The biggest discussion that top Goldman Sachs trader (and flows guru), Lee Coppersmith, had with clients this week wasn’t whether AI is over - it wasn’t.
The debate has shifted to how investors should own it from here.
If anything, the secular backdrop across both the US and Asia continues to strengthen. Capex expectations remain robust, earnings revisions continue to move higher, and we saw another week of significant inflows into US technology.
Prime Brokerage data tells the same story - Semis are on pace to finish as the most net bought global subsector for a second straight year, with net allocations now at record highs.
What’s changing isn’t the fundamental story - it’s the market structure. leverage continues to build, and volatility across large-cap Tech continues to expand relative to the broader market even as prices move higher.
At the same time, global HF net leverage has climbed to 4-year highs and this is one of the sharpest increases over a 4-week period in the past 5 years, driven by significant net buying activity and mark-to-market … Here’s our full PB rundown.
We’re also seeing some signs of broadening despite a pickup in that debate at the end of the week. Flows have expanded into Financials, cyclicals and parts of Europe and Asia, but not at the expense of AI. In fact, while overall US Tech exposure has risen toward 5-year highs, Mag 7 gross and net exposure has fallen to 1-year lows as investors rotate deeper into the AI ecosystem - particularly Semis and Asian chipmakers - rather than simply adding more mega-cap exposure.
The other major takeaway from June is that macro is back. The Iran deal serves to remove one inflation risk and Brent gave back much of its geopolitical premium, only for the Fed to replace it with renewed policy uncertainty. Front-end rates repriced higher following a hawkish FOMC, and markets should now recalibrate event volatility premium more carefully (see NFP day and FOMC day as prime examples).
One interesting observation has been how quickly investors have faded geopolitical risk. Brent has retraced most of its war premium, Managed Money has sold nearly $25bn of crude over the past seven weeks, outright shorts have reached new highs after a record build this past week, and net length now sits below pre-war levels (h/t Rob Quinn). Investors have been remarkably quick to close the book on oil and shift their attention back toward rates and Fed policy.
Brent Managed Money Shorts – weekly change
Finally, systematic flows remain an important amplifier. Dealer gamma from leveraged ETFs - particularly in markets like Korea - continues to reinforce both upside momentum and downside moves, adding another source of volatility beneath the surface. One stat that stood out to me: leveraged ETF dealer gamma rebalancing can exceed 20% of Korea's market ADV on large-move days.
Our takeaway hasn’t changed - AI remains the highest-conviction secular story we hear from clients and continues to attract capital globally.
But June has been a reminder that even the strongest secular themes don’t trade in a vacuum.
The market is carrying more length, more leverage and, as a result, more volatility.
Professional subscribers can read all the links above from Goldman's Sales & Trading team here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal
Tyler Durden Sun, 06/21/2026 - 16:55Keir Starmer's premiership appears to have entered its final act. Just over a week after Andy Burnham stormed back into Parliament with a crushing by-election win, the Prime Minister is - according to senior Labour figures cited by The Observer - preparing to set out a timetable for his own departure, with a "clear statement" possible as early as Monday.
Peter Macdiarmid/Pool via REUTERSIt would be a remarkable collapse. Starmer led Labour to a landslide less than two years ago. He now looks unable to command the confidence of his own benches for much longer, with cabinet ministers, union leaders and donors reportedly among those who have been involved in the conversations about his future.
Burnham, the outgoing Greater Manchester mayor, did not just win Makerfield - he buried it. Official figures show him taking 24,927 votes, 54.8% of the total, beating Reform UK's Rob Kenyon by a 9,231-vote margin in a seat where Nigel Farage's party had been threatening to turn Labour's crisis into a rout. The result gives Burnham the Commons seat he needs, clears his path to a leadership challenge, and leaves Starmer's position looking terminal.
Also, Starmer's former Chief of Staff - Morgan McSweeney - was the sacrificial lamb in the Mandelson scandal (recall that Starmer appointed Jeffery Epstein pal Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to the US). McSweeney also targeted Zerohedge, The Federalist and Breitbart in a clandestine campaign against alternative-media outlets. He resigned in February, two weeks before Mandelson was arrested on suspicion of passing insider info to Jeffrey Epstein in 2009, when he was serving as Business Secretary.
Meanwhile - he just... tweeted it out:
BREAKING: President Trump confirms Keir Starmer is resigning as Prime Minister… before Starmer has confirmed it himself. The final humiliation. pic.twitter.com/yz33xD4rPt
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 21, 2026 Markets Eye The Monday OpenThe political risk did not go unnoticed by bond traders. UK 10-year gilt yields climbed to 4.84% on Friday, up roughly 0.09 percentage points on the session, as markets weighed Burnham's victory, domestic political uncertainty, and the possible fiscal implications of a future leadership bid.
With markets shut over the weekend, the next read comes at Monday's open, and any Starmer statement setting out an exit timetable will land straight into it.
//--> //--> //--> Starmer out by June 22, 2026?Burnham is due to be sworn in as an MP on Monday and to meet Starmer early in the week, with a cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday. Senior Labour figures expect a "deliberate slow march in good order" - most likely a September handover timed to the party conference - rather than an immediate vacuum.
According to the report, Burnham's supporters claim he has secured backing from more than 201 Labour MPs if Starmer refuses to step down voluntarily. The Observer framed that as a critical number because it would represent more than half the Parliamentary Labour party and would make it increasingly difficult for Starmer to argue that he still commands the confidence of his own side.
A formal challenge requires far fewer names. Under Labour's rules, any challenger needs nominations from 20% of Labour MPs - currently 81 - plus the required support from local parties and affiliates. On every count, the door is open.
Starmer Digging In?For now, at least in public, Starmer is not going quietly. On Friday he congratulated Burnham on X - framing the result as a win for "Labour's campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate" - while insisting he would stand in any leadership contest and still had "more to do."
Congratulations, @AndyBurnhamGM, Labour's new MP for Makerfield.
Voters chose Labour's campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate.
By Saturday the mood music had shifted. The Observer reports that Starmer was spending the weekend at Chequers with his wife, Victoria, weighing his future after a round of conversations with cabinet ministers, advisers, union bosses and donors.
One Labour peer close to the Prime Minister told the paper that Starmer would not "walk away" from No. 10 creating a vacuum, but would instead "arrange a deliberate slow march in good order, as a matter of duty and dignity." Another Labour grandee said the Prime Minister now appeared "resigned" to stepping down after coming "hard against the reality that the support isn't there."
The establishment knives are out. Lord Falconer - Starmer's own former shadow attorney general - told the BBC that the Prime Minister had "absolutely no authority left because everybody assumes Andy Burnham is about to challenge for the leadership and everybody assumes he's going to win."
Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who remains the obvious alternative pole of opposition inside the party, publicly hailed Burnham's result even as allies insisted he still intends to stand in any contest.
Huge congratulations to @AndyBurnhamGM on an astonishing victory in Makerfield, where Labour lost badly only weeks ago.
It gives us all hope that Labour can still win, but Andy's campaign is proof that to do so we need to change.
Enormous thanks to everyone involved.
Even the money is moving. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said "obviously Starmer needs to go," calling for an orderly transition on a clear timetable and a conversation about Labour's policy priorities.
Streeting's allies, meanwhile, are still talking as though the fight is alive. The Observer reported he has taken out a contract on an office for 40 members of staff as campaign headquarters and has received two £50,000 donations from Fran Perrin, one of Labour's most generous supporters. But some senior Labour figures now believe Streeting may ultimately do a deal with Burnham rather than stand in the way of the momentum.
"A Final Chance To Change"Burnham's victory speech left no doubt about the scale of his ambition, even if he stopped short of formally launching the challenge. "Tonight could - just could - be the turning point," he told supporters, warning Labour it had a "final chance to change" with "no second chance."
There was also some weirdness: animal-rights campaigner Robert Pownall, who ran as an independent, and Count Binface, the bin-headed "intergalactic space warrior," who took 95 votes.
"I swear I'll move to Makerfield if I win."
Count Binface talks to Sky's @joncraig at the vote count at the Makerfield by-election. https://t.co/cjPB04D pic.twitter.com/skyclip
Burnham's win was the trigger, but the charge had been laid months earlier. The slow detonation of Starmer's authority traces back to his decision, in December 2024, to hand the plum Washington ambassadorship to Peter Mandelson despite Mandelson's long-public friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson was sacked as ambassador in September 2025 after released material appeared to show a closer relationship with Epstein than had been acknowledged at the time of appointment. He was later arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations that sensitive government information had been passed to Epstein during the 2008-2010 financial crisis. Mandelson has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged, and the police investigation is ongoing.
'Where does this leave the tattered reputation of our Prime Minister?'
@MartinDaubney discusses the first tranche of the Mandelson files revealing that Sir Keir Starmer was warned that the former ambassador, Lord Mandelson, brought a 'reputational risk'. pic.twitter.com/84vWC3jmhe
Starmer claimed Mandelson had lied throughout the appointment process - however it later emerged that he knew full well of the friendship.
🚨 Wow.
The Mandelson files are up.
They prove Starmer WAS advised and warned about Mandelson's appalling friendship with Epstein.
Starmer appointed him anyway.
Starmer lied.
Starmer must resign. pic.twitter.com/1yjYioVJhK
By then the damage was structural: his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney had resigned over the affair, a top Foreign Office mandarin was on the way out, and the government had spent months bleeding credibility through document dumps, a vetting row, sleaze-inquiry pressure and a steady drip of resignations.
No. 10 is still batting the resignation talk away as "speculation," and Starmer's team insists he will fight any challenge. On Friday, the Prime Minister told staff the party had to "pull together" and "take the fight" to Reform.
But the shape of the problem is brutal: Burnham has the seat, his allies claim the numbers, cabinet ministers are turning, the unions are turning, and Reform UK remains the threat Labour MPs increasingly believe only Burnham can blunt.
If Starmer steps to a podium on Monday and sets out an exit timetable, it will cap an extraordinary fall - from landslide to forced retreat in under two years - and crack open the door for the man they call the "King of the North" to walk through it.
Maybe if Starmer had addressed unchecked migration, England's woke police, or the rape gangs his CoS tried to get us demonetized for reporting on...
💥NEW: How PM Keir Starmer's Machine Quietly Moved to Cripple Breitbart, The Federalist, ZeroHedge, and Left Independent Outlets
On Breaking Points, Ryan introduces Drop Site's latest investigation, adapted from Paul Holden's book, exposing how Keir Starmer and his chief of… pic.twitter.com/NVPDm7aWmw
Tyler Durden Sun, 06/21/2026 - 16:35
The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a state-funded scholarship program that awarded financial aid based on the race of college students. The Democrat-controlled court followed the precedent laid out by the United States Supreme Court in finding that Gov. Tony Evers and the state were violating the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.
Two of the most liberal justices, however, wrote a concurrence denouncing the bar on the use of race for such scholarships.
If Democrats are able to pack the Supreme Court as demanded by many party leaders, this concurrence is an example of the likely changes that a packed court will bring in reversing anti-discrimination and other rulings.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty represented the taxpayers in this successful challenge of the Wisconsin Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program.
That program administered taxpayer-funded grants of up to $2,500 per academic year to eligible students of Black American, American Indian, Hispanic, or certain Southeast Asian backgrounds.
The state paid out roughly half a million dollars in scholarships, now found to be racially discriminatory.
Citing the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court reaffirmed that “The Constitution requires that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.’”
While many have heralded the new bright line against racial discrimination in higher education, two of the most liberal justices, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Susan Crawford, lamented the loss of racially discriminatory programs.
In her concurrence, Chief Justice Karofsky captured the sweeping, open-ended rationales used for such programs:
“Why have we not learned from our past? Why are we not willing to recognize the harms this country has caused to those who are marginalized, disempowered, or disenfranchised? Why, instead of wielding the Equal Protection Clause as a sword against racism, do we employ it to shield against the promise of equality for all? The answer appears to be because we have failed to fully recognize how societal and governmental practices have long continued to enforce a preference for White Americans and to burden Black Americans and those of other disadvantaged races or backgrounds.”
These justices would continue race-based programs indefinitely under the claim that there is a “preference for White Americans” in programs that focus purely on academic achievement or specific non-racial criteria.
The two justices quote from the dissent of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that requiring race-neutral rules is just more “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” by a white privileged society.
She added, “I fully recognize and acknowledge that I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA and other cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court…However, I also choose to write separately. I do so because I find it impossible to ignore the truths that Justice Jackson identifies.”
Notably, those “truths” from the Jackson dissent have been challenged as containing glaring false claims.
I have previously discussed my disagreements with Jackson and her jurisprudence, including her dissent in the SFFA case. However, this concurrence vividly shows the jurists whom the Democrats could call upon to pack the Supreme Court to reverse decisions like the one in SFFA.
With various Democratic leaders now openly pledging to pack the Court to reverse such decisions, the 2028 election is becoming a referendum on the future of an institution that has proven key to maintaining this Republic for 250 years.
Democratic politicians and pundits have made clear that they need the immediate control of the Supreme Court to carry out an agenda that would be struck down as unconstitutional. That includes reversing core constitutional rulings. The Karofsky concurrence offers a glimpse into our future if we allow the Court to be the object of a political hostile takeover.
Tyler Durden Sun, 06/21/2026 - 16:20