Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Monday, June 1. Nine consecutive weeks of gains, a brand-new Fed chair who owes the president a favor or two, and an Iran deal that is almost, practically, signed, and yet somehow still isn't.
Friday's close put the S&P 500 at 7,580, its ninth straight weekly gain, the longest streak since 2023. The Dow crossed 50,000 for the first time, which is the kind of round number that makes financial television weep with joy and tells you approximately nothing useful. The Nasdaq added 8% in May, all of it explained, according to le tout-Wall Street, by fundamentals and careful analysis, and absolutely nothing to do with Dell Technologies ($DELL) and Snowflake ($SNOW) each ripping 40% on AI-themed earnings while the rest of us squinted at the margin assumptions. Gold sitting near $4,580 and Bitcoin around $72,800 confirm that the animal spirits are loose, if not entirely coordinated.
Now, here is what everyone is pretending not to notice. Kevin Warsh was sworn in as Fed Chair on May 22 at the White House, in a ceremony that broke with every tradition since Greenspan in 1987. The president has made his expectations for rate cuts approximately as subtle as a foghorn, and his new man is in the chair. Warsh's first FOMC meeting is in June. And yet the 10-year yield sits at 4.47%, inflation is running at the highest level in three years, and the market is pricing in Trump's phone calls as if the data simply does not exist.
Oil is the other quietly inconvenient item. Brent ended May around $91, down 17% for the month (the biggest monthly drop since 2020) after touching $108 in April when the Strait of Hormuz became a career-defining geography lesson for the trading floor. The Iran ceasefire exists, approximately. The deal is almost finalized. The White House hasn't signed. Iranian state media says nothing is done. The market is pricing in a resolution that has not happened, which is, translation: extremely on brand.
S&P 500 futures are up a modest 0.2% into the open, because records are apparently self-reinforcing now. The ISM Manufacturing PMI for May drops at 10 a.m. ET, where April's 52.7 print and last week's Chicago PMI at a four-year high of 62.7 will set a flattering baseline for expectations. Whether the number survives contact with whatever the president posts about Tehran between now and noon is, as always, an open question.
Nine weeks up, Warsh at the wheel, inflation quietly in the corner. See you tomorrow.