Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• Trump reinstates the Strait of Hormuz blockade and proposes a toll on cargo shipments, sending oil prices sharply higher.

• SK Hynix posts its worst trading day on record, dragging chip stocks lower across global markets.

• Investors await June CPI data as markets look for fresh clues on the inflation outlook.

• Earnings season begins with results from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo.

• Fed Governor Christopher Waller says another rate hike remains possible if inflation stays elevated.

Market News

The World's Most Expensive Toll Booth

Stocks started the week the way most of us start Mondays: fine for about an hour, then rapidly deteriorating:

• The S&P 500 slid 0.79% to 7,515.82.

• The Nasdaq dropped 1.55% to 25,873.

• The Dow, cushioned by energy firms, escaped with a 0.26% scratch.

• The VIX spiked 14% to 17.16.

• Gold, the alleged doomsday asset, fell 2.6% to $4,006.

Blame the geopolitics that nobody can stop from doom.

After a weekend in which the U.S. and Iran traded fresh strikes, including Iranian retaliation against U.S. allies and a hit on a Kuwaiti offshore drilling platform, President Trump announced he’s reinstating the blockade on Iranian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, crowning America the “GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” and demanding a 20% fee on all other cargo moving through the chokepoint.

At current prices, that works out to roughly $32 million per supertanker, compared with the up to $2 million Iran used to charge. E-ZPass, but make it nine figures a week.

Crude did what crude does. WTI surged more than 8% to about $77 a barrel while Brent pushed back above $82, with tanker traffic through Hormuz sitting near zero as both sides claim control of the waterway. OPEC trimming its 2026 demand growth forecast to 780K barrels per day hardly registered.

The other wrecking ball swung in from Seoul. SK Hynix, fresh off Friday’s 13% debut pop in the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company, collapsed more than 15% at home, its worst session ever, after a conservative broker note questioned whether it can hit quarterly profit estimates.

The Kospi cratered almost 9%, tripping a trading halt, and Samsung fell 10.7% despite reporting a 19-fold profit jump.

Under the hood, the inflation got uglier. The 10-year yield climbed to ~4.60% as traders re-priced $77 oil into everything, and Waller’s comment that a hike remains live if inflation stays sticky pushed July hike odds to nearly 45%, from 25% a week ago.

That’s the backdrop for this morning’s doubleheader: June CPI at 8:30, followed by JPMorgan, Goldman, Citi, and Wells Fargo opening Q2 earnings. The first-half rally walks into the ring today; we’re about to find out if it’s been lifting.

Peel Take: Here’s the trap: June’s CPI headline will probably look great, gas prices fell during the ceasefire, and the “inflation is cooling” victory laps will write themselves. Don’t get catfished. Crude has since round-tripped to $77, a 20% Hormuz toll is functionally a tax on everything that floats, and the Fed watches core, which hasn’t budged from ~2.9%. The prize this week isn’t the banks’ EPS beats (they’ll beat, they always beat), it’s whether Jamie & Co. say the consumer is still swiping.

What's Ripe

Figma Inc (FIG) 12.0%

• With roughly 42% of the float sold short heading into Monday, the squeeze needed one match: an SEC filing showing that Citizens Financial Group scooped up 162,000+ shares, and it lit.

• The Street keeps piling in; BofA reinstated a Buy rating ($30 target), and Citi initiated a Buy rating ($36 target), both arguing that AI expands the pool of people building software rather than replacing the design layer.

• Peel Take: Shorts crowded into the “AI kills design software” trade like it was free money, and the financials simply refused to cooperate. When nearly half the float is borrowed, and one institution goes bargain-hunting, you don’t get an orderly re-rating, you get Monday. Whether $23 Figma is cheap is a fair debate; whether being 42% short of a company growing 46% was smart is not.

Conmed Corp (CNMD) 10.2%

• The surgical device maker (think AirSeal insufflation, sports medicine implants) popped after reports it’s working with advisers to weigh a sale following inbound private equity interest. The move extends Friday’s ~10% after-hours spike when Bloomberg first broke the story, no formal process confirmed, no bidders named yet.

• Even after two green sessions, shares (~$42) trade about 25% below their 52-week high. This comes just weeks after BofA cut the stock to “Underperform.”

• Peel Take: Nothing heals a downgrade quite like a buyout rumor, call it the market’s version of elective surgery. PE firms shopping the med-tech aisle for quality assets at 25% off is peak 2026: rates might be headed up, but dry powder has no memory and even less patience. If a process actually launches, that 52-week high suddenly looks less like resistance and more like a starting bid.

What's Rotten

Applovin Corp (APP) 12.7%

• Applovin Corp was the worst stock in the S&P 500 on Monday, down for the sixth time in seven sessions, closing near $449 after touching $500 intraday.

• Here's the scary part: no downgrade, no 8-K, no guidance cut, just a premium-multiple AI ad-tech name getting sold hardest in a risk-off tape, with a BofA channel check showing slower June e-commerce adds (~750 new pixels vs. ~950 in May), pouring salt in

• Peel Take: A 12% drop on zero news isn’t about the news, it’s about the multiple. APP is what happens when “priced for perfection” meets a week where perfection called in sick. The business itself is a monster (revenue +59% YoY, 85% EBITDA margins, a billion in buybacks), but stocks like this don’t need a reason to fall; they need a reason to stay up, and geopolitical Mondays don’t provide one.

SK Hynix Inc (SKHY) 9.3%

• Three days after raising ~$26.5B in the biggest-ever U.S. equity sale by a foreign company (and popping 13% at the open), the ADRs got smoked while Seoul shares plunged 15%+, the worst day in company history.

• A cautious broker note flagging risk to quarterly profit estimates was all it took: the Kospi collapsed nearly 9%, tripping a trading halt, and Samsung sank 10.7% despite record profit.s

• Peel Take: From ringing the opening bell Friday to setting off alarm bells Monday, that’s a speedrun. Nothing broke fundamentally; the company still owns 50-70% of the HBM market that every AI datacenter is begging for. But when an entire country’s AI trade is crowded into one ticker, a single skeptical note becomes a fire alarm in a packed theater.

🧠 Technical Trip

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🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR invest in Williams’ power projects to support growing AI-driven electricity demand.

• Nippon Paint makes a multibillion-dollar bid for AkzoNobel’s decorative paints business.

• Genesis Minerals moves closer to acquiring Vault Minerals after a rival bidder exits the process.

• Aditya Birla Renewables agrees to acquire Shell-backed Sprng Energy to expand its clean energy portfolio.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

Meta has launched a new AI chatbot. Which AI assistant would you be most likely to use?

ChatGPT: 27.4% // Claude: 51.6% // Gemini: 9.7% // None: 11.3%

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Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

Each year for 4 years, a farmer increased the number of trees in a certain orchard by 1/4 of the number of trees in the orchard the preceding year. If all of the trees thrived and there were 6,250 trees in the orchard at the end of the 4-year period, how many trees were in the orchard at the beginning of the 4-year period?

Answer: 2560

Today

Sixty percent of the members of a study group are women, and 45 percent of those women are lawyers. If one member of the study group is to be selected at random, what is the probability that the member selected is a woman lawyer?

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