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Warm-Up
- Oil Drops - Still highest cost for Memorial Day in years
- Consumer Sentiment Drops again
- New Fertilizer coming - Kinda Soilent Green Concept
- Everyone is talking about SpaceX

Markets
- Nothing Really Matters - Anyone can see - New HIGHS
- Governments picking the winners again
- CHIPS !
- Concentration

NVDA
- Over the weekend, Jensen Huang said that his forecast of a $200 billion market for CPUs includes China, signalling Nvidia still sees significant long-term demand in the market amid ongoing U.S.-China technology tensions.
- During an earnings call on Wednesday, Huang said Nvidia's new "Vera" central processors give it access to a new $200 billion market.
- So, once again the PR machine is running overtime to make sure there is no reason for anyone to sell the stock - needed to make this clarification over the weekend
- Nvidia has received licenses from the U.S. government to sell its H200 chips but has not received approval from Chinese officials who are fostering China's own chip suppliers.

Consumers
- Consumer sentiment has tumbled to a fresh record low in May as fears of higher prices grow due to the U.S.-Iran war and elevated oil prices, the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers said Friday.
- The index of consumer sentiment fell to 44.8 from a preliminary reading of 48.2. It’s also well below the 49.8 level seen at the end of April.

Consumers Upset

South Korea
- Record after record...
- This is an impressive chart
- Two companies -Samsung and SK Hynix
-----40% of the entire KOSPI index's total market capitalization.

Kospi Index

Who Believes this Crap?
- U.S. forces have conducted “self defense” strikes in southern Iran early Tuesday, with U.S. Central Command saying that this was to “protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.“
- “U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire,” Hawkins added.
- Meanwhile there was some talk over the weekend that
--- 1) We are very close to a deal and it will happen soon
----2) We are in no rush for a deal
----3) How many times is this same line going to be used to try to push the price of oil down (it did move towards $90 after the weekend resumption of futures trading)
- Neither side can agree on anything... Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the United States has seen some progress towards a deal but that more work was required, while Iran's foreign ministry said the differences remained deep and significant.
- Tiresome

CEO of Ford
- Did you know -???
- The CEO of Ford (Jim Farley) is cousin to Chris Farley

Farley and Farley

Crops
- Farmers worldwide are under pressure due to the Iran war disrupting supplies of conventional nitrogen fertilizers, forcing them to improvise ahead of the fall planting season.
- Some farmers are turning to age-old solutions like manure, while others are experimenting with newer technologies, including waste-based inputs and microbial products.
-----Circular bio-economy
The crisis is giving fresh momentum to products that have long struggled to gain widespread adoption, with demand for biofertilizers and biostimulants rising and companies seeing rising interest and increased sales.
- Municipal wastewater and treated human urine, which contain high levels of nutrients that can be processed.
---- So, if your corn is a little extra yellow this summer - now you know...

Government's Hand
- Quantum computing shares popped last Thursday, as the U.S. government said it would award $2 billion in grants to nine firms operating in the space.
- IBM is the biggest beneficiary of the package, with the U.S. Commerce Department agreeing to give the firm $1 billion.
- Chipmaker GlobalFoundries is receiving $375 million, while other grant recipients D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Infleqtion will be awarded $100 million.
- Shares of D-Wave added 33%, Rigetti soared 30% and Infleqtion skyrocketed about 31%.
- Funding will come from the 2022 Chips and Science Act.

More Money Throwing
- Nvidia Corp. bought $500 million worth of rights for shares in Corning Inc. as part of a partnership to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure.
- Corning pledged to increase US fiber production capacity by more than 50% to supply more optical fiber for AI data centers.
- The partnership includes Corning's plan to construct three new complexes in North Carolina and Texas, which is estimated to create more than 3,000 new US jobs.

DEBT
- Global debt hits new record, IIF (institute for International Finance) report shows
- Global debt rose for a fifth consecutive quarter in Q1 2026, increasing by more than $4.4 trillion to a record high of over $350 trillion, with the increase concentrated largely in the United States and China.
- Investors shows signs of shift away from Treasuries
- Global debt-to-GDP ratio stable around 305%
- NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Global Debt

More Charts

AI Reality?
- Starbucks retires AI tool nine months after North American deployment
- Tool was part of CEO Brian Niccol's campaign to fix product shortages
- AI tool miscounted items, leading to errors, Reuters has reported
Starbucks cites need for consistency, supply chain improvements in ending program

More AI
- Elon Musk's Grok is seeing minimal adoption in US government - even though it's cheap-
- Grok lags far behind OpenAI and other rivals that analysts call more capable
- Data shows uptake by corporations is also weak, suggesting Grok's problems stretch beyond government
- Is it possible that corps don't trust Musk after the way he heavy handled the DOGE process?
- Is this going to impact SpaceX growth story?

Employment and Ai
- The co-founder of AI company Anthropic said on Monday that the development of artificial intelligence cannot be left solely to technology companies, urging greater oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society.
- Speaking at the presentation of Pope Leo's first encyclical, addressing the challenges posed by artificial intelligence, Chris Olah said there was "a real possibility" that AI will displace human labour "at very large scale".

Scared
- China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals in private firms, requiring them to get approval from relevant authorities before embarking on overseas travel.
- The government is targeting talent within the AI sphere, including startup founders, researchers, and executives, and adding individuals to the list based on assessments of their critical importance to the country.
- The restrictions risk undermining the ability of AI firms in China to recruit and retain talent, and may force engineers with global ambitions to choose between staying home or going abroad earlier in their careers.

CHIPS
- Micron topped a $1 trillion market value for the first time on Tuesday as shares popped 18%, driven by insatiable artificial intelligence demand for its memory chips.
- The stock surge came as UBS tripled its price target on the stock from $535 to $1,625 a share, citing long-term agreement opportunities with partially fixed pricing.
- “We believe the market will start to put a more ‘normal’ multiple on the stock and MU will continue to re-rate higher as more details emerge about the structural changes AI has driven to the entire memory complex,” the firm wrote.

SpaceX
- Lots of interest on this...
- Lots of clients calling on this and we are working on this for them
- Here is a bit of a reality check...
--- First - company still losing billions of dollars - some may look past that
- - Weird inclusion period for indices and that may take stock up due to required buying ahead of the inclusion (keeping a floor on prices in the beginning)
---- SpaceX plans to allow a large portion of its shares to become eligible for resale before the usual six-month restriction period post-IPO, under a staged system conditioned to the company's performance, a company filing shows.
- The approach, designed to avoid a large wave of shares hitting the market at once, would depart from the standard 180-day lock-up that has prevailed in the U.S. Most companies going public restrict early investors from selling shares to help stabilize the stock.
- Valuation somewhere between $1.5T and $2T (a year ago it was like $400 million)
- Valuation in December was $750 M
- Rationale for the big valuation: SpaceX is leveraging its satellite network to build massive, space-based AI data centers, which take advantage of limitless solar energy and off-planet cooling

Retail 
- Ross Stores Inc. raised its sales and profit guidance after first-quarter results surpassed consensus estimates, aided by strong customer traffic among younger shoppers.
- The company reported sales of $6.01 billion and earnings of $2.02 per share, with same-store sales growing 17% in the period, a record for Ross.
- Ross now expects full-year same-store sales to grow 6% to 7%, and earnings of $7.50 to $7.74 per share, with executives citing increased customer traffic as a key driver of profit.

Meanwhile
- Walmart issued a worse-than-expected financial outlook amid soaring gas prices.
- Finance chief John David Rainey said high tax returns may have muted some of the impact high gas prices had on shoppers in the first quarter, indicating consumer pressures could rise in the current quarter
- The big-box retailer issued fiscal first-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top line but were only in line on the bottom.
- The retailer said it’s expecting adjusted earnings per share to be between $2.75 and $2.85, lower than expectations of $2.91, according to LSEG.
- Walmart said it anticipates net sales will rise between 3.5% and 4.5% for the year.

Ferrari - Electric
- Ferrari (RACE) is trading lower today after the company unveiled its first fully electric vehicle, the Ferrari Luce, marking a major strategic shift away from its traditional combustion-engine supercar identity.
- The Luce is a four-door, five-seat ultra-luxury EV developed with former Apple (AAPL) design chief Jony Ive, featuring a quad-motor setup producing over 1,000 horsepower, a 0--60 mph time of roughly 2.5 seconds, and a price tag around $640,000.
- Despite these headline-grabbing performance specs, investors reacted negatively because the design is seen as a sharp break from RACE's iconic styling, with many critics arguing it looks closer to a mass-market EV than a traditional Ferrari.

Saying goodbye
- One of America’s once-dominant beer brands is being discontinued after more than 175 years.
- Schlitz Premium, a beer brand that traces its roots to Milwaukee in the 1840s and was once among the largest breweries in the country, is being put "on hiatus," parent company Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed Friday after Wisconsin Brewing Company announced it would brew the brand’s final batch later this month.
- "Unfortunately, we have seen continued increases in our costs to store and ship certain products and have had to make the tough choice to place Schlitz Premium on hiatus," Zac Nadile, Pabst head of brand strategy, said in a statement to Milwaukee Magazine.

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