest that when starting valuations reach these levels, future returns become increasingly dependent on continued optimism rather than fundamentals.

2. The SpaceX IPO Could Be a Sentiment Marker — For months, I’ve speculated that a potential SpaceX IPO could coincide with a market top. Market peaks are often characterized by investors assigning extraordinary valuations to extraordinary companies.

• Morningstar Just Issued The Most Bearish SpaceX Valuation Yet

• Skeptics Step Back From SpaceX

• The SpaceX IPO May Be The AI Bubble’s Final Test

Asking public investors to absorb one of the largest and most highly valued IPOs in history is a difficult proposition when liquidity conditions are tightening, valuations are already stretched, and risk appetite is showing signs of fatigue.

3. Crypto Remains the Tip of the Risk-On Spear — Crypto continues to function as the purest expression of speculative risk appetite:

• Saylor Adds 1,550 Bitcoin To “Hold The Line”

• Bitcoin Bulls All Have A Breaking Point

• Saylor Breaks The ‘Immaculate’ Bitcoin Narrative

Michael Saylor and Strategy appear to be doing everything possible to defend both the price of Bitcoin and investor confidence surrounding the Bitcoin treasury trade. Yet recent attempts to support sentiment have not generated the response bulls were hoping for.

As I’ve argued for some time, if crypto begins to crack meaningfully, it will likely be a warning sign for broader risk assets. Historically, the most speculative assets tend to weaken first. If crypto goes, the rest of the market rarely remains immune for long.

🔥 80% Off If You Subscribe Today: This coupon allows for 80% off of annual subscriptions and results in a 85% savings over paying the monthly rate for a subscription to the blog. You keep the discounted rate for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber: Get 80% off forever

4. Violent Price Swings Are Characteristic of Market Tops — One of the most overlooked warning signs isn’t the direction of the market—it’s the behavior of the market.

A -3% Nasdaq session followed by a +2% rebound and then another -3% decline is not evidence of stability. It’s evidence of uncertainty.

Major market tops are often accompanied by increasingly violent swings as institutional investors distribute risk while retail investors continue buying dips. Volatility expands, conviction falls, and price action becomes erratic.

Healthy bull markets tend to climb steadily. Topping processes tend to look chaotic.

5. The Consumer Is Running Out of Room — The U.S. consumer remains the backbone of the economy, but cracks continue to emerge: The American Consumer Is Piss Broke.

Credit card balances remain elevated, delinquency rates are rising across several lending categories, savings buffers have largely been exhausted, and wage growth is no longer providing the same cushion it did several years ago.

Consumers can continue spending longer than many expect, but the direction of travel is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

6. Treasury Auctions Continue to Show Sporadic Demand

Today’s 3-year Treasury auction tailed, reinforcing concerns that demand for U.S. government debt remains less robust than policymakers would prefer: The Bond Market Is About To Break Washington.

While one auction does not make a trend, repeated tails suggest investors require higher yields to absorb the growing supply of Treasury issuance.

The bond market remains the most important market in the world. Right now, it still looks uneasy.

7. The Next Fed Chair Won’t Have Many Easy Options — The next Federal Reserve chair may inherit one of the most challenging policy environments in decades: New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Job Is Impossible.

If inflation remains sticky, aggressive rate cuts become difficult. If growth slows meaningfully, keeping rates elevated becomes painful. And if asset prices begin falling while inflation remains above target, policymakers could find themselves trapped between conflicting objectives.

The old playbook of simply cutting rates to rescue markets may not be available.

8. Credit Markets Are Sending Warning Signals — For months I’ve been arguing that investors are ignoring a growing list of warning signs across the economy and financial markets.

Private credit continues to show signs of stress, yet receives remarkably little attention compared to equities. But private credit is only one area to watch: 10 Areas Of The Market I'd Avoid Right Now

Credit problems rarely stay contained. They spread slowly, then all at once.

9. Market Breadth Remains Fragile — Index performance continues to mask weakness underneath the surface.

A relatively small group of mega-cap technology names still accounts for a disproportionate share of market gains. When leadership narrows to a handful of stocks, markets become increasingly vulnerable to sudden sentiment shifts.

The broader the participation, the healthier the rally. Narrow leadership often emerges late in the cycle.

10. Rate Hikes Are No Longer Unthinkable — Perhaps the biggest assumption embedded in markets today is that the next move from the Fed will eventually be lower rates: Time For Rate Hikes

But if inflation proves more persistent than expected—or begins accelerating again—the conversation could shift in a hurry.

Markets have largely priced a future of easing. They are far less prepared for a future in which policymakers are forced to tighten again. Even if additional hikes never arrive, the fact that they’re back in the conversation should get investors’ attention.

Final Thought

No single indicator rings a bell at market tops. But when extreme valuations, weakening credit conditions, volatile price action, fragile consumer finances, and growing policy constraints begin appearing simultaneously, investors should pay attention.

Today’s reversal may ultimately prove meaningless…but could also be one of those days that looks much more important in hindsight. I think it could be the latter.

--

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This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.

As of May 20, 2026 I personally no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 10:00

Americans' Real Wages Are Shrinking As CPI Tops 4% For First Time In 3 Years

With expectations of a 4%-plus print, all eyes are on this morning's CPI report as we move past April's shutdown-related distortions.

Headline CPI rose 0.5% MoM (as expected) in May, lifting prices 4.2% YoY (also as expected). The first 4%-plus print since April 2023...

Core Goods prices deflated in May while Energy remains a notable contributor...

CPI details:

Headline: The all items index rose 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending May, after rising 3.8 percent for the 12 months ending April. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.9 percent over the year, following a 2.8-percent increase over the 12 months ending April. The energy index increased 23.5 percent for the 12 months ending May. The food index increased 3.1 percent over the last year

• The index for energy rose 3.9% in May, after rising 3.8% in April and 10.9% in March. The energy index accounted for over 60% of the monthly all items increase. The index for shelter also increased in May, rising 0.3 percent.
• The food index increased 0.2% over the month as the food at home index rose 0.1% and the food away from home index increased 0.3%.

This is the first deflationary print for goods prices in a year...

• Household furnishings and Supplies -0.042%

• Transportation Commodities less motor oil: -0.49%

• Medical Care Commodities -0.54%

Drug prices are down for the fifth month in a row...

Core CPI rose less than expected (+0.2% MoM vs +0.3% MoM exp), lifting prices by 2.9% YoY (as expected), up from April's 2.8% YoY and the highest since Sept 2025...

Core Services costs are accelerating...

Core: The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2% in May.

Indexes that increased over the month include communication, airline fares, medical care, personal care, and recreation.

• The shelter index increased 0.3% over the month.
  • The index for owners’ equivalent rent rose 0.3 percent in May and the index for rent increased 0.4 percent.
  • The lodging away from home index also rose 0.4 percent over the month.

• The index for communication increased 1.3 percent over the month, after falling 0.2 percent in April.
• The airline fares index rose 2.7 percent in May and the personal care index rose 1.0 percent.
• The index for recreation rose 0.3 percent over the month as did the index for apparel.
• The used cars and trucks index increased 0.1 percent in May
• The medical care index increased 0.3 percent in May, after falling 0.1 percent in April.
• The index for hospital services increased 0.7 percent over the month.

On the other hand, the indexes for motor vehicle insurance, household furnishings and operations, and new vehicles were among the major indexes that decreased in May.

• Conversely, the prescription drugs index decreased 0.9 percent over the month while the physicians’ services index was unchanged in May.
• The motor vehicle insurance index declined 1.7 percent in May after rising 0.1 percent in April.
• The index for household furnishings and operations fell 0.6 percent over the month and the index for new vehicles declined 0.3 percent.

Transportation Services deflated MoM...

...led by the unexpected drop in Insurance costs...

That is the biggest drop in vehicle insurance costs since COVID...

Goods inflation overall is trending lower while Services costs are accelerating...

The much-watched SuperCore CPI (Core Services Ex-Shelter) saw prices rise 0.26% MoM and 3.49% YoY (highest sine Aug 2025)..

On a shorter-term basis, its all about energy...

But, is this the peak of Energy-cost-driven inflation?

This leaves headline consumer prices up 5.16% since President Trump came to office...

And perhaps most notably, Americans' real wages are shrinking on a YoY basis (for the first time since April 2023)...

Let's just hope this analog fails here...

BofA's Michael Hartnett previously warned that a May print above 0.4% (estimates currently have it a 0.6%) means US CPI >4% YoY and on course for 5% by US midterms, and risk assets get twitchy: in the past 100 years once CPI crosses 4% on average, the S&P is down 4% in the next 3 months, and down 7% next 6 month...

Finally, while nattering nabobs of mainstream media will be decrying Trump's terrible record on prices, Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid notes that when looked at over the full century, inflation above 4% is not especially rare: over a quarter of monthly observations have exceeded this level.

However, these episodes have tended to arrive in distinct waves - most notably around WWII, during the 1970s, and more briefly in the post-Covid period.

Smaller but still meaningful pockets also appeared during the late-1980s boom and ahead of the GFC.

The more recent experience looks very different.

Since 1992, 83% of observations have sat comfortably in the 1–4% range, with just 10% printing above 4%. For most market participants, then, inflation above 4% has been an exception rather than the rule.

The key question is whether the future looks more like the last 35 years or the full 105-year monthly history.

While there are no immediate signs of inflation running away, the disinflationary environment of the past few decades benefited from a set of unusually supportive, and largely non-repeatable, global forces.

So going forward the template from the last century rather than the last few decades will probably be the better guide.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 09:44

Amazon Freight Expansion Sparks Selloff Across Trucking Stocks

Less-than-truckload freight stocks fell in premarket trading in New York after Amazon roiled the industry yet again - this time by announcing expanded LTL services to cover all U.S. destinations, including third-party warehouses, distribution centers, and retail partners.

"Businesses now have the flexibility to ship by pallet, choosing LTL to share trailer space for partial loads instead of reserving and paying for a full truckload," Amazon wrote in a press release, adding, "Since 2019, Amazon LTL has served tens of thousands of Amazon selling partners and vendors, moving millions of pallets across its U.S. network last year. The company is now expanding the service based on strong positive feedback and growing customer demand." 

Among the movers in premarket trading, FedEx Freight fell 2%, Old Dominion declined 6%, Saia sank 7%, and ArcBest dropped nearly 8%.

LTL services are part of Amazon Supply Chain Services, whose launch last month roiled trucking stocks at the time.

Amazon noted, "Businesses of all sizes can now use LTL to move freight, typically ranging from one to six pallets, or between 150 and 15,000 pounds."

UBS senior analyst Tom Wadewitz, who covers freight transportation, told clients last month that the selloff in transport names, including UPS, FedEx, and C.H. Robinson, sparked by Amazon’s push into the supply chain network, was "overdone."

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 09:40

Ukraine Hits Over Half A Dozen Energy & Industrial Sites Deep Inside Russia Overnight

Ukraine has hit Russia in another sweeping wave of overnight aerial attacks, especially targeting industrial facilities and energy infrastructure across multiple regions, and the extent of damage is yet to be disclosed.

One of the key targets was reportedly the VNIIR-Progress plant, located in the republic of Chuvashia, which is alleged by Ukraine and the West to manufactures components for Russian drones and bombs. Other nearby infrastructure was also attacked.

via Telegram

Ukraine has for months been making clear that it is going gloves off when it comes to attacking Russia's energy and military sites, as well as dual use military-industrial factories. Ukraine used its domestic-made Flamingo cruise missile:

Ukrainian forces have carried out a missile attack deep inside Russia, hitting a major military plant overnight, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

He said FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles struck the drone and missile plant in the city of Cheboksary, in the Chuvash Republic, more than 900km (560 miles) from the front line. Local officials say said three people were injured in a missile attack on the city.

Ukraine also said it had hit the Moscow-occupied port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, a Russian oil refinery in Samara and a "shadow fleet" oil tanker in the Black Sea.

According to a review of sensitive sites struck in the fresh overnight attack wave:

• In Novokuibyshevsk in Russia’s Samara oil hub region, hosting Rosneft refineries, regional governors said authorities repelled drone attacks while urging one million residents to seek shelter. Russian OSINT channel Astra confirmed the Kuibyshevsk oil refinery was burning after at least 29 drones attacked.
• In Russia’s Rostov region bordering Ukraine, falling debris from a drone triggered a fire in a fuel tank at a civilian site. In the central Vladimir region, two industrial facilities were ablaze.
• Rare air raid alerts were issued in remote oil-producing regions Khanty-Mansiysk, Perm and Tyumen, plus industrial Ural mountain regions Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk.

Chuvashia regional governor Oleg Nikolayev blasted the strike on the aforementioned manufacturing plant as indicative of the "impotent rage of terrorists who, having no success at the front line, try to intimidate peaceful people in the rear."

All of these strike waves in disparate places is likely invite even greater airstrikes on Kiev, after the capital has already been hit hard over the past several weeks.

Big night for Ukraine’s long-range strikes.

Kuibyshev Refinery in Samara is reportedly burning in multiple locations and may face lengthy repairs.

VNIIR Progress in Cheboksary — a key producer of Kometa navigation systems used in Shahed drones, Iskander and Kalibr missiles —… pic.twitter.com/PGpEgnaOul

— распад и неуважение (@VictorKvert2008) June 10, 2026

President Putin and top military brass had last month said strikes would be initiated against "decision-making centers" in response to the dorm attack in the Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22, which killed 21 people - mostly teenage girls - and injured 70 others.

Kremlin officials now say that Russian forces have "a right to dismantle any infrastructure that supports terrorism."

But it's also these constant attacks on oil and industrial sites that little by little will put immense strain on Russia's economy and the populace. The salvos out of Ukraine will keep coming, especially as Moscow continues to maintain the 'special military operation' at a slow, grinding pace.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 09:05

Graham Platner Wins Maine Senate Democratic Nomination, Locking In Face-Off With Collins

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

Democratic voters in Maine on Tuesday nominated oysterman and military veteran Graham Platner as their candidate to take on incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), locking in the nominees for one of the most critical Senate elections of the 2026 cycle.

Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, greets supporters after speaking at an event hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Orono, Maine, on May 24, 2026. Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo

At 9:23 p.m, The Associated Press formally declared that Platner would be the Democratic nominee. When the race was called, Platner led Gov. Janet Mills - who withdrew her candidacy after polls showed her trailing the dark horse Platner - by tens of percent, though only around 8 percent of the votes were in when the race was called.

Platner's campaign recently come under scrutiny after several media reports about his past treatment of women and other controversies.

Platner's victory formalizes the 2026 Senate lineup, locking in the final picks for a race that has been characterized as the political fight of Collins's life by many observers.

The five-term Collins was first elected in 1996 and has held on long beyond any other New England Republican at the federal level.

This year, she faced no Republican challenger for the nomination.

Though she regularly breaks with President Donald Trump and her party in the upper chamber, the political odds for a Republican in statewide matches have grown increasingly grim in recent years.

Aside from Collins, the last Republican to win a statewide federal race in New England was Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican who won a single term to the Senate in 2010 before being unseated by Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in 2016.

Maine has never voted for Trump on a statewide level, with Vice President Kamala Harris winning by around 7 percent in 2024.

But Collins's brand of moderate, old-school Republicanism has kept her well ahead of most other Republicans in the state.

In 2020, Collins outran Trump by around 17 percent in Maine, defeating her Democratic rival by around eight points in an election former President Joe Biden won by around nine points.

Still, polls have painted a tough picture for Collins, who has fallen behind Platner in most polls conducted since March.

Platner has campaigned as a progressive candidate, winning the endorsement of key figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

However, his campaign has faced some controversies.

The New York Times has run various stories against Platner, which include claims made by Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican political strategist who previously dated him.

Fifield claimed that on one occasion, while they were dating between 2013 and 2015, Platner twisted her arm. The New York Times stated in the article that it was unable to independently corroborate the allegation, which Platner has denied.

A report by The Wall Street Journal also relayed a story involving Platner exchanging sexually explicit text messages with other women during his marriage.

His wife, who knew about the infidelity, had shared the information with a campaign staffer, who later brought the story to The Wall Street Journal. Platner's wife has described the public reporting on the topic as "shameful" gossip.

Polymarket Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 08:50

Futures Slide Amid Renewed Tech Selling, Geopolitical Chaos Ahead Of Key CPI Print

Markets continue to trade with a risk-off bias this morning, with equity futures and macro credit weaker, rates selling across the curve, as the USD and oil sensitive currencies outperform. It’s set to be another ugly day for US tech stocks as US equity futures slide ahead of today's CPI print which will see headline inflation rise above 4% for the first time in 3 years (full preview here). As of 8:00am Nasdaq 100 futures are down 1.5% versus losses of 1.0% for the S&P 500 contracts. Pre-market, Mag 7 are all lower with NVDA (-1.9%), TSLA (-1.6%) and MSFT (-1.3%) being the biggest underperformers. Oracle trades lower by 2.8% in the premarket ahead of its after-hours earnings, which could provide the next catalyst for the AI trade.  Bond yields are 1-2bp higher across the curve amid hotter-than-expected Japan PPI print last night. Commodities are mixed: oil swung from losses to gains after Trump said Iran “will have to pay the price” for taking too long to negotiate a deal. The threat followed a round of retaliatory attacks between the two sides, with Tehran saying it’s reviewing the diplomatic process. Brent rose 1.7% to around $93 a barrel. Treasury yields climbed across the curve, with the 10-year rate up three basis points to 4.54%. The dollar held steady; precious metals are all lower. Geopolitical headlines remain volatile - Trump warning that "Iran will have to pay the price for taking too long" and threatening he is close to ordering new strikes - but this was unlikely to have triggered the rotation given 1) Oil & Rates traded lower yesterday; 2) Tech has been the escalation trade. US economic data calendar includes May CPI (8:30am) and federal budget balance (2pm)

In premarket trading, Nvidia falls 2.4%, leading decliners among Magnificent Seven stocks, with technology and semiconductor firms set to extend losses (Apple -0.1%, Amazon -0.6%, Meta -0.9%, Alphabet -1.3%, Microsoft -1.5%, Tesla -1.7%)

• Casey’s General Stores Inc. (CASY) is up 2% after the convenience store chain reported revenue for the fourth quarter that beat the average analyst estimate.
• Chewy (CHWY) climbs 7% after the pet food posted first quarter results.
• Cracker Barrel (CBRL) jumps 9% after the restaurant chain boosted its revenue guidance for the full year, beating the average analyst estimate.
• Devon Energy (DVN) rises about 1% after the oil and gas producer boosted its production forecast for the full year and said it was undergoing a portfolio review to concentrate assets in the Permian Basin.
• Dianthus Therapeutics (DNTH) slumps 19% after peer developer Sanofi halted a late-stage trial of an experimental therapy for a rare autoimmune disorder, citing efficacy concerns.
• Hinge Health (HNGE) climbs 3% after the digital health-care company raised its revenue forecast for the full year.
• Old Dominion (ODFL) slumps 7%, falling with other less-than-truckload stocks, after Amazon expanded its LTL freight offering to all destinations in the US, including third-party warehouses, distribution centers and retail partners.
• Super Micro Computer (SMCI) falls 11% after the company said it plans $7 billion in equity and equity-linked financing transactions to fund component purchases to satisfy around $39b in AI server orders it has received from customers.

In corporate news, SoftBank’s talks with potential creditors to raise at least $6 billion from a margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake is said to have stalled. TSMC reported a 30% rise in May monthly sales. Combined April and May sales up around 24% from a year ago, with analysts looking for 35% increase in total second-quarter sales. 

Tuesday’s volatile session was encapsulated in a double-digit swing in the benchmark semis index as broader equity financing costs rose. S&P 500 options have witnessed the two busiest days on record, both within the past week. For markets to settle, we might need a “solution in the Middle East and a SpaceX IPO which goes well enough to signal that the market has confidence, but not good enough to raise animal spirits among investors,” according to Stephan Kemper, chief investment strategist at BNP Paribas Wealth Management. SpaceX’s IPO is set to price Thursday and trade the following day. The near-$75 billion offering has attracted demand from institutional investors for several times the shares available.

“Clearly, the AI-linked theme is seeing some unwind,” said Andrea Gabellone, head of global equities at KBC Securities. “It’s not structural, just temporary rotation away from high momentum names, and perhaps also linked to the several high-profile IPOs that are coming up.”

“We currently see a healthy correction in parts of the market which might have moved too far, too fast,” said Stephan Kemper, chief investment strategist at BNP Paribas Wealth Management. “There’s also no trigger to further upgrade earnings expectations. We have a fair chance that the current choppy trading environment will stay in place for some time.”

Oil swung from losses to gains after US President Donald Trump said Iran “will have to pay the price” for taking too long to negotiate a deal. The threat followed a round of retaliatory attacks between the two sides, with Tehran saying it’s reviewing the diplomatic process. Brent rose 1.7% to around $93 a barrel. Treasury yields climbed across the curve, with the 10-year rate up three basis points to 4.54%. The dollar held steady.

Jim Reid, head of Macro Research at Deutsche Bank, describes markets as “swinging between 1999-style AI exuberance and 2000-type tech crash fears.” A volatile CPI print might keep the pattern going, although isn’t expected. Bloomberg Economics’ US team thinks the headline reading will likely be hot, but core inflation subdued and more reassuring, potentially challenging the 25-bps rate hike later this year priced in by the swaps market.

For now, the focus will be on Wednesday’s consumer price data for May (full preview here), which may offer the clearest signal yet on whether a Fed led by Kevin Warsh will keep borrowing costs higher for longer. The median analyst consensus expects annual inflation to accelerate to 4.2% in May, the highest since April 2023, from 3.8% a month earlier. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, is projected to edge up to 2.9% from 2.8%. A $39 billion auction of 10-year Treasuries will also test demand at a time of steadily rising yields. The JPMorgan Market Intelligence desk says options are pricing in approximately 1% move in the S&P 500 on the most likely core CPI MoM print, while an upside shock above 0.35% could result in the benchmark falling by as much as 3%.

“With US CPI the key event risk today, bonds and equities are likely to take direction together. Consensus forecasts imply inflation is unlikely to return anywhere close to target, leaving a high bar for markets to price a materially more dovish Fed", said Skylar Montgomery Koning, Bloomberg macro strategist.

“Not only are we oscillating between deal or no deal with the US and Iran, but markets are also swinging between 1999-style AI exuberance and 2000-type tech crash fears,” noted Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank AG. “All we need now is a volatile US CPI print today to keep the pattern going.”

Elsewhere, Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda has been hospitalized and is set to miss the monetary policy meeting next week, according to a statement. Investors are currently betting that the BOJ needs to raise rates soon to combat inflation and curb the yen’s weakness. 

In other assets, gold hits the lowest price since November, behaving more like a risk asset over the short term than a haven, setting the metal up to test $4,000 an ounce, around where key retracements lie. And Bitcoin renewed its slide having endured its worst week since the collapse of FTX exchange in 2022.

In politics, Aaron Ford, Nevada’s attorney general, has prevailed over a crowded field of Democrats to face off against Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in the gubernatorial election. Trump says Bill Pulte will take over as acting Director of National Intelligence on June 19. 

European stocks started off on a mildly positive footing before succumbing to the selling pressure in global equities, with the Stoxx 600 down 0.2%.  Here are the biggest movers Wednesday:

• STMicro gains as much as 3.4% after Bank of America said its shares have nearly 40% further to climb on optimism that a growing need for chips used to support communications and power management in data centers will boost earnings
• Auto1 shares rise as much as 4.9%, as Goldman Sachs expects capital markets day to support valuation re-rating, seeing 58% upside ahead; believes company will detail uni economics and long-term margin building blocks at the CMD
• EnQuest shares gain as much as 24%, to their highest level since early 2023, after the oil and gas company agreed to buy Malaysian assets for up to $833 million
• Fuller Smith & Turner advances as much as 12%, the most since Nov. 2023, following an update from the pub operator in which it delivered a full-year beat and announced a new share buyback
• Fielmann rises as much as 7.7%, the most since mid-February, as Deutsche Bank initiates coverage of the German eye wear company with a buy recommendation, saying it has a “credible foundation for the next strategic phase”
• Scandi Standard gains as much as 5.2% after SB1 Markets initiated coverage of the Swedish poultry producer with a buy rating, noting the company’s strong market position and potential for continued margin improvement
• WH Smith shares fell as much as 19%, the biggest drop since August 2025, after the retailer cut its full-year profit forecast following a sharp deterioration in US trading and set out plans to raise capital
• Soitec shares drop as much as 12% after Jefferies cut their recommendation on the semiconductors materials producer to underperform from hold. Analysts said the stock’s valuation doesn’t reflect fundamentals
• Kongsberg shares fall as much as 4.7% after the Norwegian firm’s targets came up short of analysts’ margin forecasts, with Morgan Stanley saying the lack of consensus earnings upgrades should call into question the stock’s premium valuation
• Pennon Group shares fall as much as 4.8%, the most in a month, after the water company lowered EPS guidance for its 2027 financial year. Analysts said that the outlook disappoints the market

Asian stocks resumed their decline, weighed by technology firms, as sentiment soured on renewed tensions in the Middle East. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 2.7%, with chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix the biggest drags. Tech-heavy markets led losses in the region, with South Korea’s Kospi tumbling 4.5% and Taiwanese shares falling by more than 3%. Indonesian stocks extended gains to as much as 3.4%, spurred by the central bank’s off-cycle interest rate hike.

“We don’t think this is a bubble yet,” but could be the early innings of a bubble forming, Jeff Li, global equity CIO at E Fund Management, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. Investors may position themselves at the point of supply that’s suffering from the most severe shortage, which is CPU and optics communications this year, he added.

In FX, The Norwegian krone sits on top of the G-10 leaderboard after hot inflation data. USD/JPY has hit its highest level since April 30, when Japanese authorities intervened in the currency. Spot gold and silver have continued to decline, each down about 2%. Bitcoin falls 1.8% but holding above the $61,000 mark. 

In rates, treasury futures fall to session lows as oil prices jump after US President Trump in social media post said Iran has taken too long to come to terms and will “pay the price.” US yields climbed 2bp-3bp across the curve to day’s highs. US 10-year yields rose as much as 3.4bp to 4.55%, remaining inside Tuesday’s range, before stabilizing under 4.54%; bunds and gilts in the sector lag by around 1.5bp. Curve spreads remain within a basis point of Tuesday’s closing levels. Treasury auction cycle continues with $39 billion 10-year note reopening at 1pm New York time; Tuesday’s 3-year new-issue auction tailed by 0.3bp. Cycle concludes with $22 billion 30-year reopening Thursday. WI 10-year yield near 4.54% is ~7bp cheaper than last month’s new-issue auction, which tailed by 0.4bp. IG dollar issuance slate includes a couple of offerings, led by an EIB $4 billion 7Y, but is expected to be muted by CPI release. Eight borrowers priced almost $8 billion on Tuesday, paying about 5bp in new issue concessions on deals that were 2.7 times covered. Focal points of US session include May CPI data and 10-year note auction.

In commodities, WTI crude oil futures, little changed before Trump’s comment, rose as much as 2% afterward and remain higher by about 1.2%, weighing on Treasuries and S&P 500 futures, down around 1%

US economic data calendar includes May CPI (8:30am) and federal budget balance (2pm)

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

• Trump slammed Iran for not reaching a quick peace deal with the US after a night of attacks that have strained a fragile two-month truce.  “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price,” Trump wrote on Truth Social
• Trump still thinks a peace deal with Iran is on the horizon, even as the United States launched retaliatory strikes on Iran Tuesday evening, a senior White House official said Tuesday. Politico
• It would be "unwise" to assume that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will return to how it was before the Iran war, the head of French shipping group CMA ‌CGM said on Tuesday. CMA CGM, the world's third-largest container line, is among firms with vessels stranded inside the Gulf since the start of the conflict that has virtually closed the waterway, which carries a fifth of global oil and LNG supply. RTRS
• US House passes USD 70bln immigration enforcement funding bill.
• US Agriculture Secretary Rollins said the first US calf with screwworm is healthy and recovering, while she said they will start eradicating screwworm in a couple of months.
• China’s consumer inflation unexpectedly stalled in May even as factory prices gained at the fastest pace in almost four years. BBG
• China’s factory-gate inflation accelerated in May as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East continued to drive up energy and commodity costs. The producer-price index jumped 3.9% from a year earlier in May, accelerating from a 2.8% increase in April, according to data released Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics. WSJ
• Japan’s corporate goods prices jumped again in May, signaling strengthening inflationary pressures rippling across domestic supply chains as the war in Iran drags on and keeps energy prices elevated. BBG
• Governments have raised a record $504 billion through syndicated bond sales in the first half so far, surpassing even pandemic-era borrowing as deficits widen and spending climbs. BBG
• US markets are close to ending more than two decades of declining equity supply as a trio of mega initial public offerings brings a flood of new shares. FT
• We expect a 0.17% increase in May core CPI (vs. +0.3% consensus), corresponding to a year-over-year rate of +2.79% (vs. +2.9% consensus). We expect a 0.45% increase in headline CPI (vs. +0.5% consensus), reflecting sharply higher energy prices. Our forecast is consistent with a 0.27% increase in core PCE in May, reflecting a large increase in its financial services component. GIR
• SK Hynix plans to list its shares in ‌the U.S. as soon as August, said two sources familiar with the matter, as the South Korean memory chipmaker seeks to capitalize on strong appetite for AI-linked stocks and broaden its investor base. RTRS

Top Iran Headlines

• The US and Iran exchanged fire following the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's IRGC struck a US base in Jordan and 21 other targets in the Gulf, after the US hit Iranian air defence, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near Hormuz. Sounds of explosions were reported in Qeshm Island and the port city of Sirik, while explosions were heard near Bandar Abbas and Jask. Following the initial exchange of missiles, US CENTCOM announced in the early hours of Wednesday that they have ended its self-defence strikes against Iran.
• US President Trump told ABC that the US was responding to Iran and that it is important to respond to Iran downing the helicopter, as well as noted that the response is very strong and powerful.
• US VP JD Vance said the US is very close to reaching a deal that would address Iran's nuclear programme for the long term, which could come next week or months from now, but absolutely before the midterms, according to CBS.
• White House senior official said nothing has changed in their position regarding an agreement with Iran and it is still close despite the strikes.
• A US official said the US military carried out strikes on almost 20 targets inside of Iran, but noted preliminary assessments indicate most Iranian missiles and drones were successfully intercepted.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said they need to reassess, following the overnight clashes, when questioned on talks with the US, SNN reported.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry statement strongly condemns America's crime in its military aggression against Iran.
• An Iranian military source tells IRIB that no offensive military operations have been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours. Warned that if the enemy carries out another hostile action under the pretext of the military helicopter crash, it will face a decisive response.
• A massive fire in the centre of Erbil and an explosion has been heard near the US base in the vicinity, Mehr news reported citing sources.
• Local sources reported that an explosion was heard in the area of Qeshm city, Mehr News reports. However, this was later denied by the Qeshm governor.
• UN Security Council debated reviving the Iran sanctions panel, although Russia and China opposed the revival of the Iran sanctions committee, according to Tasnim.
• Israeli air raids hit the Lebanese towns of Touline, Srifa and Kafra. It was separately reported that missiles were spotted from Lebanon that were headed towards Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings, while rockets launched from Lebanon towards Upper Galilee were also detected.
• UKMTO has received a report of an incident 20nm Northeast of Oman’s Sohar.
• UKMTO reported an incident involving a cargo vessel 88 nautical miles southwest of Balhaf, Yemen.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks mostly declined following the tech weakness on Wall St and amid the escalation in the Middle East after the US conducted strikes on Iran in response to the downing of an Apache helicopter, while Iran retaliated with strikes targeting US bases in the region. ASX 200 bucked the trend amid gains in the consumer sectors, financials and defensives. Nikkei 225 retreated amid tech-related headwinds, while firmer-than-expected PPI data and the latest BoJ source report continued to point to a looming hike for next week's meeting. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp conformed to the downbeat mood in the region owing to the recent geopolitical escalation. Elsewhere, Chinese inflation data was mixed as CPI Y/Y printed softer-than-expected, but PPI Y/Y topped forecasts and printed its highest since July 2022.

Top Asian News

• Chinese CPI YY (May) 1.2% vs. Exp. 1.3% (Prev. 1.2%).
• Chinese PPI YY (May) 3.9% vs. Exp. 3.8% (Prev. 2.8%).
• Japanese PPI MM (May) 0.9% vs. Exp. 0.5% (Prev. 2.3%).
• Japanese PPI YY (May) 6.3% vs. Exp. 5.5% (Prev. 4.9%).

European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.2%) initially opened with mild gains, before dipping into the red as the morning progressed – currently at lows. In Tuesday's session, US President Trump vowed retaliation after the downing of a US Apache helicopter, resulting in US forces targeting Iranian air defences, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites around the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iran's IRGC said they carried out attacks against a US base in Jordan and 21 other targets around the Gulf. European sectors are mixed. Topping the sector pile is Real Estate (+0.6%), with Optimised Personal Care (+0.4%) and Food, Beverages & Tobacco (+0.5%) rounding out the top three. Underperformance in Financial Services (-0.8%), Basic Resources (-1.2%) and Technology (-0.9%).

Top European News

• Germany's DIW cuts its 2026 growth forecast for Germany to 0.5% (prev. 1.0%); Germany risks slipping into a technical recession this year following the energy shock.
• European Parliament's budgetary control committees are to examine the Commissions plan to unlock EUR 16bln of funding for Hungary on the 14th of July, Politico reported citing sources.

FX

• G10s mostly range trading as the Buck positions into US CPI; CAD outperforms into BoC, antipodeans lag after soft Chinese inflation data, NOK outperforms post-CPI.
• DXY -0.1%, lower on the day but still holding onto most NFP gains despite a sharp reversal in crude over the past few days. Levels reached around NFP, just above the 100 mark, will be watched closely as an inline/hot CPI print will help the index return to these levels. MUFG suggests that a hot print CPI (>4.3%) would likely trigger a sharp sell-off in US front-end rates, potentially pulling forward expectations for a hike towards October. ING contends a soft print would see DXY test the 99.50/60 area.
• CAD is one of the best performers ahead of the BoC confab, USD/CAD -0.1%. BoC is widely expected to leave its policy rate unchanged at 2.25% for a fifth consecutive meeting as it balances trade uncertainty against lingering inflation risks. Attention will centre on whether policymakers are more attentive to inflation or growth risks. Markets will also be watching for acknowledgement of Canada's technical recession, alongside any emphasis on the apparent Q2 recovery, stable core inflation and the Bank's position near the lower end of neutral as justification for maintaining a wait-and-see approach. USD/CAD could look to test 1.40 if US CPI comes hot, and BoC does not provide food for hawks.
• NOK is the best G10 performer after hot CPI-ATE this morning surpassed consensus and was mildly above the Norges Bank's own forecast of 3.3%. Sell-side banks saw some risk that a hot inflation report could see board members begin to mull another hike at the June meeting. However, it is more likely that policymakers wait for more data and assess the developments in the Middle East. Nonetheless, CPI-ATE remains persistently high, which clouds the environment. NOK/SEK +0.4%, looks to test par after surpassing the level overnight.
• Antipodeans underperform after Chinese inflation printed cooler than expected. CPI was steady at 1.2% Y/Y, cooler than economists had expected. PPI rose to 3.9%, lower than most estimates. As such, both Aussie and Kiwi weaker against the Buck by 0.2% and 0.1% respectively.

Fixed Income

• Global fixed benchmarks are trading tentatively on either side of the unchanged mark, following similar indecisive action in the energy space. This follows on from overnight US strikes on Iran, in response to the downing of a US helicopter earlier in the week. This latest attack led Iran to launch retaliatory strikes against Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. As for the progress to peace, a WH official stated that “nothing has changed in their position regarding an agreement with Iran, and it is still close despite the strikes”. However, the Iranian Foreign Minister stated that they need to reassess, following the recent strikes; he added that the US harms diplomatic efforts.
• USTs (-2 ticks) trade with very mild losses and hold towards the bottom of a 109-03 to 109-08 range. The tentative action today is explained by the uncertain geopolitical environment, and as markets await US CPI/10yr auction later today.
• Bunds (-9 ticks) and Gilts (-6 ticks) trade incrementally lower, following the tentative action seen above. Domestic updates today have been lacking, but focus for the EGBs will be on a 10yr Bund auction. As it stands, the GE 10yr yield holds slightly above the 3% mark, driven higher by elevated energy prices and sticky inflation. The sale should go well, with some traders potentially booking profits at elevated levels. The geopolitical environment appears to be easing (but remains incredibly uncertain), and with some fund managers believing fixed income will reclaim its safe-haven status, yields should begin to ease from recent peaks.
• Germany to sell EUR 3.982bln vs exp. 5bln 2036 2.90% Bund: b/c 1.71x (prev. 1.5x), average yield 3.06% (prev. 3.16%), retention 20.4% (prev. 23.1%).
• Japan sells JPY 450.8bln 30-yr JGBs; b/c 2.94x (prev. 3.49x), and average yield 3.860% (prev. 3.842%), Lowest accepted price 97.40 vs prev. 97.80, Average accepted price 97.78 vs prev. 98.02, Tail in price 0.38 vs prev. 0.22.
• Australia sells AUD 1bln 1.00% October 2037 bonds b/c 4.25, avg yield 4.9566%.

Commodities

• In geopolitics, The US and Iran exchanged fire following the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's IRGC struck a US base in Jordan and 21 other targets in the Gulf, after the US hit Iranian air defence, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near Hormuz. Sounds of explosions were reported in Qeshm Island and the port city of Sirik, while explosions were heard near Bandar Abbas and Jask. Following the initial exchange of missiles, US CENTCOM announced in the early hours of Wednesday that they have ended its self-defence strikes against Iran.
• Crude futures trade around the unchanged mark despite the US-Iran strikes. WTI Jul'26 oscillates in a USD 87.39-90.00/bbl range while Brent Aug'26 rotates in a USD 90.77-93.26/bbl band. Saxo's chief investment strategist says, "Geopolitics is being treated as a headline risk, not a macro shock for now. Oil holding around USD 90 despite fresh Iran headlines suggests markets are not pricing a sustained supply disruption."
• Precious metals continue to trade under pressure. Spot gold slips below the USD 4200/oz handle, at the lower end of its USD 4161-4258/oz range. The yellow metal has been under pressure in recent sessions, which was initially spurred by the stronger-than-expected US jobs report last Friday. The US inflation print at 13:30BST/08:30EDT will be a highly-watched data point for metals traders, another hot print could spur further downside. The next level below market is the USD 4099/oz low from March 23rd.
• 3M LME Copper traded rangebound throughout the Asia-Pac session but is currently extending to lows, slipping below the USD 13.5k/t mark. Chinese inflation failed to move the red metal, after headline inflation held at 1.2% Y/Y but was cooler than the expected 1.3%.
• US Private Inventory Data (bbls): Crude -9.1mln (exp. -3.4mln), Distillates +1.3mln (exp. -0.2mln), Gasoline -1.2mln (exp. -0.6mln), Cushing -1.1mln.
• US Deputy Secretary of State Landau said the US is working to release energy reserves and boost sales of LPG and LNG to ASEAN.
• Kuwait is reportedly in discussions with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to secure pipeline capacity to export crude and oil products, Argus reported.

Central Banks

• BoJ Governor Ueda said to have been hospitalised, reports suggest, and is expected to be absent for the June 15-16 meeting. Deputy Gov. Himino will chair June meeting.

Ukraine

• Ukrainian President Zelensky confirmed that the targeted the Russian Novokuibyshevsk refinery.
• Ukraine hit two Russian pumping stations; namely, Vtorovo and Lobkovo.

US Event Calendar

• 7:00 am: Jun 5 MBA Mortgage Applications 10.8%, prior -2.5%
• 8:30 am: May CPI MoM, est. 0.5%, prior 0.6%
• 8:30 am: May Core CPI MoM, est. 0.3%, prior 0.4%
• 8:30 am: May CPI YoY, est. 4.2%, prior 3.8%
• 8:30 am: May Core CPI YoY, est. 2.9%, prior 2.8%
• 2:00 pm: May Federal Budget Balance, est. -283.1b, prior 215.02b

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

After writing thousands of EMRs without an ocean or sea view, I've now had three in a single month. After the US West Coast and Lisbon in May, I'm writing this looking out from my balcony over the beautiful Bosphorus Strait here in Istanbul. I'm writing in Europe, but looking out across the strait at Asia — a first for me.

As I straddle two continents, markets are straddling some fairly extreme scenarios at the moment. Not only are we oscillating between deal or no deal with the US and Iran, but markets are also swinging between 1999-style AI exuberance and 2000-type tech crash fears. On the former, Brent briefly fell below $90 for the first time since April 17th yesterday before partially rebounding after Trump vowed retaliation following Iran shooting down a US helicopter. On the latter, the Philly Semiconductor Index fell by as much as -8.62% intra-day before recovering to -1.93% by the close. So it’s been a genuinely topsy turvy start to the week, with oil and tech whipsawing across both Monday and Tuesday. All we need now is a volatile US CPI print today to keep the pattern going.

Over the past 24 hours, the conflict between the US and Iran has escalated again following American strikes launched in direct response to the downing of a US Army Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz. Late on Tuesday, US Central Command said its forces carried out what it described as a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” striking Iranian air-defence systems, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites near the strait using precision munitions from fighter jets. President Donald Trump, speaking to ABC News as the strikes were announced, said the action was necessary after the helicopter incident, adding: “I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that’s what this one is.” Iranian media reported explosions across southern Iran, including on Qeshm Island and in the Bandar Abbas region, while state television said two water-storage tanks in Sirik were hit, temporarily cutting local drinking water supplies.

Tehran has denied responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, although Iranian officials issued sharp warnings following the US operation. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran “will leave no attack or threat unanswered,” while also cautioning earlier that foreign forces operating near Iranian territory are at constant risk of “human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire.” Iran’s joint military command claimed it had targeted several US bases in the region, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps saying it launched a drone strike at the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, according to state-run IRIB. The exchange has underscored the fragility of the April ceasefire and cast fresh doubt over President Trump’s repeated assertions that a broader peace deal was close.

Brent is still over a dollar lower than it was this time yesterday but is up around +0.5% overnight to $91.90 but having been as low as $89.70 before news of the helicopter downing emerged an hour or so before the European close.

This news came as US equities were in the midst of a pronounced tech-led sell-off and added to the risk-off mood. However, there wasn’t an obvious catalyst for that tech sell-off and with there being no follow up to Trump’s post during market hours, equities ended up largely reversing their losses by the close. So the S&P 500 closed a modest -0.26% lower after trading -2.27% intra-day, while the NASDAQ "only" fell -0.97% on the day. We did see underperformance by the Mag-7 (-1.29%) as well as the Philly semiconductor index (-1.93%) but this was much less severe than it had been midway through the session (intra-day lows of -8.62%) as we mentioned at the top. And the picture was actually positive beyond tech, with almost three-quarters of the S&P 500’s constituents up on the day and the equal-weighted index rallying +0.76% amid rotation into more defensive sectors. This morning, S&P 500 (-0.28%) and NASDAQ 100 (-0.45%) futures are a bit lower.   

A notable feature of yesterday’s selloff was that unlike Friday, it didn’t coincide with a big hawkish repricing given that oil was still lower on the day even with the turnaround after Trump's comments on the helicopter incident. If anything, investors were becoming more optimistic on inflation, as earlier hopes for a US-Iran deal saw oil prices fall back again. So even though we were off the lows for the day, Brent crude (-2.97%) still closed at $91.45/bbl, which was its lowest level since mid-April, whilst the 6-month Brent future (-1.61%) closed at $84.58/bbl.  
Those moves came as investors latched onto comments from President Trump, which came out shortly before we went to press yesterday, in the small hours of Tuesday. He said that “We’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal”, and that “We could have at least an idea one or two days from now.” So that raised hopes that some kind of deal might be imminent, and that the Strait of Hormuz might reopen in the weeks ahead. And while Trump’s helicopter post added fresh doubts, it didn’t entirely derail the optimism. Later in the day, the New York Times report some of the details of US-Iran negotiations towards an outline of a nuclear agreement, which added hopes that we could get something more than a narrow temporary deal to reopen Hormuz that was reportedly in play late last month.  

Inflation is set to remain in the headlines today, as we have the US CPI print for May at 13:30 London time. This is an important one, because recent weeks have seen mounting speculation about a Fed rate hike. That was initially driven by the energy shock pushing inflation up, but we’ve now had 3 consecutive jobs reports surprise on the upside too, with the 3-month average for payrolls at a two-year high of 188k. So the labour market side of the Fed’s mandate seems increasingly secure, giving them much more space to focus on the inflation side.

In terms of what to expect today, our US economists think that monthly headline CPI should come in at +0.51%, which would push the year-on-year measure up to +4.3%. And if that’s realised, it would be the first 4%-plus reading for CPI since 2023, back when the Fed were still hiking rates. They see that driven by a large increase in gas prices, so for core CPI they’re expecting a slower +0.22% pace, which would push the year-on-year core measure up to +2.9%. Nevertheless, we know that markets are attuned to hawkish risk after the reaction on Friday, so an upside surprise could cause trouble given how febrile markets have been recently.

Ahead of the CPI print, lower oil prices helped to ease inflation fears on both sides of the Atlantic. So the US 1yr inflation swap (-3.9bps) fell to 3.03%, and the Euro 1yr inflation swap (-5.6bps) fell to its lowest in almost 3 months, at 2.93%. Meanwhile, with inflation concern easing, investors also dialled back their expectations for a hawkish reaction. For example, the amount of Fed hikes priced by December fell -3.4bps on the day to 25bps.

With that in mind, sovereign bond yields also fell back on both sides of the Atlantic. So in the US, the 2yr Treasury yield (-4.5bps) fell to 4.12%, whilst the 10yr Treasury yield (-4.6bps) fell to 4.52%. And over in Europe, yields on 10yr bunds (-1.7bps), OATs (-2.9bps) and BTPs (-3.5bps) all fell back as well.

Speaking of Europe, equities there were also hit by the sudden selloff, with the STOXX 600 (-0.50%) falling for a 3rd consecutive session, whilst the DAX (-0.74%) was back into negative territory for 2026. This performance wasn’t helped by European markets closing before the recovery in US equities emerged, though the more limited exposure to both chips and the broader tech sector meant that the CAC 40 (+0.05%) and the FTSE MIB (+0.11%) posted modest advances.  

Finally, there wasn’t much data yesterday, although we did get a few US releases. That included the NFIB’s small business optimism index, which fell to 95.3 in May (vs. 96.0 expected), marking its lowest level since October 2024. However, there were some stronger numbers, with existing home sales up to an annualised pace of 4.17m in May (vs. 4.07m expected), their highest in 5 months. 

Asian equity markets are trading lower as I type with the KOSPI leading regional declines, down -4.20%, while the Nikkei is also weaker (-1.43%) amid continued pressure on AI related stocks. Other major indices are similarly in negative territory, including the Hang Seng (-1.15%), CSI (-0.98%) and Shanghai Composite (-0.58%). Meanwhile, 10 year US Treasuries are +2.2bps higher at 4.54% as we go to print.

Elsewhere, the Japanese yen (-0.02%) is hovering close to its weakest level since April, keeping markets alert to the risk of potential intervention by Japanese authorities.

Early economic data from China showed consumer inflation in May coming in slightly below expectations, highlighting subdued domestic demand. Headline CPI rose +1.2% year on year, marginally under the +1.3% consensus and unchanged from the previous month. By contrast, producer prices accelerated sharply, with PPI up +3.9% year on year, in line with expectations and the strongest reading since August 2022. The pickup was largely driven by higher energy costs linked to developments in the Middle East, marking a notable acceleration from April’s +2.8% pace.

Looking at the day ahead, there’s not too much on the calendar, although we will get the US CPI print for May, and a policy decision from the Bank of Canada. No move is expected.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 08:21

Belfast Burns After Sudanese Migrant's Street-Beheading Attempt Sparks Local Revolt Against Globalists

The unrest ripping through Belfast should be seen as a predictable social reaction from a local population that believes it has been ignored and overruled by a global managerial class of unhinged politicians who have spent more than a decade enforcing nation-killing mass migration policies without public consent.

The attempted beheading of a native-born citizen earlier this week, involving a third-world migrant, appears to have become the catalytic event that pushed long-simmering anger into the streets.

Overnight coverage: 

• Belfast Is Burning After Attempted Beheading Attack By Migrant

Unlike much of Europe, where public backlash is weak or suppressed by the globalist regime, Northern Ireland now appears to be entering a more volatile phase, with local communities signaling that their tolerance for mass migration and the resulting security failures has reached a critical breaking point.

Front page of local paper, Belfast Telegraph:

Local outlet The Irish News wrote on X, "Residents had to be evacuated from their homes in east Belfast following fires. Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service officers attended the scene at Lendrick Street on Tuesday night."

Residents had to be evacuated from their homes in east Belfast following fires.

Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service officers attended the scene at Lendrick Street on Tuesday night.

Live updates: https://t.co/e5sXQxSNZE

📸: PA pic.twitter.com/oI2ZWwEJrz

— The Irish News (@irish_news) June 9, 2026

Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O'Neill condemned both the attempted beheading and the subsequent social unrest.

"The attack in North Belfast was heinous and wrong. But there are dangerous attempts to exploit that to target and attack innocent people who are simply trying to live, work, and raise their families here," O'Neill said.

Activist Tommy Robinson, who has long warned about mass migration chaos, shared an image of the victim before the beheading attack, which he says was carried out by a "Sudanese invader" ...

The victim of the attempted beheading by a Sudanese invader in Belfast has been named by locals as Stephen Ogilvie.

He remains in intensive care with serious facial and neck injuries. pic.twitter.com/5KJqOhyska

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 9, 2026

... and here's the victim after the attack (view here): 

Robinson blasted lefty Prime Minister Keir Starmer: "This twat imports the problem, dumps murderers and rapists into our communities, then whines about what is and is not acceptable?"

This twat imports the problem, dumps murderers and rapists into our communities, then whines about what is and is not acceptable?

This WANKER has to go!!!!#TwoTierKeir https://t.co/H4UMY0tD52

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 10, 2026

"Stop importing rapists, murderers, and sex pests from savage third-world countries who put young girls' lives at risk. Once you have advocated for that, and the removal of unwanted illegal migrants from communities who never asked for or wanted them, then you can take the high road," Robinson continued.

Stop importing rapists, murderers, and sex pests from savage third world countries who put young girls lives at risk.

Once you have advocated for that, and the removal of unwanted illegal migrants from communities who never asked for or wanted them, then you can take the high… https://t.co/AY2dWi4QVO

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 10, 2026

He noted, "I have very little time or patience right now listening to those who plant unvetted savages into our communities who rape, murder and prey on our children - and they have the audacity to tell us to shut up for the sake of diversity, and everyone is racist?"

Politicians lecture us, yet THEY are the ones responsible for disorder and violence on the streets of Belfast.

Whilst I absolutely DO NOT advocate for violence or for setting a town ablaze, I can understand the anger that drives it.

People feel they have no other choice because…

— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) June 10, 2026

Via X user Saggezza Eterna:

The civilizational collapse of the Western world is no longer a distant warning; it is being written in the blood of its citizens on the streets of Belfast. While the establishment media scrambles to sanitize the narrative, the horrific facts of this latest betrayal remain absolute. Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese national sustained by the asylum industrial complex, has been remanded in custody for the brutal attempted stabbing murder of Stephen Ogilvie. Ogilvie remains in serious condition after losing his left eye, having suffered devastating wounds to his face and back. This is the predictable outcome of borderless globalism: the deliberate importation of third-world violence directly into unsuspecting working-class neighborhoods.

The institutional response to this tragedy exposes the total rot of the globalist managerial class. Prime Minister Keir Starmer bypassed the horrific maiming of a native citizen entirely, choosing instead to threaten outraged protestors with the full force of the law. The regime routinely ignores public safety failures, yet it displays immediate, ruthless efficiency the moment an endangered community rises in self-defense. This asymmetric application of justice proves that our leaders are completely insulated from the consequences of their policies and utterly indifferent to the suffering of the people they supposedly govern.

The explosive protests tearing through Belfast are the justified reflex of a population that refuses to accept quiet liquidation. For decades, citizens have been gaslit into believing that the institutional machinery of democracy would self-correct. The reality is now undeniable: the ballot box is dead, the entire system is rigged, and our leaders are not listening to us. You cannot vote your way out of a regime designed to replace you. When formal channels of justice surrender, the street becomes the final forum of survival. The resistance in Ulster (a province in Ireland) is a warning shot to the entire West to throw off the psychological chains of submission, support the defense of our communities, and reclaim our nations before it is too late.

Belfast: Hadi Alodid named as suspect as victim has 'lost left eye'...

The civilizational collapse of the Western world is no longer a distant warning; it is being written in the blood of its citizens on the streets of Belfast. While the establishment media scrambles to sanitize… pic.twitter.com/gz9ujsYZxV

— Saggezza Eterna (@FinalTelegraph) June 10, 2026

What needs to be addressed are the globalist politicians who pushed population replacement against the will of the people, not just in Europe but in the U.S., and flooded nations with years of mass migration.

Every government imports the problem, then complains when the indigenous population say they have had enough!! pic.twitter.com/fAIZMVogCv

— Innominate Elements (@InnominateElem1) June 10, 2026

It increasingly appears as though their objective was to collapse these countries from within and transform them into one-party states governed by globalist elites.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 07:20

These Are The Jobs With The Highest And Lowest Divorce Rates

Actuaries have America’s lowest divorce rate at 14.2%.

At the other extreme, several occupations report divorce rates near 48%, highlighting a striking divide across the U.S. workforce.

Using American Community Survey data compiled by FlowingData, Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld created the following graphic ranking the occupations with the highest and lowest divorce rates among more than 500 jobs.

One of the ranking’s most surprising findings is that healthcare occupations appear on both sides. Physicians, dentists, and physical therapists rank among America’s lowest-divorce occupations, while home health aides, psychiatric aides, and practical nurses rank among the highest.

The contrast suggests that schedules, working conditions, and job structure may play a larger role than industry alone.

The Jobs With the Lowest Divorce Rates

America’s lowest-divorce occupations are remarkably similar. Most require years of advanced education, professional licensing, or specialized technical expertise.

Education appears to be one factor. Census-based research shows divorce rates generally decline as education levels rise.

Individuals with only a high school diploma experienced a divorce rate of 38.8%, compared with 30.1% for those with an associate degree and 25.9% for those holding at least a bachelor’s degree.

Notably, America’s lowest-divorce occupations include not only high earners such as physicians and dentists, but also clergy, one of the few modest-paying professions in the group.

The Jobs With the Highest Divorce Rates

Telemarketers, bus drivers, bartenders, home health aides, psychiatric aides, casino workers, and security personnel all rank among America’s highest-divorce occupations, with rates exceeding 45%.

The occupations at the opposite end of the ranking share a different set of characteristics. Many involve irregular schedules, shift work, public-facing responsibilities, or emotionally demanding working conditions.

Work schedules may be part of the explanation. A landmark study of more than 3,400 married couples found that irregular schedules, such as night shifts, were associated with significantly higher odds of separation or divorce than regular daytime work.

Other research has linked night-shift work to greater marital instability and work-family conflict, particularly for new parents.

The Surprising Healthcare Divide

One of the ranking’s most surprising findings is that healthcare occupations appear on both sides.

Physicians, surgeons, dentists, physical therapists, optometrists, and physician assistants all rank among the lowest-divorce occupations in America.

Yet healthcare support roles tell a very different story. Home health aides, psychiatric aides, practical nurses, ambulance attendants, and other healthcare support workers rank among the highest-divorce occupations.

The divide suggests that job conditions may matter as much as industry. Workers in healthcare can face vastly different schedules, levels of autonomy, educational requirements, and workplace pressures, even while serving similar patient populations. In other words, two people can work in healthcare and face entirely different relationship pressures depending on their role.

What the Rankings Reveal

The rankings suggest that occupation and family life may be more connected than many people realize. While no profession determines whether a marriage succeeds, factors such as work schedules, stress levels, educational attainment, and job autonomy appear to be linked with markedly different divorce outcomes.

The healthcare divide is perhaps the clearest example. People working in the same industry can face entirely different relationship pressures depending on the role they hold.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on America’s 30 highest-paying jobs.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 06:55

Chinese Firm To Deploy 100 Humanoid Robots To Households For Daily Chores

Authored by Kaif Shaikh via Interesting Engineering,

A Chinese robotics company has begun placing its humanoid robots inside real homes, marking a significant step in the race to develop machines capable of performing everyday household tasks.

Wuhan-based GigaAI recently deployed the first batch of 100 SeeLight S1 humanoid robots for household testing, according to reports from China. The trial is being positioned as China's first large-scale real-home test of a general-purpose humanoid robot designed for domestic use.

While humanoid robots have become increasingly adept at performing carefully choreographed demonstrations, researchers say the real challenge lies in operating inside unpredictable human environments.

From Robot Demos To Real Household Work

In a demonstration apartment in Wuhan, two SeeLight S1 robots carried out a variety of household chores. According to Global Times and China Daily reports, one robot prepared breakfast by retrieving food items, heating chicken in a microwave, clearing dishes, and loading a dishwasher. Another removed laundry from a dryer, folded clothes, and organized them in a wardrobe.

According to GigaAI, the robots learned these tasks through less than a month of on-site training. The company's executives argue that household robotics represents a fundamentally different challenge from the acrobatic robot videos that often dominate social media.

"Tasks such as dancing or performing flips mainly rely on what we can call the robot's cerebellum," GigaAI co-founder and chief scientist Zhu Zheng told Global Times. "Household robots, however, depend on the brain."

That distinction reflects a broader challenge in robotics known as embodied AI, where machines must perceive their surroundings, understand spoken instructions, plan actions, and adapt to constantly changing environments.

Check out China's SeeLight S1, a household humanoid robot capable of cooking, doing laundry, folding clothes, and organizing spaces pic.twitter.com/oHqbb0B6oZ

— Shenzhen Channel (@sz_mediagroup) May 22, 2026 Why Are Homes Harder Than Factories?

Factories are structured and predictable. Homes are not. Furniture gets moved, objects are left in unexpected places, lighting conditions change throughout the day, and every household follows different routines.

Researchers often point to Moravec's paradox, a long-observed phenomenon in artificial intelligence where tasks humans consider difficult, such as advanced mathematics or strategic games, can be easier for machines than seemingly simple activities like folding clothes, grasping objects, or navigating cluttered rooms.

The SeeLight S1 attempts to address this challenge through what GigaAI describes as an embodied foundation model. Rather than following pre-programmed action sequences, the system is designed to process natural-language instructions, interpret its surroundings, create a plan, and execute tasks autonomously. According to the company, the robot can also adapt when furniture layouts change and continue operating even when interrupted during a task.

Still Far From A Robotic Maid

Despite the impressive demonstrations, reports from users and observers suggest there is still considerable room for improvement.

According to Global Times, some household tasks remain slow. Organizing a few books can take several minutes, while folding a single piece of clothing may require more than ten minutes. The robot has also reportedly struggled with tasks such as handling cups without spilling liquids.

Those limitations highlight the gap that still exists between controlled demonstrations and practical household automation. The current SeeLight S1 is therefore less a finished consumer product and more a data-collection platform designed to learn from real-world environments.

GigaAI plans to launch an upgraded SeeLight S2 later this year with a smaller chassis, longer battery life, improved arm reach, and more advanced AI algorithms. The company also intends to expand testing into homes with elderly residents, children, and various living arrangements to expose the robots to a wider range of real-world scenarios.

While humanoid assistants capable of seamlessly handling household chores remain a work in progress, the deployment of 100 robots into actual homes represents an important experiment. The question is no longer whether robots can perform tasks in carefully staged demonstrations. It is whether they can cope with the messy, unpredictable reality of everyday life.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 06:30

Marriage Benefits Men's Life Expectancy More Than Women's

One data point has recently caused much astonishment, confusion and also anger online.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, it is the finding that men benefit more from being married in terms of life expectancy than women do.

In other words, that men live longer and healthier lives if they are backed up by a spouse in doing so, while women don’t see the same support in prolonging their length and quality of life.

The notion that men rob years of life from their wives and basically tag them on to theirs is, however, not supported by (most) research on the topic.

Yet, the differences in how men’s and women’s lives are affected by marriage or the lack thereof are still significant.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In general, women tend to live longer and healthier lives than men for a variety of reasons, including greater health consciousness and a tendency to avoid risky behaviors, but also genetic and hormonal factors. A study published in 2020 in the Journal SSM – Population Health shows that at 65 years old, U.S. women were expected to live for an additional 19 to 21 years, while for U.S. men, this number only stood at around 16 to 18.5 years. Nevertheless, the devil is once again in the details and reveals itself when looking at the differences in sex and marital status.

Here, married men aged 65 gain almost 2.5 years of life expectancy over their unmarried counterparts of the same age, boosting their outlook on life significantly. The data shows how having a spouse brings the life expectancy of married men quite close to that of never-married women - quite significant if one considers how fundamental the longer life span of women has been across ages and cultures. Married and never-married women, on the other hand, have a more similar expected lifespan. However, marriage also benefits women and increases their life expectancy, if only by 1.8 years on average compared to never-married females.

Another study looking at Danish people at age 50 even shows that men benefited from an added life expectancy of around eight years through marriage, while married women could expect to live approximately five years longer compared to never-married women. This gave men an increase that was 60 percent bigger than that of women, compared to the 33 percent U.S. researchers found in 65-year-olds. A study in Asia even found benefits of marriage in reducing mortality only in men, but not in women, concluding that more traditional Asian marriages where female partners take on a lot of household and child-rearing chores on top of possible employment might cancel out any potential benefits.

The role women play in marriages as planners and facilitators of medical care as well as advocates for healthy habits becomes clear when looking at divorced and widowed men’s life expectancy. In the U.S., it falls to basically the same level as that of never-married men when considering 65-year-olds. In the case of U.S. women, the differences are again not that stark. Even if a women is divorced or widowed, her life expectancy is still somewhat above that of a never-married woman, highlighting how women benefit from the overall advantages of marriage rather than just their spouse. These come in the form of so-called marriage protections, like adopting better habits, better mental health outcomes and better social connectedness. They are also often explained by so-called marriage selection, the idea that those individuals who manage to get married are already starting out with a better outlook on life.

Newer research into these factors has added an important distinction to these theories, however. It finds that while overall, marriages tend to provide benefits to a majority of individuals, this doesn’t mean that every marriage is beneficial. A bad marriage or one that places a lot of additional burdens on both or one of the individuals involved can diminish the positive effects of marriage significantly. Likewise, smaller differences between the life expectancies of married, divorced, widowed and never-married women potentially mask a set of more diverse outcomes for women.

Where men’s benefits stemming from marriage seem more widespread and typical, women may still often find positive outcomes from a marriage that is going well for them, but many might also see minimal or even adverse effects, culminating in a less clear picture of marriage and female longevity.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 05:45

Health Team To Monitor Wastewater, Social Media At World Cup For Outbreak Detection

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Public health specialists have launched a dedicated surveillance operation to detect infectious disease threats early during the 2026 World Cup by analyzing wastewater samples and monitoring online chatter.

The 39-day tournament begins on Thursday in Mexico. Organizers estimate more than 6.5 million soccer fans from more than 100 countries will attend 104 matches spread across venues throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The global travel of a worldwide audience to packed stadiums across North America creates conditions for the rapid transmission of pathogens, according to health security experts. The United States will host 78 of the 104 matches.

A team led by Rebecca Katz, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security in Washington, has transformed a university laboratory into an epidemiological command center. The facility pools resources from academic institutions, nonprofit groups, and private companies to support government agencies.

The group already publishes daily status reports that flag emerging risks for hospital emergency managers and public health authorities at local, state, federal, and international levels, as well as for FIFA, soccer’s governing body.

In advanced wastewater analysis, researchers use DNA and RNA sequencing to identify genetic strands from microbes in sewage, without first requiring the growing of cultures in a laboratory setting.

“It’s incredibly powerful,” Katz said.

Collection sites in the United States and Canada, together with additional monitoring across the three host countries, already supply data to the team, with the potential to catch an outbreak in its early stages, giving clinicians time to watch for specific symptoms that might otherwise go unrecognized and allowing public health officials to issue timely precautions.

The operation also incorporates social listening tools.

Staff members analyze anonymized electronic health record data and scan open social media platforms for signs of illness clusters.

Katz noted one earlier case in which officials flagged a gastrointestinal outbreak after noticing a sudden increase in online conversations about toilet paper purchases.

The systems include new layers of aerial and ground monitoring over fans and public spaces for the duration of the event.

Measles is high on the priority watch list. U.S. case counts this year are approaching record territory, with approximately 2,000 reported so far. The highly contagious virus has also resurged in parts of Mexico and Canada.

Mosquito-borne illnesses like dengue, also known as breakbone fever, as well as its close relative chikungunya heighten the level of concern. Infected travelers could bring these tropical diseases to local mosquito populations in host cities.

An Ebola outbreak persists in Congo, which has been at the center of the current crisis in Africa. Katz said the often-fatal hemorrhagic fever holds a “very low risk to the general public” in North America. World Cup players and support staff from Congo completed a precautionary quarantine in Belgium ahead of traveling to the United States.

The new surveillance network comes as U.S. public health officials continue their work to manage risks from multiple outbreaks, including measles, Ebola, and hantavirus.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 05:00

EU Targets Head Of Russian Orthodox Church With Sanctions

What is there left to sanction in Russia? Apparently the European Union still sees plenty of opportunity to punish Russia over the Ukraine war, and is set to go after even religious leaders, now in year five of the conflict and many sanctions packages later.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, is among many names to be targeted in the EU's latest anti-Moscow sanctions proposal. Kirill has long been accused of justifying the war based on his several patriotic-themed sermons over the years.

via Associated Press

Brussels first tried to impose individual sanctions on the patriarch in 2022, but Hungary under PM Viktor Orban had exercised veto power over the move.

The sanctions would involve travel bans and an asset freeze, as has already happened with Kremlin officials and notables.

Kirill has at times utilized language in public that frames Putin's 'special military operation' in Ukraine as a 'holy war'; however, some sympathetic pundits especially in the Orthodox Church world have said these are simple calls to patriotism and defense of the 'motherland' or homeland - a common mindset among most religions and nationalities. 

American politicians and other church leaders in the US have taken swipes at Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church - and yet it must be recalled that in the lead-up to Bush's disastrous 2003 Iraq invasion, since proven to have been based on lies, propaganda, and falsehoods - an overwhelming number of prominent Evangelical and Baptist leaders supported it as a somehow 'righteous' or 'godly' regime change mission.

The Russian Orthodox Church has of late been especially angry that the Ukrainian government under Zelensky has been seizing churches and historic monasteries in Ukraine which still hold communion with Moscow.

In some cases, Orthodox bishops in Ukraine have been arrested simply for not severing spiritual ties with Kirill. This has happened even when bishops, monks, or priests - who find themselves targeted by Ukrainian authorities - don't support Russia's war.

And yet, the EU has remained largely silent on Ukraine's own abuses, and using religion to foster nationalism and conformity to a political agenda.

Moscow has long highlighted this hypocrisy, also as Orthodox Christian clergy in the United States have of late lobbied Congress to demand that Kiev overturn its discriminatory laws which target Orthodox leaders in Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2026 - 04:15