Aggregator

While the Knicks won championships twice in the early 1970s, no ticker-tape parade was held.

Trade $10, get $10 with the Kalshi promo code NYPMAX.

Trump Details Iran Deal At G7: No Nukes, Conditional Sanctions Relief

Summary:

• Iran will not have a nuclear weapon under the new deal.
• The agreement includes strong policing and enforcement powers.
• Trump: Obama’s JCPOA was a horrible deal that led toward a bomb.
• Past U.S. payments to Iran were a failed bribe attempt.
• Sanctions relief will only happen if Iran complies with terms.
• Iran gets no money or relief just for signing the deal.
• A deal has been electronically signed by Iran's Ghalibaf, according to US officials cited by CNBC
• Opening the strait will take time due to mines, and to expect an increase in traffic in 1-2 weeks
• Details to be released in 24-48 hours
• Trump: Ships starting to move through strait or Hormuz
• Vice President JD Vance Begins Optics Roadshow to Boost Investor Confidence On Deal 
• Iran Offers 60-Day Toll-Free Hormuz Transit As 100s Of Ships Await Reopening

Deal Done

CNBC is reporting that a deal between the US and Iran has been electronically signed by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. According to an unnamed US official, the US-Iran MOU provides for the 'immediate' reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, however - while President Trump said earlier that ships were beginning to move, the US official then said that reopening the strait would 'take time' due to mines, and that we can expect an increase in strait traffic over the next 1-2 weeks. 

Trump addressed reporters and allies at the G7 summit in France on Monday, just hours after a major interim agreement with Iran that includes a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and strict limits on Tehran’s nuclear program. Speaking alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, he repeatedly underscored that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was the central achievement of the deal.

“The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “They fully agreed to that with strong policing powers.”

🚨 PRESIDENT TRUMP JUST NOW: "The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon!"

"They fully agreed to that with strong POLICING powers and they won't have a nuclear weapon, which is what it was all about because they probably would have used it if they had it."

"So… pic.twitter.com/izXsxj7vkE

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 15, 2026

He then compared it to the Obama-era JCPOA, calling the earlier agreement “a horrible deal for the United States” that had put Iran on “a road to a nuclear weapon” while sending billions of dollars to Tehran. Trump was also sharply critical of past U.S. cash payments to Iran, describing the $1.7 billion withdrawal from banks plus tens of billions in additional spending as a failed attempt to “bribe them to make a deal that didn’t work.”

🚨 BOOM! President Trump is now publicly OBLITERATING Barack Hussein Obama trying to "BRIBE" Iran with CASH to no success

"$1.7 billion was taken out of the banks and given to Iran and on top of that tens of billions of dollars was spent. So they tried to bribe them to make a… pic.twitter.com/uzp1r070kg

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 15, 2026

On the current arrangement, Trump stressed that any sanctions relief would be strictly behavioral and tied to compliance rather than granted simply for signing. He noted improved relations with Iran’s current leadership and reported that the Strait of Hormuz is already partially open, with mines being cleared and commercial shipping set to resume fully by Friday. Markets reacted immediately, with stocks surging and oil prices posting their biggest drop in some time.

🚨 JUST IN: Overseas, President Trump says he's GETTING ALONG WITH IRAN, the market is SURGING and oil prices are DROPPING

47 just made massive history!

"The Strait is already partially open, as you know they're doing a little hunting for a couple of mines that they've already… pic.twitter.com/UAHoCs1JBn

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 15, 2026

Trump also called for an end to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, saying the long-running conflict “should NOT be tough” to address and that “we have to have a little talk with them.” Less than 24 hours after the Iran developments, he revealed he had already spoken with both President Zelensky and President Putin, describing the conversations as “very good” and expressing optimism that progress could be made to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, where he noted roughly 25,000 people are dying each month.

🚨 HOLY CRAP! President Trump not even 24 HOURS after ending the Iran war just spoke with Putin and Zelensky to try and end the UKRAINE war

This man is going all-out for peace!

"Very good conversation yesterday with President Zelensky and President Putin. And I see maybe we can… pic.twitter.com/XDrhgQgyuT

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 15, 2026

Details of the MOU will be released over the next 24-48 hours, though one US official said that the MOU contains 'possible' $300 billion in reconstruction funding. 

Ghalibaf notably came into public view for the first time in weeks in April to lead the Iranian delegation in talks in Islamabad with US Vice President DJ Vance - marking the highest-level contact between the two foes since before the 1979 Islamic revolution. 

Trump

President Trump on Monday claimed on Truth Social that commercial ships loaded with oil are transiting the Strait of Hormuz followinmg an announced deal to end hostilities with Iran.

"Ships are starting to move, many loaded up with Oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz," he wrote. "They are going along the Southern ‘Highway,’ which is totally safe, secure, and pristine. There are other areas of travel, also!!!"

Keep an eye on it here. 

https://hormuzstraitmonitor.com/

Sunday evening Trump announced that the US and Iran had reached a tentative deal to end the war which was started by the Trump adminisgration and Israel on Feb. 28. 

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it had agreed to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) - according to state-run outelt IRNA.

VP Vance

Not even 24 hours after President Trump declared a peace deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and just 30 minutes before New York futures opened Sunday evening, the administration already had Vice President JD Vance beginning a media roadshow to calm investor nerves and boost confidence.

Vance began the Monday roadshow on CNBC, providing more details on the U.S.-Iran deal, as uncertainty is the market's worst fear.

Vance said the U.S.-Iran deal is moving ahead despite what he called MSM "misreporting."

"The agreement is fundamentally built around a two-step verification process," Vance told the outlet, adding that Israel will have a seat at the table. Vance also stated that all Iranian government factions are represented in the talks, with several Iranian representatives expected at Friday's signing ceremony.

On the Hormuz maritime chokepoint, Vance said the strait is already seeing increased traffic and is expected to remain open toll-free over the long term, not just temporarily. He added that Iran would need resources to rebuild, but those resources would not be available without a nuclear deal.

Summary of discussion via CNBC: 

Vice President JD Vance on Monday said after the U.S. and Iran struck a preliminary deal that there are "a lot" of details that remain to be ironed out, but he expressed confidence that America has "all the cards" in subsequent talks.

The agreement reached Sunday would extend the U.S.-Iran ceasefire for 60 days and set up a framework for future negotiations about Tehran's nuclear program and other key issues.

The text of the preliminary deal has yet to be released. Vance, on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Monday morning, said the deal's two major prongs are reopening the Strait of Hormuz and clinching a long-term commitment that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon.

He indicated that if Iran abides by the deal's commitments, it will be rewarded with loosened economic sanctions or other barriers, allowing Tehran "to be reinvited into the world economy." 

Vance is also expected to join CBS Mornings to discuss the U.S.-Iran peace deal. It is likely that Fox Business and other outlets will follow, as the administration must repair any political damage from four months of war with Iran, which created uncertainty on Wall Street and sent the national average for gasoline prices above $4 per gallon for 2.5 months.

VIEWER ALERT: @VP Vance joins @CBSMornings 🌞 just after 8am ET to discuss the emerging U.S.-Iran deal.

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) June 15, 2026

Let the roadshow begin... 

Iran Offers 60-Day Toll-Free Hormuz Transit As 100s Of Ships Await Reopening

The U.S. and Iran reached an interim agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday evening, just 30 minutes before New York futures opened, with officials from both countries set to meet in Switzerland on Friday to formally sign the peace deal.

According to Iranian outlet Fars, the U.S.-Iran deal reportedly includes a 60-day toll-free window for vessels. After that period, if a more permanent deal is agreed upon, Tehran may seek to monetize the Hormuz chokepoint by charging commercial vessels for "services" tied to safety, navigation, environmental protection, and insurance.

Traffic on the Strait remains light on Monday morning, with hundreds of tankers waiting for the Hormuz waterway to officially reopen by the end of the week. But LNG tanker Disha did not wait for the formal opening and made a dash to exit the strait early Monday.

There are nearly 300 loaded vessels idling in the Persian Gulf, while a similar number of empty ships are waiting in the Gulf of Oman to return to export terminals. Another 250 ballast vessels inside the Gulf are ready to pick up cargoes if outbound flows resume.

The reopening could release millions of barrels of trapped oil and restart LNG flows, but normalization of energy flows back to pre-war levels could take many months, if not quarters, and for Qatar's sake, years.

"From the bridge and the engine room where we're sitting, right now it looks very different to what the headlines may say," said Angad Banga, CEO of maritime conglomerate The Caravel Group, which owns Fleet Management Limited, one of the world's largest ship management companies.

Banga told Bloomberg that it has several crews trapped in the Persian Gulf area, adding, "We've seen positive signals before, and I think ultimately what matters is what holds."

Anoop Singh, global head of shipping research at Oil Brokerage Ltd, told the outlet, "Shipowners are on a risk spectrum — the Japanese, Koreans and Chinese are less open to high risk, while the Greeks have a different appetite — so we may see some people gearing up."

Singh noted, "But by and large the rest of the market is still seeking more details and assurance before proceeding."

Beyond the shipping industry, on Wall Street, UBS economist Arend Kapteyn told clients earlier this morning that "the test will be how quickly and to what extent the Strait of Hormuz reopens. Early indications suggest this may depend on Iran clearing naval mines over an initial 30-day period. But taken at face value, the news should be supportive for risk assets, pushing yields, oil and the US dollar lower, while equities move higher."

Latest Hormuz trends via Kepler Cheuvreux shipping analyst Axel Styrman:

Daily arrivals at the Strait of Hormuz in 2026

Global trade & capacity trapped/waiting as of 22 May

Daily arrivals, Strait of Hormuz, # of ships per segment

Crude Exports and destination via the Strait of Hormuz

LNG Exports and destination via the Strait of Hormuz

LPG exports and destination via the Strait of Hormuz

Shipping Stocks To Watch

Professional subscribers can read much more about the Hormuz chokepoint on our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/15/2026 - 14:30

A California nurse from San Diego miraculously survived a helicopter crash during the Baja 500 race in Mexico.

"Dangerous Precedent Of Censorship And Sanitization": Biden-Appointed Judge Enjoins Removal Of Slavery And Climate Displays

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

George Santayana famously said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The same is true for judicial overreach. Those judges who yield to the temptation to counter policies that are not to their liking are likely to repeat such excesses of power. That is why the recent decision of U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston is so concerning. While there are good-faith reasons why some have objected to the removal of slavery and climate change exhibits from national parks and monuments, this is not about the merits but the authority to make such changes. Kelley’s recent injunction smacks of judicial excess rather than measured review.

Judge Kelley, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction at the behest of groups representing park conservationists, historians and scientists, who argued that the U.S. Department of the Interior has been engaged in a “sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.”

The complaint is heavily laden with subjective views of historical relevance that are obviously not shared by the Administration. These interpretations were installed under the discretion of the Biden Administration. They were removed under the same inherent discretion of the Trump Administration.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing his predecessor on what he viewed as a “revisionist movement” that portrayed the U.S. as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

He ordered the Interior Department to make changes to parks, monuments and memorials to address any “false revision of history” that the White House said had occurred in recent years.

Some of the displays discuss the abuses of indigenous populations or the enslavement of persons at these sites. I happen to agree with the Court that such context is important for citizens to fully appreciate our history. The issue, however, is who legally decides on such interpretive displays.

For example, I strongly disagreed with the African American Museum in the exclusion Justice Clarence Thomas from displays of great African Americans.  While I supported those in Congress seeking answers from the Smithsonian, I never viewed the material as a violation of federal law or worthy of judicial intervention. Notably, these historical groups and experts did not file actions in federal court to force his inclusion.

That was, of course, the individual decision of one museum. However, the question is why the Administration can make such individual decisions rather than department-wide or branch-wide decisions. Likewise, it is difficult to see the limiting principle here. If President Trump said that he wanted to emphasize certain elements like patriotism and these displays were substituted, would that also be a violation of federal law?

The challengers invoked federal law to argue that the Trump Administration was wrong and that the action was therefore arbitrary and capricious. The action is based on loose interpretations of the National Park Service Organic Act, the National Park Service Centennial Act, and the National Parks Omnibus Management Act, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.

Judge Kelley chastises the Administration for removing displays that “do not align with its preferred narrative.” However, the original displays were themselves a preferred narrative by the prior Administration.

Judge Kelley invokes generally worded federal laws to require the Administration to seek out and heed the wisdom of historical experts on such questions, despite the views of other experts who agree with the action.

She declared that the removal of the displays not only undermines “the integrity of the National Parks; it sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.”

The court notes that “the Secretary’s Order fails to provide any reasoned justification for its directive to review and remove interpretive material.” Yet, that would seem abundantly obvious from the cited Executive Order and the purpose of the change. The real question is whether this type of action requires more than the exercise of discretion. Agencies and offices routinely make such decisions on displays. The only difference is a branch-wide order.

The court’s cited authority is itself vague and undefined. For example, Judge Kelley holds that “The Order mentions the Organic Act and the FLPMA as ‘Authority’ but does not explain its relationship to those statutes, such as how the removal of interpretive materials comports with the Organic Act’s mandate to ‘conserve’ and to ‘provide for the enjoyment’ of park resources. 54 U.S.C. § 100101(a).”

The Administration is citing the sweeping discretion afforded under federal law.

However, the Court suggests it can micromanage the branch in making decisions about interpretative displays under this language.

Once again, I may agree with these historians on some of this material but it is immaterial — as immaterial as Judge Kelley’s qualms.

In my view, the court’s analysis is deeply flawed and should be reversed.

Here is the decision: National Park Conservation Association v. Department of the Interior

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/15/2026 - 14:25

"Today's young parents are just plain LAZIER. They both work, come home, cook, and feel that they are too tired to be bothered."

Mikal Bridges went live crazy on Instagram Live on Monday after the Knicks' NBA championship win, talking about everything from Jalen Brunson getting a statue to singing with his dog Sonny.

The $2 bill was reintroduced in 1976 for America’s bicentennial after the first printing pause from 1966 to 1976.

"Fed Express" will be joined by fellow icons Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi and John McEnroe.

An already thin Mets pitching rotation is losing another component.

Could Trump's Fable 5 Export Curbs Slow China's AI Model Race

The biggest AI story to start the week is the Trump administration's decision to place export controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, forcing Dario Amodei's frontier AI lab to restrict foreign access.

The move comes as Chinese open-source models have been rapidly closing the compute gap with U.S. labs. Anthropic's latest release appears to have widened that gap again, particularly in frontier reasoning, coding, and cybersecurity use cases.

Export controls could have second-order effects on the global AI race, according to analysts at Jefferies. By limiting access to Anthropic's most advanced models, Trump officials may slow the pace at which foreign developers, particularly in China, can study, benchmark, or distill these advanced frontier models into cheaper open-source systems.

"US models are improving at a faster pace, likely due to computational advantage, but anti- distillation and US export control are new negatives for China AI," the analysts wrote in a note on Sunday.

The key question now is whether Fable 5 and Mythos 5 include stronger anti-distillation safeguards to prevent Chinese labs from replicating or compressing Anthropic's advances into open-source models. If so, the export curbs may not just be about access. They may represent a broader effort to protect America's AI lead.

To understand the full AI model landscape, not just in the West but also in the East, Bank of America analysts, led by Alex Liu, penned an insightful note on Monday morning about leading Chinese models.

Liu wrote that China's AI model market is moving into a two-speed global structure, with U.S. labs likely to retain the lead in frontier capabilities while Chinese players gain share in lower-cost, high-volume use cases.

She noted that Chinese models are narrowing the gap through efficiency gains, architecture optimization, distillation, and lower-cost inference, making them increasingly affordable.

Liu said AI labs at Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu are racing against independent labs, such as DeepSeek, Zhipu, MiniMax, and Moonshot AI.

Who's who in the China AI model market

Incumbents

• Major internet companies such as ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—many of which have established cloud businesses—have developed proprietary AI foundation models in-house.

Independent AI labs

• DeepSeek, MiniMax, Zhipu, and Moonshot AI are independent AI labs

China AI model landscape is intensely competitive

Investing landscape of Chinese AI labs  

Liu's view is that China AI has shifted from a frontier story to an affordability story. But with the U.S. government now able to halt foreign access to advanced models, as it just did with Anthropic's Fable 5, it appears increasingly difficult for Chinese labs to copy, distill, or reverse-engineer U.S. frontier models.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/15/2026 - 14:05

"You're probably wondering why I'm watching the FIFA World Cup 2026 from home," the Cloud23 founder said in the ad for DoorDash shared Monday.

"You're probably wondering why I'm watching the FIFA World Cup 2026 from home," the Cloud23 founder said in the ad for DoorDash shared Monday.

Social media is saturated with claims that "salt stomping" before bed is a boon for the body. Here's what doctors say.

Cornbread's converted me into a hemp-enthusiast.

Bet $10, get $365 in bonus bets win or lose with the bet365 bonus code.

Judge Eleanor Ross apologized to a former law clerk for the jaw-dropping behavior.

Pratt's Pacific Palisades home was destroyed in the 2025 Palisades wildfire.

The incident has revived memories of a string of bizarre encounters that began in 2020.

What Could Break The Bull Market This Summer

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Key Takeaways

• After nine straight up weeks, the bull market pullback we flagged finally arrived, and it stopped cold at the 50-day moving average.

• The selloff reset an overbought tape without breaking trend. RSI fell from above 70 to the low 40s, and Thursday’s bounce came on broad participation.

• Our Money Flow Breadth Ratio ticked up to 60%, back in buy territory, and we’re holding equity exposure at 100%.

• The bigger risks haven’t gone anywhere: record margin debt, fading retail demand, and a 10-year Treasury that now out-yields the S&P 500.

• This sets up more upside for now. It does not erase the odds of a deeper correction this summer if forward earnings expectations crack.

Two weeks ago, after the S&P 500 logged its ninth consecutive weekly gain, we discussed that a bull market pullback was coming. It came. From the May 27 record near 7,621, the index slid 4.5% and bottomed almost exactly on its 50-day moving average before ripping back to close Friday at 7,431.46. That is not the opening act of a bear market. That is the kind of bull market pullback that resets sentiment and, more often than not, clears the runway for the next leg higher. The harder question is what happens after the bounce.

The Correction We Told You To Expect

Make no mistake, I have been warning about the potential for a pullback over the last few weeks and repeatedly discussed taking profits and rebalancing risk. As I wrote in “Two-Month Market Rally: What Comes Next,” a market that climbs for 9 straight weeks gets stretched, and stretched markets tend to mean-revert. The only real questions were the “when” and “how much.” We suggested a bull-market pullback of 3% to 5%; toward the 50-day moving average, would be most likely. However, a larger correction is still possible. As noted, the actual decline ran 4.5% peak to trough and found its floor exactly where trend-followers add rather than abandon.

Notably, the dip buyers showed up on cue. When the S&P probed the mid-7,200s on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, the same crowd that has bought every dip since the April 2025 low stepped in again, and by Friday the index had clawed back roughly a quarter of the prior week’s 2.64% drubbing. That close at 7,431.46 leaves the larger uptrend fully intact, sitting about 2.5% below the high rather than careening away from it.

Crucially, the setup still favors the bulls, at least for now.

First, the damage was technical, not structural. The 14-day RSI ran above 70 at the late-May high and fell to the low 40s at this month’s lows before settling back near 53. In plain terms, the market burned off its overbought condition without violating the trend, which is textbook.

Second, the quality of the bounce mattered. Thursday’s 1.75% surge came on broad participation rather than three megacaps doing all the lifting, and broad thrusts off support tend to mark real lows instead of dead-cat bounces.

Third, our own money-flow work agrees. The Money Flow Breadth Ratio (MFBR) is a rules-based model that “systematically adjusts portfolio equity exposure in response to the direction and persistence of institutional capital flows.” We use this analysis to size equity exposure in portfolios, and the MFBR ticked up to 60% as of June 12 and sits back in buy territory after sliding to 55% the prior week. The trailing four-week net flow has swung sharply positive following a deeply negative stretch, which historically reads as a contrarian buy. We’ve held exposure at 100% since April 17, and this signal keeps us there.

“As of June 12, 2026, with the S&P 500 at 7,431.46, the Money Flow Breadth Ratio (MFBR) stands at 60% and rising. This places the indicator in BUY territory (60-70%), triggering a NEUTRAL signal. The prior week reading was 55%, representing a 10% decline over the trailing four weeks. The model currently recommends HOLDING exposure at 100%, a level that has remained since April 17, 2026 (8 weeks). This reflects a FLOW-OVERLAY OVERRIDE: the trailing 4-week net dollar flow has swung sharply positive (>$300B) after a deeply negative prior 4 weeks, a historically strong contrarian buy signal.” – Bull Bear Report June 13th

The map from here is simple. Overhead, the 20-DMA at 7,466 is the first hurdle, then the round 7,500 mark, then the 7,621 record. Below, the 50-DMA at 7,248 is the line in the sand, with the 38.2% retracement at 7,118 and the rising 200-DMA at 6,882 beneath it. Hold 7,248 through Wednesday’s Fed meeting, and this stays a routine shakeout inside an uptrend.

What Could Break The Trade This Summer

None of that means you switch off your risk management. As we warned in “Leadership Is Narrow” and again in “Market Correction Risk,” the ingredients for a deeper drawdown are quietly building underneath a rising tape. Three of them deserve your attention.

Start with leverage. FINRA margin debt hit a record $1.30 trillion in April, up better than a third in a year, and now runs near 4% of GDP against a long-run median closer to 1.5%. Measured against M2, it’s back near the peaks that preceded the 2000 and 2007 tops. Borrowed money cuts both ways. It is an accelerant, not a cushion.

Next, watch the retail bid. Vanda’s flow data shows single-stock retail net turnover rolling over into negative territory in recent sessions, even as prices grind higher. That divergence matters. When the buyer who powered this rally starts selling into strength, the marginal source of demand thins out right as the supply picture gets heavier.

Then there’s the cold math on bonds versus stocks. The 10-year Treasury now yields about 4.45%, while the S&P 500’s trailing earnings yield sits near 3.7%. For the first time in this cycle, a risk-free Treasury pays you MORE than the index earns. That flips the equity risk premium negative and hands every allocator a credible, paid-to-wait reason to trim equities into bonds.

Layer on the supply story as detailed in “Equity Supply Surge”: Alphabet’s $80 billion secondary, SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO, and a queue of mega-raises from OpenAI, Anthropic, and the hyperscalers mean the market has to absorb a wall of new paper. More shares chasing the same dollars is a persistent headwind, not a one-day shock. As we noted in “Parabolic Semiconductor Rally,” when the most prized names all rush the exit at once, it pays to ask who is selling.

How We’re Positioning

So how do we square a buy signal with a real list of worries? We hold exposure and manage risk simultaneously. Those two things aren’t in conflict. The MFBR keeps us invested because the weight of the evidence and a clean test of support still point higher. Bob Farrell’s fourth rule reminds us that exponential moves tend to run further than anyone expects and then correct violently. Markets like that never correct gently. Therefore, we keep trailing stops disciplined, we refuse to chase the SpaceX-fueled enthusiasm at the highs, and we watch 7,248 like a hawk.

The calendar adds a second reason for that discipline. We’re walking into the weakest stretch of the year. As I detailed in “Market Correction Risk: Why Summer 2026 Looks Risky,” the May-through-October window has produced an average S&P 500 gain of just 1.7% since 1950, compared with better than 7% in November through April. The old “sell in May” line gets mocked every spring by people who haven’t looked at the data. The data is one-sided.

Then stack the election cycle on top. 2026 is a midterm year, and midterm years are the weakest and most volatile leg of the four-year presidential cycle. Jeff Hirsch’s Stock Trader’s Almanac has tracked the pattern for decades, and the numbers are sobering. Going back to the early 1960s, the average intra-year drawdown in a midterm year runs around 17% to 18%. That is well above the roughly 13% you see in the other three years. Notably, volatility tends to build up ahead of the November vote as investors handicap the balance of power in Congress.

Here’s the part that keeps me constructive, though. That midterm weakness has historically been a setup, not an ending. The 12 months after a midterm election have delivered an average S&P 500 gain of more than 12%. Furthermore, the Dow has climbed by more than 45% on average from its midterm-year low to its pre-election-year high. So the same seasonal soft patch that turns a routine bull market pullback into a deeper summer correction has, time and again, been the launchpad for the next leg up. We manage risk now, NOT because the bull market is over. We do it because we want dry powder and a steady hand when the seasonal low shows up.

None of this is about going to cash and hiding. It’s about tilting the book so you can sit through a noisy summer and still have ammunition for the fall. Here’s the playbook we’re running.

Howard Marks said it best.

“The riskiest thing in markets is the belief that there is no risk.”

With high-yield spreads pinned near 300 basis points, the market is pricing almost none. That’s exactly the backdrop where this kind of playbook earns its keep. Stay invested, but keep one hand on the exit.

The catalyst that turns a healthy pullback into something deeper won’t be a single oil-soaked CPI print. It’ll be the moment forward earnings expectations start to roll over while valuations sit at the high end of history. We aren’t there yet. Watch the Fed on Wednesday, watch wages, and watch whether second-half earnings estimates hold. The trend is your friend right up until the day it isn’t. Our job between now and then is to stay invested without going blind.

What’s your read? Are you adding to this dip or trimming into strength? Does the gap between a bullish tape and a long list of risks have you second-guessing your own positioning? If so, that’s exactly the conversation worth having. Connect with our team, and let’s pressure-test your portfolio before the summer does it for you.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/15/2026 - 13:45