A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:
1. Iran announced a full shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz following U.S. strikes on southern Iran, sharply escalating tensions in one of the world’s most critical oil-shipping routes. Iranian state media also said Iran’s military attacked the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain in response to the strikes. President Trump is now holding a White House Situation Room meeting to discuss potential additional strikes, per Axios. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, today said: "We will be hitting Iran hard tonight, they have had their time to negotiate and these attacks are not a restart to the war but to set the terms for the deal."
2. Oracle $ORCL reported FY26 capex of $55.7B, above its prior $50B plan, after Q4 capex reached $15.9B, and guided FY27 capex to a massive $90B–$95B, with around $70B expected to be cash capex as it ramps AI data center spending. The company also plans to raise roughly $40B through debt and equity, including its $20B ATM program, to fund the buildout. In Q4’26, Oracle reported revenue of $19.2B, slightly above estimates and up 21% YoY, adjusted EPS of $2.11, beating estimates and up 24% YoY, operating income of $8.6B, ahead of expectations, and cloud revenue of $9.9B, up 47% YoY.
3. Palantir $PLTR CEO Alex Karp made several notable comments on CNBC about Anthropic, AI labs, Maven, and why Palantir is winning with enterprises. On Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Karp said “most of the things they talk about in public are running on Palantir,” adding that Amodei has gone from being “way behind” to “ahead” and that he genuinely believes what he is saying. Karp also said the public has only seen older versions of Maven, arguing Americans would be “positively surprised” by the advances in U.S. defense technology. More broadly, he criticized AI labs for operating with what he called a “hyper-religion of hyper-optimism,” saying they believe they can solve all problems — including human nature and even the problems they create themselves. His bigger point was that the models alone do not create value; the real value comes from implementation, deployment, and turning AI into actual workflows, which is why Palantir is winning with enterprises.
4. U.S. inflation came in line with expectations in May, but remained elevated. Headline CPI rose 4.2% YoY, matching estimates, while core CPI increased 2.9% YoY, also in line with expectations. It marks the hottest inflation reading since 2023, but because both headline and core CPI matched what the market was looking for, the report was more about confirming inflation remains sticky than delivering a major surprise.
5. Citadel Securities is making a simple point in its new “Tokenomics” note: AI may be revolutionary, but it still has to obey economics. As token bills rise, companies are being forced to think about compute costs, power, cooling, memory bandwidth, and inference budgets. Citadel says the market is already shifting toward cheaper “good enough” models, creating a split where only the biggest players can afford frontier AI at scale.
6. OpenAI is reportedly considering major price cuts for its AI services as it looks to win more enterprise customers from Anthropic, per WSJ. The company is weighing significant reductions to token pricing, a move that could pressure profit margins across the AI industry given the massive compute costs required to run advanced models. The push comes as Anthropic’s Claude Code has gained traction with software engineers and helped the company rapidly grow revenue, forcing OpenAI to compete more aggressively on price. A broader AI pricing war could benefit customers by lowering costs, but it may also make the economics tougher for both OpenAI and Anthropic as enterprises look for cheaper ways to use AI at scale.
7. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $TSLA with 3.6M contracts, $NVDA with 3.2M contracts, $AAPL with 1.7M contracts, $AMZN with 821K contracts, $SMCI with 696K contracts, $MSFT with 604K contracts, $META with 579K contracts, $ORCL with 569K contracts, $MU with 529K contracts, and $HOOD with 506K contracts. Tesla led the market with more than 3.6M options contracts traded, followed by Nvidia at 3.2M and Apple at 1.7M.
8. Trading in leveraged and inverse ETFs just hit a record. Total notional volume across U.S.-listed leveraged and inverse ETFs surged to $90B on Tuesday, the highest ever and more than triple the level from a year ago. That volume represented roughly 50% of all AUM in the entire leveraged/inverse ETF universe. The 3x short semiconductor ETF $SOXS alone traded more than 1.3B shares, marking the third-largest single-session volume for any U.S.-listed ETF in the last 20 years. The only bigger ETF volume days came from $QLD and $SSO, both during the 2008 Financial Crisis.
9. OpenAI is reportedly in talks to lease a proposed 10-gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio, per The Information. The project would be built by SoftBank’s SB Energy on Department of Energy land in southern Ohio, with OpenAI controlling the equipment under a 20-year lease. Payments would begin once the site becomes operational, with the first phase expected in 2028. Nvidia $NVDA is expected to supply the hardware and provide a financial guarantee tied to both OpenAI’s lease obligations and SB Energy’s financing, further deepening Nvidia’s role in the AI infrastructure buildout.
10. PIMCO is warning that a new credit-loss cycle is underway, with defaults likely to rise sharply among lower-quality borrowers, including leveraged companies and parts of private credit. The firm says markets may be too complacent about the risks, especially as AI-driven disruption could pressure heavily indebted businesses that are already vulnerable. Against that backdrop, PIMCO favors intermediate-term government bonds, citing recession risk, persistent uncertainty, and the potential for future central-bank rate cuts.
11. SpaceX’s IPO has reportedly drawn demand for more than 4x the shares available, underscoring massive investor appetite for the listing. The company is aiming to raise roughly $75B at a $1.8T valuation, which would make it the largest IPO ever and surpass Saudi Aramco’s record. Shares are expected to begin trading on June 12 under the ticker $SPCX.
12. JPMorgan said U.S. equity futures saw $21B of net selling last week, with most of the pressure coming Friday in S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts. However, that selling was more than offset by $26.8B of ETF inflows, showing investors were still putting money to work despite the volatility. Fixed income ETFs also saw strong demand, while commodities and some emerging market funds faced redemptions. Overall, JPMorgan said investors rotated across sectors but remained broadly long equities even as market swings picked up.
WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.