With the resumption of hostilities in the Iran War, the markets went right back to trading like the early days of the Iran War. Oil didn’t explode up, but it did edge up, which was enough for bond yields to edge up. That put downward pressure on Bonds, US Small Cap Equities and Precious Metals. That also led money to the safety of US Large Cap Growth in the form of the AI trade in Technology. Meanwhile, the economic news showed the US economy solidly in a moderate growth mode. Overseas, business activity indexes for June showed subpar growth in the Eurozone, moderate growth in Japan and strong growth in China, India and Brazil. The S&P 500 ended the week up 1.23% with Foreign Developed and Emerging Markets both down at -1.37% and -1.74%,... (click for more)

The real economic news showed the economy was still in steady growth mode including solid job hirings. Treasury Bond yields declined for the month which affirmed that oil price inflation is indeed transient. The chaos in the headlines really had more to do with concerns over the profitability of the massive AI buildout and trying to support the last two months S&P 500 rally on the back of the AI trade. Overseas, despite the earlier concerns over oil and supply line disruptions associated with the Iran War, business activity surveys for May and June remained unchanged at mostly moderate to strong levels. The S&P 500 ended the month at -1.06% with Foreign Developed at 0.06% and Emerging Markets at -1.41%. In the US, Small Caps substantially outperformed..... (click for more)