Happy Belated Fourth of July, and congratulations to Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo for once again winning their Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contests. I don’t know how they do it, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. For those of you without dogs, I hope you enjoyed some fireworks!
Last week held only four days of trading and included the end of the June trading month. Stock markets closed higher for June, rising on the ideas that fighting in Iran was over, oil prices were falling, and the dollar was strengthening. It was also the end of a very strong quarter in the markets – the best for the Standard & Poor’s 500 since the second quarter of 2020, when markets roared back after the Covid selloff.
Small stocks beat large ones as the Russell 2000 rose 22% for the first half of 2026 – better than the Nasdaq and its best first half since 1991. Just when you think you should only own big tech or AI stocks, the markets teach you a lesson. Asset allocate and stay the course!
SpaceX stock is trading today in the 160s – putting Elon Musk back into trillionaire status. (In fact, it seems that he is almost as wealthy as the next five billionaires combined. So sad for them!) But SpaceX also raised money by selling bonds, and they are not performing as well. Since issuance, the bonds have fallen in price, pushing their yields higher. The bonds were issued with a BBB rating – the lowest investment-grade rating. But their yields are now closer to BB-issued bonds. Investor confidence in bonds is measured by how close to Treasury yields they trade. A typical BBB bond trades at 0.92% above Treasurys, but SpaceX is now trading around 1.62% above Treasurys – more typical of junk bonds.
More than 1,200 Americans per day become millionaires. AND more than $60 trillion of American wealth will pass into the hands of heirs (Gen Z and millennials) before 2048. Just FYI – time to choose your relatives.
On Thursday we received the June jobs report, which showed that 57,000 net new jobs were created in that month. Previous months’ job gains were revised downward by 74,000. The unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.2% as workers left the job market. Hundreds of thousands of people have decided they don’t want to work, or can’t work, and the unemployment rate only counts people without jobs who are also actively job hunting. The labor-force participation rate, which counts how many employable people are employed, slipped slightly to 61.5%.
The home market continues to be troublesome for younger buyers. You may remember buying your first home while in your twenties, but today’s first-time buyers are more likely to be in their forties. In 1975, a typical home cost about 2.4 times as much as an average under-40 household earned. In 2019, the ratio had risen to 2.9 times. And in 2024 it was up to 3.5 times what the average under-40 household earned in a year. Homes are more expensive than ever, and some wages are not keeping pace with inflation.
West-Texas Intermediate oil (the American standard) is now trading below $70 dollars per barrel. Which is pretty good given that we still don’t have a peace deal with Iran, and Iran is threatening ongoing tolls on ships that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. But it turns out that there is a new glut of oil keeping prices down. OPEC+ already agreed to increase oil production by 800,000 barrels per day through July and will now ramp up oil production by 188,000 barrels per day beginning in August. Some days OPEC+ is our friend.
The U.S. death rate fell to an all-time low in 2025, thanks largely to a decrease in overdose deaths. But Influenza and pneumonia are among the top ten causes of death for the first time in many years.
For the week ending on July 3rd, the S&P 500 finished at 7,483, the Nasdaq Composite at 25,832, and the Dow Jones Industrials at 52,900. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.485%. U.S. crude oil cost $68.51 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $4,201.81 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.14.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here were gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Yahoo Finance, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Axios, CNN, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, Fortune, and Popular Science. If you have questions about what you’ve read, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or email me, Liz Cook, at ecook@dwinvest.com. Thank you for reading!
Someone has used a 1998 Game Boy Camera to photograph Jupiter, which is 444 million miles from Earth. Of course, he first attached it to one of those enormous telescopes which peeks out the roof of an observatory, but still. What he still hopes to shoot: Mario and Luigi.