Everyone Wants SpaceX

SpaceX’s IPO attracts overwhelming demand as investors line up ahead of its market debut.

Author

Ankit Sinha
June 11, 2026

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Market News

The Fed Can’t Print Oil

All the market wanted on Wednesday was one boring CPI print. Instead, it got inflation at a three-year high, a fresh overnight exchange of strikes between the U.S. and Iran, and a reminder that 2026 still has plenty of surprises left.

The S&P 500 fell 1.6% to 7,267, the Nasdaq dropped 2.0%, and the Dow shed 953 points, sliding back below the 50k mark it fought so hard for. The VIX jumped 12% to 22%; fear is back on the menu.

The headline number: May CPI rose 0.5% on the month and 4.2% year-over-year, the fastest annual pace since April 2023 and the third straight increase in the 12-month inflation rate. There was no real mystery behind the inflation spike.

  • Energy accounted for over 60% of the monthly increase.

  • Gasoline up 7.0% in May alone and a casual 40.5% over the past year, courtesy of a shooting war parked next to the Strait of Hormuz.

  • Food is running +3.1% annually, and airfares tacked on another 2.7% in a single month.

  • Under the hood, though, core CPI rose just 0.2%, below the 0.3% economists expected, and was up 2.9% from a year ago.

That split is the key story. Headline inflation is being pushed higher by energy prices, while core inflation remains relatively well-behaved. Unfortunately, consumers do not spend in “core” terms. With wages up 3.4% and inflation at 4.2%, real purchasing power fell 0.7%, the second straight month prices outran paychecks.

Now it all lands on the Fed, specifically on Kevin Warsh, whose very first FOMC meeting as Chair arrives June 17 with markets pricing a ~98% chance of a hold and exactly zero cuts for all of 2026. Imagine your first day as a manager, and the kitchen is already on fire.

The conversation on the Street has fully rotated from “when do they cut” to “do they hike by December,” and that hawkish repricing is exactly why gold, the one asset with a single job description during wartime, cratered 4.4% to its lowest level since March, and why B*tcoin sits near $62K after kissing $80K+ in May.

The geopolitical layer also got heavier overnight: after an American helicopter went down, the U.S. launched “self-defense strikes” on Iranian air-defense sites, putting the ceasefire on life support and Brent up 2% to $93. Oil is now both the cause of this CPI problem and the wildcard for the next one.

Under the surface, the AI complex kept bleeding:

  • Super Micro detonated 28% on a $7B dilution bomb (autopsy below).

  • Micron fell almost 5%, while energy, staples, and real estate caught the defensive rotation bid.

  • Oracle's after-bell report: a beat, a $638B backlog, negative $23.7B in free cash flow, and plans to raise ~$40B more… was the perfect closing argument: the AI buildout is very real, and very, very expensive.

Peel Take: Here’s the uncomfortable truth for everyone begging Warsh for mercy: the Fed can hike to the moon, and it still won’t drill a single barrel of crude. This is supply-shock inflation wearing a demand-problem costume, and a core rate of 2.9% says the underlying economy hasn’t lost the plot. What actually worries us isn’t the print… It's the cash call. Between SpaceX's $75B, Oracle's next $40B, and Super Micro passing the hat for $7B, markets are being asked to write enormous checks the same week the Fed's next move flipped from "cut" to "coin flip on a hike. Keep some dry powder at these rates, and your money market fund is finally pulling its weight.

What's Ripe

Cracker Barrel (CBRL) 22.6%

  • The chain that was supposed to lose $0.48/share instead earned an adjusted $0.29, on revenue of $797M vs. the $777M expected. Comps still fell (restaurant -2.6%, retail -1.8%), but Wall Street had braced for declines roughly twice as bad.

  • The beat lit the fuse on a violent short squeeze; shares ripped as much as 30% intraday before settling at $44.49, extending a ~45% YTD run. Wells Fargo upgraded to Overweight and jacked its target from $35 to $50.

  • The quarter also got a $47.4M one-time boost from an interchange-fee settlement, and management raised full-year guidance … with customer satisfaction at its highest level since 2018.

  • Peel Take: Cracker Barrel’s turnaround strategy ended up being surprisingly simple: go back to what worked. The company leaned into its core brand, improved operations, and delivered a profit, even as many expected a loss. Traffic is still down roughly 7%, so this is far from a complete recovery, but the results were good enough to catch short sellers off guard. In a market where expectations are everything, a profitable surprise can go a long way.

Caseys General Stores Inc (CASY) 20.3%

  • The Iowa gas-station-pizza empire posted Q4 EPS of $4.37 vs. the $3.31 expected, up 66% YoY on revenue of $4.57B. Inside, same-store sales grew 5.5% with a 42.4% margin, and fuel gross profit jumped 29%.

  • Management hiked the dividend by 14% (the 27th consecutive annual increase), extended the buyback to $1B, and guided to 8-10% EBITDA growth in FY27, with 120+ new stores on the way.

  • Reminder: this is the third-largest convenience chain AND fifth-largest pizza chain in America, freshly added to the S&P 500, with ~10.5M rewards members and sauced wings now in ~850 stores.

  • Peel Take: While tech stocks dominated the headlines, Casey’s quietly posted a 66% earnings beat. It’s a reminder that steady execution still matters. With a 27-year dividend growth streak and a history of consistent performance, Casey’s has proved that sometimes the market’s biggest winners are the ones doing the boring things well.

What's Rotten

Super Micro Computer (SMCI) 28.0%

  • The AI server maker announced a $7B capital raise, $1.25B in common stock, $3.75B in mandatory convertible preferred, plus a $2B at-the-market program… equal to roughly a fourth of its pre-announcement market cap. Shareholders, understandably, did not love becoming the funding source.

  • The kicker: Super Micro says it has ~$39B in AI server orders from 20+ customers… and just $1.3B of cash to buy the GPUs needed to build them. Revenue grew 123% last quarter, and it still can’t self-fund the backlog.

  • Peel Take: Winning $39B in orders and then asking shareholders to spot you for the parts is like winning a hot-dog eating contest and asking the crowd to buy the hot dogs. This is the dirty secret of the AI buildout: hardware “winners” are capital furnaces… the more they win, the more they need to raise. After the 2024 accounting saga and a co-founder indictment already in the rearview mirror, SMCI's trust account was running low; a ~25% market-cap dilution bomb just overdrafted it.

Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL) 5.1%

  • Amazon opened its less-than-truckload (LTL) freight service to every business, every size, every U.S. destination, backed by 80,000+ trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers, with live next-day pickup, GPS tracking, and cargo cameras. LTL (think 1–6 pallets) is precisely the bread and butter of Old Dominion, Saia, XPO, and FedEx Freight.

  • Special condolences to FedEx Freight ($FDXF), which was spun off as an independent company on June 1 and enjoyed nine whole days of freedom before Bezos pulled into the parking lot.

  • Peel Take: The scariest sentence in capitalism remains “Amazon is entering your market.” ODFL has spent two decades earning a premium multiple on best-in-class service and pricing discipline, and now the largest logistics network on Earth is offering the same service as a side hustle, during a freight recession, probably at margins that would make Old Dominion’s CFO physically ill. Maybe Amazon stays niche here (it's a brutally operational business), but the market isn't waiting to find out.

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Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

A photography dealer ordered 60 Model X cameras to be sold for $250 each, representing a 20 percent markup over the dealer’s initial cost per camera. Of the cameras ordered, 6 were never sold and were returned to the manufacturer for a 50 percent refund of the dealer’s initial cost. What was the dealer’s approximate profit or loss as a percent of the dealer’s initial cost for the 60 cameras?

Answer: 13% Profit

Today

Of the 300 subjects who participated in an experiment using virtual-reality therapy to reduce their fear of heights, 40% experienced sweaty palms, 30% experienced vomiting, and 75% experienced dizziness. If all of the subjects experienced at least one of these effects and 35% of the subjects experienced exactly two of these effects, how many of the subjects experienced only one of these effects?

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