by diastole-admin | Jun 29, 2026 | Uncategorized
Happy Fourth of July week! Many offices, including ours, will be closed on Friday to celebrate the holiday. Get to the grocery store early to pick up the hotdogs you’ll need for your cookout – because nothing says happy birthday America like standing over a hot grill in the middle of a heat wave. Mmm, hot dogs.
But first, stocks! Last week saw the Standard & Poor’s 500 fall about 2%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 4.6%. The Dow Jones Industrials gained 0.6% for the week. What happened? Well, the first thing is that tech stocks fell in price as some companies decided to pass along rate hikes (in the price of tech components) to consumers. Among other companies, Apple and Microsoft announced that they were raising prices on laptops, smartphones, and other devices.
We know that there is a shortage of chips (the processing kind, not the tasty kind). That’s why chip manufacturers are doing so well. And we know that AI companies are set to build data centers that will suck up the chips AND the clean water. Scarcity drives prices higher, but higher prices can cause a dip in demand. It’s complicated, and we’re watching it. Well, everyone is watching it.
The S&P and the Nasdaq are more subject to tech stock moves than is the Dow Industrial Average, which is less tech heavy. But it’s working to catch up, as today the Dow swapped out Verizon stock in favor of Alphabet – the parent company of Google. Serious investors watch the movements of the S&P and, to a lesser extent, the Nasdaq. The Dow remains almost an afterthought. But it still serves to reflect when value stocks are doing better than growth (usually tech) stocks.
And as for one particular stock, SpaceX, it fell in price four out of five trading days last week. Although SpaceX originally went public at $135 per share, Morningstar evaluated it as worth more like $63. But then it traded up, and then down, and today is trading around $155 per share. Stockholders in Elon Musk-related companies are generally fans of his, and may feel sorry for the man who was, for a brief minute, a trillionaire.
But Musk has gone further than issuing stock in SpaceX. Following his successful IPO, he announced that he was also going to sell $25 billion in SpaceX bonds. The bonds were released at a slight premium to Treasurys but began to fall in price (raising their yields) as investors decided the bonds were too expensive given their speculative quality.
We received an updated personal-consumption expenditure index reading last week, which showed that consumer prices rose 4.1% over the trailing-twelve months ending in May. This is more than double the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target and would normally indicate that the Fed would raise interest rates to tamp down inflation. But there’s a new sheriff in town, and Kevin Warsh is going to be reluctant to raise rates after campaigning for his new job with the idea that he would cut rates. He’s now being pulled in two directions by what the economy needs and what the Administration wants. The next Fed Open Market Committee meeting is at the end of July.
The U.S. Congress managed to pass a bipartisan housing bill which would limit the number of homes a corporate buyer could accumulate – potentially leaving more homes for actual people to buy. But the Administration cancelled the signing of the bill at the last minute. Still, it has not been vetoed, and if that remains true, the bill will go into effect 10 days (not including Sundays) after it reached the president’s desk.
Last year, people in America donated $19.2 billion in what are called megagifts to charities. One third of these gifts were donated by Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. Her total giving for the year equaled about $7 billion dollars. She was followed by Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. Scott’s giving over the past five years has exceeded $26 billion, although her Amazon-based fortune is still worth almost $35 billion.
For the week ending on June 26th, the S&P finished at 7,414, the Nasdaq at 25,641, and the Dow at 52,214. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.39%. U.S. WTI crude oil cost $69.95 per barrel, New York gold cost $4,050.80 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.14.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Barron’s, Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal, Morning Brew, Axios, Bloomberg, CNN, Business insider, Reuters, CNBC, NBC, The AP, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fortune, and The Hustle. If you have questions about anything you’ve read here, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com.
Living in New York City and unable to afford even the average rent of about $3,600 per month? No problem! The solution is convents! Nuns in the city are renting out their spare rooms to young men (on separate floors) and young women. The cost is about $800 to $1600 per month, payable weekly, and other rules apply. Curfews, chores, and communal eating are some of the restrictions and advantages. I’ve seen Sister Act, I know nuns can be a good time.
by diastole-admin | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized
Special thanks are due to Joe DePatie of Diastole for writing the Monday Comment last week while I played hooky. He wrote a wonderful piece and now I don’t have any job security.
A few things have happened since then. SpaceX stock started falling back to human levels after rising like a rocket after its IPO. This morning the stock is trading around $175 per share. It was initially listed at $135 per share and traded as high as $225 over the past ten days.
A cease-fire deal between the U.S. and Iran seems to be holding, while peace negotiations are ongoing in Switzerland. The Strait of Hormuz has opened, closed, and reopened again. Currently the Iranian government says it is closed, but some traffic is moving through it. Oil prices have fallen on all of this news, with both WTI (U.S.) crude and Brent (international) crude trading below $80 per barrel. We have China to thank for the relatively reasonable oil prices we have seen during the war with Iran. China opted to buy NO oil during the conflict, relying instead on its hefty reserves.
Last week was Kevin Warsh’s first Open Market Committee meeting as Fed Chairman. He indicated that instead of having the Fed move markets, he would prefer that markets move the Fed. Warsh gave the usual press conference after the interest-rate decision was announced, but he was a man of few words, both in his comments and his written summation of the meeting. We will learn more about his style as chairman as time goes by.
The FOMC announced no rate change at its meeting – as was fully expected and decided unanimously. Of the 19 governors on the Committee, nine anticipate a rate hike coming later this year. In March, that number was zero.
Rate hikes can be necessary to combat inflation, and inflation is what we see when we look at the latest Producer Price Index. In May it rose 6.5% over the trailing twelve months, and import prices increased 6.7% over the same period. U.S. retailers reported sales growth acceleration in May – not necessarily reflecting increased purchasing, but perhaps just increased prices on the same goods being bought. Under former Chairman (and still Fed member) Jerome Powell, the Fed’s target inflation rate was 2%. Chairman Warsh has announced his commitment to the same target.
According to Axios and Forbes Magazine, “Median household net worth in the U.S. is around $193,000.” Jeff Bezos is worth roughly $249 billion, while Elon Musk is now worth more than a trillion dollars. You know what that means, don’t you? Our piddly fortunes are now closer to the value of Bezos’s than his is to Musk’s. Yikes!
For the week ending on June 18th, the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished at 7,500, the Dow Jones industrials at 51,564, and the Nasdaq Composite Index at 26,517. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.496%. WTI (U.S.) crude oil cost $73.61 per barrel, while Brent (international) oil cost $77.69 per barrel. New York Gold cost $4,155.68 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.14, reflecting a strengthening dollar.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Morning Brew, Yahoo Finance, Barron’s, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Axios, USA Today, The Bureau of Labor Statistics, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The AP, Reuters, Fortune Magazine, Forbes Magazine, PitchBook, Morningstar, CNN, and The BBC. If you have questions, please call Diastole at 800-458-5220 or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thank you for reading!
Elon Musk won’t see the entirety of his SpaceX payout until and unless he meets all the terms of the deal he made with SpaceX. One of them is that he establishes a permanent colony on Mars. Seems far fetched, but who am I to sell Elon short? In the meantime, NASA has revealed its plans to build a permanent Moon base. Before humans can live there, lots of machines will have to be delivered, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is one of the companies that will produce the machines. But Musk’s SpaceX is being contracted to deliver the humans. And meanwhile, the Chinese seem to be ahead in the race back to the moon. Oh, the drama!
by diastole-admin | Jun 15, 2026 | Uncategorized
Last week’s turbulent market environment was accentuated by the largest ever initial public offering. Despite geopolitical headwinds, rising inflation, conflict uncertainty, and concerns about disruptions brought on by artificial intelligence, investors appear to remain optimistic about the future.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Ticker: SPCX) successfully raised $75 billion from the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, debuting at an initial market capitalization of over $1.7 trillion. Shares traded as high as $176.52 before settling at $160.95—almost 20% higher than the IPO price of $135.
This IPO generated massive investor interest for a few key reasons. First, the company undoubtedly provides cutting-edge services, including rocket launches, satellite internet, social media, and artificial intelligence. Second, the market has rarely seen a company this massive go public with such a small portion of its total shares available for public trading.
This limited float, combined with the fact that this mega-cap company is being included in market-cap-weighted indices, may trigger a significant amount of forced buying from institutional funds. It will be interesting to see how these liquidity dynamics are navigated, particularly with two more massive tech IPOs in the pipeline: Anthropic and OpenAI.
Unfortunately, inflation is running hot once again. Last week, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) grew by 4.2% over the last 12 months, marking the largest increase since 2023. The single largest contributor to this spike was an almost 25% surge in the cost of energy.
The textbook response to a hot data print like this would be an interest rate hike. However, with a new Federal Reserve chairman at the helm and clear, localized energy disruptions, will rates actually be increased? Markets are laser-focused on this week’s rate announcement from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank (ECB) did raise interest rates last week in response to the economic fallout of the conflict in the Middle East. On a brighter note, news broke on Sunday that a deal between the U.S. and Iran has been struck, ensuring the Strait of Hormuz opens for business. Hopefully, this news translates to lower prices at the pump soon.
Inflation and SpaceX weren’t the only major narratives driving markets last week. Semiconductor shares recovered after four of the world’s largest data center operators raised their 2026 capital expenditure (CapEx) budgets to a collective $750 billion, with expectations to top $1 trillion in spending by 2027. Bitcoin continued its recent slide, falling to $63,543. For context, it traded as high as $126,198.07 during the second half of 2025.
For the week ending on June 12, the Standard & Poor’s 500 finished at 7,431, the Nasdaq Composite Index at 25,889, and the Dow Jones Industrials at 51,202. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.48%. U.S. (WTI) crude cost $87.81 per barrel, International (Brent) crude cost $87.33 per barrel, New York gold cost $4,186 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.16.
Joseph T DePatie CFA, CFP®
Financial Advisor
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Morning Brew, Barron’s, Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, Axios, USA Today, CNN, The AP, The Washington Post, Business Insider, The New York Times, Reuters, Fortune, The Atlantic, The Hustle, and Popular Science. If you have any questions about what you’ve read, please call us at 203.458.5220, or write to me, Joseph DePatie, at jdepatie@dwinvest.com. Thanks for reading!
by diastole-admin | Jun 8, 2026 | Uncategorized
There was a whopping jobs report released on Friday, which showed that 172,000 net new jobs were created in May – about twice what was expected. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.3%. Yay, great news! Oh wait. Good news is bad news – again. Markets slumped considerably on Friday as investors realized that, in combination with rising inflation, strong jobs numbers will lead to higher interest rates, NOT the falling rates for which this administration is lobbying.
Savers like rising rates. Borrowers, of course, do not. And one of the biggest borrowers out there is the U.S. government, which has to sell Treasurys of various durations in order to fund its massive debt. If you are curious about the difference between our debt and our deficit, remember that our debt is everything we owe, while our deficit is the difference between THIS YEAR’S federal income and THIS YEAR’S federal spending. It is a one-year number. The U.S. fiscal year runs October 1st through September 30th.
The war with Iran is also still a major factor on stocks. And the stock indices have been responding up and down to news that the war is over, the war is expanding, the Strait is closed, the U.S. is escorting tankers through the Strait, Israel has signed a treaty with Lebanon, there are no material negotiations ongoing. Your guess is as good as mine. (Probably. Are you a military expert? Then your guess is much better than mine.)
Before Friday’s stock slide, markets were again making new incremental highs last week. And also pulling back slightly on news of oil prices rising, and on Friday, the chip stocks lead the rout, as those companies are borrowing tons of money to build data centers, hog all the freshwater, and create AI threats to humanity. But hey, those recaps of my emails are pretty sharp.
So, we must ask the question that has recurred for several weeks now, maybe months. Why are equity markets (and bond markets to a lesser degree) rising overall during such troubled times? Well, one answer may be the K-shaped economy. The K-shape is meant to describe that upper-income households are doing better, while middle- and lower-income households are struggling. The upshot of this discrepancy is that consumer spending remains strong (buoyed by the wealthy) even while working families are facing inflation that is now running hotter than wage gains.
If you own stocks (probably mutual funds) in your retirement accounts, you are unlikely to sell based on market conditions, because you have limited access to those funds. If you have discretionary ownership of stocks, you are probably not selling them because they’re doing great and you don’t need the money (see the K-shaped economy, above). A correction is coming, but no one knows when. Make sure your conservative allocations are in place!
We keep hearing that 20% of the world’s oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. So why aren’t oil prices higher? One big reason is that the Chinese have made a major shift away from fossil fuels, cutting their demand for oil by up to 9%. AND they’ve got more than one billion barrels in storage. Europe is following suit in terms of renewable energy. Plus, oil traders really really want to believe that the Strait will reopen soon.
A quick word about bitcoin (down by about half since October) and gold (down about 18% since January). Clearly money has moved from both “safe havens” into stocks during the recent equity climb. Will they rise if stocks start falling? Don’t know, but I do know that bitcoin fund Strategy just had to sell some of its coins in order to pay its dividend.
According to LiveScience, there were yeast growing on the body of Otzi the Iceman when he was discovered in the Alps in 1991, 5,300 years after his death. The yeast had been feeding on his frozen remains. Now scientists have used the yeast to make sourdough bread, which they describe as “very very good.” Thank you, no. You go first.
For the week ending on June 5th, the S&P 500 finished at 7,383, the Nasdaq Composite at 25,709, and the Dow Industrials at 50,866. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.536%. U.S. oil (WTI crude) cost $90.81 per barrel, while international Brent crude cost $86.24 per barrel. New York gold cost $4,334.49 per ounce, while one Euro was worth $1.15.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Morning Brew, Yahoo Finance, Barron’s, AFP News, CNBC, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Axios, Fortune, Business Insider, Reuters, Bureau of Labor Statistics, The AP, Bloomberg, USA Today, CNN, The New York Times, and LiveScience. If you have questions, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thanks for reading!
Serena Williams is making a tennis comeback. The 44-year-old already has 23 Grand Slam singles titles, but she will be playing doubles at an upcoming tournament in London. Williams says she wants her children to see her play. Half a lifetime ago, I stayed up pretty late on Friday nights. Don’t think I could do it again. You go, Serena!
