So 7.58% is the one-month gain for Emerging Markets, or EEM, over the S&P 500. That's a significant move, and it's being driven by a few factors, including the Iran peace deal and the Warsh-driven hawkish pivot, which is actually helping EM by stabilizing dollar expectations.
The Russell 2000 is also doing well, up 3.5% over the past month, and small caps are typically a high-beta domestic risk asset that leads when the market believes in continued earnings growth. However, if credit starts to soften, small-cap leadership might not last.
On the other hand, Energy is having a rough time, down 9.98% over the past month, with the US-Iran peace deal sending crude oil prices to a three-month low. This is a significant move, and it's overriding the usual seasonal demand strength for energy.
Technology is still leading, but it's starting to show some signs of weakening, with the rate of change decelerating. Industrials are recovering, and the Lumber/Gold ratio is signaling a pro-growth environment, which favors cyclical sectors.
For listeners who want low-fee exposure to the broader market, our markets partner supports a range of assets — link in show notes.
Let’s get something straight that most financial commentators won’t say out loud: The CLARITY Act is not just about “regulating crypto.” It’s about deciding who gets to control the next financial system. And XRP, whether people like it or not, has ended up directly in the blast radius. On paper, the CLARITY Act sounds harmless. A clean framework. Clear jurisdiction. Less confusion between regulators. But in Washington, words like clarity are usually doing something else: They’re covering up a power struggle. Because this bill quietly answers one brutal question: Who gets to define what crypto is: banks, regulators, or the market itself? And depending on how that gets decided, entire categories of digital assets either: become institutional-grade financial instruments or get squeezed into regulatory corners they may never escape There are no neutral players in this. Just three competing agendas: Traditional financial institutions are not scared of crypto. They’re scared of losing control over compliance infrastructure. Their argument, echoed by policy groups like BPI, is simple: If crypto acts like a bank system, it must obey bank-level AML/CFT rules. But there’s a hidden implication here: If compliance becomes too heavy, only large, regulated players survive. Everyone else? Out. That’s not neutrality. That’s consolidation. Crypto builders tell a different story. They say the CLARITY Act finally draws real boundaries: SEC vs CFTC centralized vs decentralized intermediaries vs protocols But here’s what they don’t always say loudly enough: Clear rules don’t just enable innovation; they also decide who gets excluded from it. Because once classification is locked in, it becomes very hard to escape it. Markets don’t care about ideology. They care about access, liquidity, and flow. And XRP is sitting in a very strange place right now: ~$1.14 price ~$70B market cap ~62B circulating supply ~100B max supply already basically fully issued ~46% down over the past year ~68% below its all-time high Yet underneath that price collapse story… something uncomfortable is happening: XRPL stablecoin activity exploding into the billions RLUSD gaining traction tokenized Treasury products entering the ledger ETF exposure already flowing in (but cautiously) on-chain activity rising meaningfully (~17%+ cited) So, here’s the contradiction: The network is scaling like a financial system… while the asset price behaves like a legal question mark. Thank you so much to our free subscribers for reading this far, we’re currently running a limited time 50% off lifetime discount on our premium analysis. If you want analysis that has printed millionaires claim your spot before its gone:
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3.14% is the gain the Nasdaq has seen over the past three weeks, though it still hasn't reached its former peak. The housing market, on the other hand, is not looking like it's going to break out of its slump anytime soon. May existing home sales were flat year over year and only up 9.6% month over month, which is less than the average surge seen from April to May.
The National Association of Realtors did release a positive Pending Home Sales report, but the commentary was overly optimistic. Pending sales should be up both year over year and month over month, especially considering last year's higher mortgage rates. The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 6.23% year to date through May, compared to 6.81% last year.
The particulars of the housing market statistics tell a more nuanced story. Certain regions are looking shakier, and the path forward remains clear: until affordability issues are addressed, the market will continue to move slowly. A recent study from the Dallas Fed made some interesting observations about the impact of immigration on home prices.
In terms of market strength, clear themes are emerging, and more tangible assessments can be made about the near-term prospects in various markets. This is based on fundamentals such as the number of underwater properties, for-sale and rent inventory, tax liens, auctions, and pre-probate notices.
The summer trading season is likely to be fairly green as traders take their usual break. The question is, what does that mean for housing? For now, it seems like the market will continue to trudge along until something changes.
New positions can be considered here, with the understanding that this is not the cleanest low risk entry. The pullback looks like a normal shakeout rather than a trend change. Existing positions can hold. The bigger trend is still intact. The stock just reclaimed a key short term level. The PIMM Score is mixed depending on the timeframe. On the weekly chart, the score sits at 4. A score of 4 or 5 means strong momentum, so the bigger picture trend is healthy. On the daily chart, the score has dropped to 3. This tells us short term momentum cooled off after the recent pullback. When the weekly score is strong but the daily score is weak. Tt usually means the stock is taking a breather inside a bigger uptrend. The Market Terminal Overall Rating for AAPL is 82 out of 100. A score of 80 or above is considered strong. Sector Strength comes in even higher at 95, and Current Strength sits at 91. These numbers tell us Apple is outperforming its peers and showing real strength under the hood. Try Market Terminal for free. Tell them The PIMM Trader sent you. Price closed back above the 10-day moving average on Thursday. It is also trading above the 21-day, the 50-day, and the 200-day moving averages. That is a clean sweep across every major moving average. This tells us the pullback did not do lasting damage to the trend. The 50-day line is sloping up. The 200-day line is sloping up as well, which supports the idea that the longer term trend remains intact. The 10-day line had rolled over during the pullback, which is normal after a sharp drop. Reclaiming the 10-day on Thursday is an early sign that short term momentum is turning back up. Yes, the 200-day line is curving up. This is a strong sign, since an upward curving 200-day line points to full momentum building underneath the stock. It tells us the longer term buyers are still in control even with the short term pullback. AAPL had a strong gap up and a series of long green candles heading into early June. That move pushed the stock from the 270 area all the way above 310. After that, AAPL printed a long red candle that erased a big chunk of those gains in a single session. That kind of sharp reversal candle after a big run up is a classic sign of short term weakness. The stock has since tried to stabilize and is chopping around the 296 to 298 area. The pullback looks normal within a healthy trend rather than a breakdown. Apple’s total revenue grew to $416 billion, up 6% from the prior year. Net income jumped 19% to $112 billion. Free cash flow came in at $98.8 billion, and the company is still generating well over $100 billion in cash from operations every year. Service revenue keeps climbing too, growing 14% to $109 billion. These numbers support the case that Apple’s core business remains strong, even when the stock chart gets choppy. Institutional ownership in AAPL now stands at 63.4%, up from 60% just two years ago. The number of institutions holding the stock grew to 6,300, more than double where it stood a few years back. Total institutional investment has grown to $2.38 trillion. Big money has been steadily building positions in Apple, which adds confidence to the longer term bullish case. The Market Terminal AI Prediction model is currently showing a slightly negative outlook of -0.46%. This is a mild signal and does not carry much weight on its own. Paired with a reclaimed 10-day moving average, it looks more like the model catching up to a pullback that has already started to resolve. AAPL just had a sharp pullback after a strong run from the 270s to above 310. The 50-day and 200-day lines are both still sloping up, and price reclaimed the 10-day moving average on Thursday. That combination points to a healthy pullback rather than a trend change. A move back above the recent highs near 308 would confirm the uptrend is fully back in gear, while a pullback toward the 0.618 Fibonacci level near 285 would offer a lower risk entry for anyone who missed the move so far. Existing holders can stay patient and hold through this pullback as long as price stays above the 200-day average. Disclaimer: The author is not a financial advisor. The information provided herein is not financial advice and should not be construed as such. This content is intended solely for educational purposes. The author will not be held liable if you decide to use this material as a basis for any financial decision-making. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of your invested capital. Only invest what you are willing and able to lose.
This week’s weekly perspective really comes down to one word: uncertainty. Markets can handle bad news. What they do not handle well is uncertainty. And right now, investors are trying to digest several moving pieces at once: interest rates, geopolitical risk, energy markets, and the ongoing developments surrounding the U.S. Iran memorandum of understanding. The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged this week, holding the target range at roughly 3.5% to 3.75%. That decision was widely expected. But the message underneath the decision was more important. The Fed continues to signal that inflation remains a concern and that rate cuts are not guaranteed. Personally, I think some of that is theater. I do believe interest rates will be coming down, and I will discuss that more in the future. But for now, the market is still questioning the direction of both interest rates and economic growth. Higher-for-longer rates continue to pressure debt-heavy sectors. Commercial real estate remains under strain. Government financing costs continue to rise. None of that goes away simply because investors want easier money. In the Middle East, the U.S. Iran memorandum of understanding was intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart energy flows, and begin a 60-day negotiating period on broader issues, including Iran’s nuclear program. But the situation quickly became more complicated. Renewed regional violence involving Israel and Hezbollah disrupted planned follow-up talks, and what many investors viewed as a step toward stability suddenly became far less certain. That matters because easing tensions could reduce oil prices and help calm inflation. But if negotiations fall apart, the trend could reverse very quickly. Gold and silver have also felt this uncertainty. Many investors expected precious metals to move straight up during the Middle East tensions, but markets rarely work that way. Gold has already had a tremendous run, and silver remains in a strong long-term bull market. Corrections, consolidations, and trading ranges are normal. In fact, they are often healthy during major secular bull market advances. What I continue to watch is the bigger picture. Global debt remains at historic levels. Central banks continue to accumulate gold. Fiscal deficits remain enormous. Governments everywhere are facing rising interest costs. None of those long-term drivers have changed. The short-term story is uncertainty. The long-term story is currency debasement, sovereign debt burdens, and a gradual shift toward tangible assets. In the mining sector, I know many investors remain frustrated by the lag between metals prices and mining share performance. This is nothing new. Historically, miners tend to be the last group invited to the party. Capital usually moves first into bullion, then into larger producers, and finally into the smaller mining and exploration names. Patience is required. As we move through the second half of June, I am watching four key indicators. First, whether the U.S. Iran negotiations continue to hold together, although right now they appear to be slipping. Second, the direction of oil prices. Third, whether inflation data begins to surprise to the upside. And fourth, whether precious metals can complete their current consolidation and resume their long-term trend. For now, the markets are telling me that uncertainty remains elevated. In this kind of environment, discipline matters more than predictions. Stick with position sizing. Stick with your plan. And do not let short-term headlines dictate long-term investment decisions. I also want to briefly mention my Twitter account. I posted a great article from Zero Hedge, along with a very interesting piece about The Wizard of Oz. It is a little on the esoteric side, but it offers a different look at the story, especially in relation to gold and sound money. I have also studied Bill Still’s work on the secrets of The Wizard of Oz, which goes into detail about how the story connects to the move toward a gold-only standard. Market Analysis/Investing/Trading Methods At TheMorganReport.com. | http://www.themorganreport.com/join
I love democracy. I have what’s basically religious zealotry for the form of liberal democracy most of the wealthy world lives under. Citizens having control and oversight of their leaders is a rare treasure in human history, and one that AI threatens to erode. I have never read a popular modern critic of democracy in the broad sense who I didn’t see as, at best, a complete joke. I’ve noticed that in lots of conversations about current AI models and the general AI buildout, it’s becoming more and more popular to say that AI isn’t happening "in a democratic way. There are times when I strongly agree. I’m very worried about the ways AI could enable the concentration of power, or impose huge (including existential) risks that citizens never signed up for and would hit the brakes on if they could. But there’s a specific way of arguing that AI isn’t “democratic” that’s gaining traction, and that I find ominous and antithetical to what I believe about what makes a good democratic society. It’s usually dressed in the language of progressive politics, but underneath, I think it carries authoritarian, homogenizing and anti-democratic implications. There are two visions of democracy hiding behind our talk about it, one I think is good and the other I think is bad, and you can probably tell which is which by the labels I give them. The goal of pluralist democracy is to give people with wildly different beliefs about the good life and what’s really valuable control and veto points over how they’re governed, without letting them steamroll each other into all living under one contentious ethical or religious vision of the world. Most liberal democracies like the US manage to balance pluralism with majority rule. Despite being a majority Christian country, and that majority having voting power over who represents them, the US government is not able to impose Christianity on everyone else. People have a lot of democratic control over contentious issues of government, but they often can’t use this to steamroll other people into very specific visions of the good life. Christians are restrained by governing norms from forcing non-Christians from attending church. The goal of homogenizing democracy is to discover the true, good ethical values and beliefs about the world, with the faith that the majority either publicly or secretly believes them, and then to structure all society around those true, good ethical beliefs, and push ideological minorities into going along. Here’s a more ominous way to frame it: “There is an authentic community of rooted, powerless, good people, who know what’s good and right in life and agree on it. They’re up against unrooted powerful people who don’t know what’s good in life and want to override it for their own gain. The good people are in the majority. Democracy means discovering these good values all good people hold, and then representing and acting on it, steamrolling the bad powerful people into going along with these good values.” I read this as ominous because it’s an especially useful cudgel for forcing people into your specific vision of ethics and the good life. If you invalidate another value system by saying it’s not what all the good, powerless people believe, this gives you more permission to steamroll the people who hold that value system in the name of resisting power. Many Christian nationalists will frame themselves as representing the good, simple, rooted majority beset by powerful cabals who don’t understand their values, and use this to argue that underneath these differences is only a raw struggle for power that the good people need to win. Thus to them, seizing the government to impose Christianity on religious minorities is actually a form of democracy. It’s simply letting the values of the good majority be represented in how the country is governed. Stuff like this is why I worry about accepting a narrative that lets homogenizing democracy sneak in unexamined. Democracy at its best weighs the pluralistic desires of radically different people. At its worst it excludes those desires from the debate entirely, on the grounds that anyone who disagrees with the majority is illegitimate and not worth making concessions for. And it can creep in under the guise of noble-sounding rules, like “a town should have control over how its resources are used.” For example, consider the claim that a small town should have complete democratic control over what gets built there. This sounds nice in the abstract, but is actually a way for homogenizing democracy to slip in. Imagine what happens if 80% of the town is Catholic, and 10% is Muslim. The Muslim population gets together and says they would like to buy some of the town’s land to build a mosque. Will this mosque get built if it’s voted on by the town? Well, 80% of the town believes that the mosque is part of a false religion that sends people to hell. It seems unlikely that the mosque will get built.
The piece argues that our usual channels for pushing back against power grabs have been quietly replaced by hollow substitutes, leaving the real shift in control invisible. It points out that the mechanisms we once relied on for redress—public comment periods, community boards, and transparent audits—are now perfunctory, offering the illusion of participation without genuine impact.
Because these changes feel incremental, we’ve grown accustomed to them, treating the erosion of accountability as “just how things are.” The author warns that this normalization makes it easy to shrug off warning signs.
Two everyday examples illustrate the point: a corporate feedback portal that routes complaints into a dead‑end queue, and a municipal planning process that publishes drafts online but never actually incorporates citizen input. Both cases show how formal structures can mask deeper power realignments.
The takeaway is a call to stay alert to the subtle ways influence is being redirected, even when the surface still looks familiar.
Learn more about how option positions can drive post-earnings performance Micron reports after the close on June 24, and the setup looks a lot like it did back in March — when the stock fell hard in the days after results, even though the numbers were good. What matters most this time isn’t really whether earnings are good or bad. It’s how the options market is positioned going in. And like last quarter, it’s positioned very heavily toward calls. Try Navigating the Market for 3 Months at 50% off the monthly rate Implied volatility is at a two-year high, so both calls and puts are expensive right now. The problem is that once a company reports, that volatility is likely to fall sharply. In March, the 10-day implied vol went from about 100% down to 65% in just a couple of days. When that happens, options premiums decay no matter which way the stock goes — so you’re paying a lot for a call or a put that starts losing value the moment results come out. On top of that, the biggest level of call gamma — the call wall — sits at $1,200, while the put wall is all the way down at $900. With the stock around $1,135, there’s much less room for the upside than for the downside. And in a positive gamma regime, market makers tend to sell into the stock as it rises toward $1,200, which can pin it right around the call. So even if Micron reports great numbers, it may have a hard time getting much above $1,200 to $1,220 — and anyone who bought calls above there needs a big move just to break even. That’s why the risk looks skewed. The upside is fairly limited around $1,200, but the downside — once the volatility comes out and all that call positioning starts to unwind — runs toward the zero-gamma area and maybe the put wall. That’s a decline of somewhere between 15% and 20%. None of this says the results are going to be bad. It’s that the way the options are positioned makes it hard for the stock to go up after results and pretty easy for it to fall — a lot like March, except this time the stock has more than doubled and has a lot more to give back. Learn more about how option positions can drive post-earnings performance -Mike Call Gamma — The rate at which a call option’s delta changes as the underlying stock price moves. Call Wall — A strike price with a large concentration of call open interest that can influence price movement and act as resistance. Implied Volatility — The market’s expectation of future price volatility reflected in option prices. Options Premium — The price paid to buy an option contract. Positive Gamma Regime — A market condition in which dealer hedging activity tends to dampen price volatility and stabilize movements. Put Wall — A strike price with a large concentration of put open interest that can influence price movement and act as support. Zero-Gamma Area — The price level where aggregate dealer gamma exposure transitions between positive and negative, often affecting market behavior. This report contains independent commentary to be used for informational and educational purposes only. Michael Kramer is a member and investment adviser representative with Mott Capital Management. Mr. Kramer is not affiliated with this company and does not serve on the board of any related company that issued this stock. All opinions and analyses presented by Michael Kramer in this analysis or market report are solely Michael Kramer’s views. Readers should not treat any opinion, viewpoint, or prediction expressed by Michael Kramer as a specific solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell a particular security or follow a particular strategy. Michael Kramer’s analyses are based upon information and independent research that he considers reliable, but neither Michael Kramer nor Mott Capital Management guarantees its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. Michael Kramer is not under any obligation to update or correct any information presented in his analyses. Mr. Kramer’s statements, guidance, and opinions are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Neither Michael Kramer nor Mott Capital Management guarantees any specific outcome or profit. You should be aware of the real risk of loss in following any strategy or investment commentary presented in this analysis. Strategies or investments discussed may fluctuate in price or value. Investments or strategies mentioned in this analysis may not be suitable for you. This material does not consider your particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs and is not intended as a recommendation appropriate for you. You must make an independent decision regarding investments or strategies in this analysis. Upon request, the advisor will provide a list of all recommendations made during the past twelve months.
An electronic memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran was signed Wednesday, setting a 60‑day window for cease‑fire talks.
The deal called for immediate steps like opening the Strait of Hormuz, halting Israeli attacks on Lebanon, and lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Israel’s renewed bombing in southern Lebanon prompted Tehran to postpone the planned Swiss signing, saying the MOU’s first clause was being violated.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance cancelled his trip, and both sides left the door open for a future technical session once the violence eases.
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