The negotiations over a peace treaty with Iran have hit a bump in the road with the conflict in Lebanon. Israel has continued to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon irking Iran with a debate about whether the Straits of Hormuz will stay open.
On the positive side, the price of WTi holing around $76.
Though we are still above crude prices before the fighting started in Iran, the drop is giving hope for a bit of relief from inflation.
I don’t think we will get much relief outside of the pump, but hopefully that will make the public feel better.
Prices just have a very hard time retreating once they have gone up.
It almost takes a national financial crisis or recession to bring prices down and then the economy is in the tank.
I would say that though things are costlier, the economy is far from a recession.
We did lose a significant economic giant with the passing of Allen Greenspan. During his time as Fed Chair inflation was as high as 16%.
He was a seriously cerebral figure that could give lengthy speeches that provided no indication of what he planned to do.
He did have quite the network of friends who were CEOs of many fortune 500 companies.
He would contact them to get their feel for what was happening to their companies and the competition.
A more casual financial analysis that probably was more predictive than the various models used by the Fed to predict the economy.
Much like Volker, he guided the ship through significantly choppy seas to calmer water.
The markets last week returned back closer to record territory.
Some of the bloom came off the rose for SpaceX, but that only seems reasonable given the enormous size of the IPO.
We will now get to experience OpinAI and Anthropic in the next couple of weeks.
These IPOs should seriously suck up some of the vast cash on the sidelines.
I do worry that we will get fatigue trying to take out the new record highs.
It is good to note though that we are still above the 200 day average for the S&P 500.
I see no big pullback, but not sure this market has the strength for major gains.
The concerns will grow over the political fallout of the November elections.
They are still months away, but politics is never out of the news.
It is hard to believe that summer is officially here.
I am depressed now as each day will be getting shorter until my happy day in December when each day will get longer.
My summer is almost completely caught up in yard work.
Here in Central Texas, the wildflowers are still blooming and we are closer to baling our yards than mowing.
We have even had some of the local lakes recover.
As always, the only thing you can count on is change.
We tend to believe the next drought begins two weeks after the last rain.
Just can’t get that optimism to overcome reality.
With Congress about to vacate DC soon after the 250th celebration, we are probably in for a long hot summer of speculation about what is coming.
That all, of course, assumes we can negotiate a treaty. The outcome of such will bring even more debate. The fact that Congress is about to on Holiday, as our European friends would say, may not be all bad.
Possibly a good time for all of us to reflect on all that has happened so far this year and what we need to accomplish the rest of the year outside of yard work.
