In this solo morning‑market briefing Kenny Polcari walks listeners through the key drivers shaping the markets on June 10 2026. He opens with a geopolitical flashpoint – renewed Iranian tension in the Strait of Hormuz – and explains how the risk‑off reaction pushed the Nasdaq lower while defensive sectors held up. He then pivots to the upcoming CPI release, outlining consensus expectations (headline +0.5% MoM, core +0.3% MoM, YoY headline 4.2%, core 2.9%) and the inflation‑rate risk that could keep the Fed in a restrictive stance. Polcari reviews the previous day’s market performance, providing sector‑by‑sector returns, VIX movement, bond‑yield levels, and gold price pressure, and stresses that diversification mitigated the fallout. He highlights a new, four‑fold risk environment: geopolitics, inflation, rates, and valuation, and notes that the AI narrative that dominated the past two years is now being tested by liquidity concerns as a wave of AI‑related IPOs (SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI) approaches. The bulk of the segment is a deep dive into the SpaceX IPO: pricing at $135, implied $1.77 trillion valuation, $75 billion raise, 555 million shares offered (≈5 % of post‑offering float), reported 4‑times oversubscription, and the scarcity narrative that may eclipse valuation concerns. He also mentions his own Substack piece and provides a brief outlook on US futures and technical support levels for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. After a short personal note about his availability, he closes with a step‑by‑step penne alla vodka recipe, positioning it as a reliable dinner while markets fluctuate. The briefing blends market analysis, investment‑risk framing, IPO insight, and lifestyle content.
Chapters
Well, good morning. It's me, Kenny Polcari, your host of the party. And today is Wednesday, June 10th, 2026. And here are the things that you need to know to get your day started. Well, the Middle East heats up again. Iran targets the US and some of its own neighbors. The CPI is due out later on this morning. Expect a hot number. Tech, well, that got whacked again. Diversification, though, matters. 9 of the 11 S&P sectors ended the day higher. SpaceX is now only 2 days away. Rumors are that it's already 4 times oversubscribed. And what do we have for dinner tonight? We're gonna have the penne alla vodka. It's always a winner. Okay, here's just an update. I'm gonna be out of touch, uh, until the end of the month. My next note won't be until the last week of June. So remember what I say: remain focused, stay disciplined, and take good care. Okay, so I went to sleep last night with a headache, and I woke up this morning with the same headache. Yesterday began on an uptick. Stocks opened higher, offering investors a bit of relief after Monday's downtick, but it didn't last very long. Suddenly the green, well, that turned to red. And the trigger? Reports servicing once again of renewed military tensions involving Iran near the Strait of Hormuz, sparking new concerns, uh, that the conflict is going to escalate again. And that was enough to trigger a risk-off move across the market. And they did react just as expected. Yesterday's action was another reminder of that reality. The Nasdaq weakened. It swung 1,280 points from high to low while the Dow held up relatively well. Money moved into the defensive names— think the boring names— and out of the growth— think those sexy names, right? Chips. Well, they got smacked again. At one point, the VIX surged by 23%, before settling up only 5%. This morning it's up another 5% at 2108. That's putting it now in the concern zone. Still nowhere near panic levels, but certainly enough to make investors pay attention. At the end of the day, here's what it looked like. The Dow gained 86 points. The S&P lost 20 points. The NASDAQ lost 250 points. The Russell added 11. The transports rose by 295 points. The equal-weighted S&P added 63 points. While the Mag 7 gave back 445 points. Of the 11 S&P sectors, only 2 ended the day lower. 9 sectors were higher. So the damage wasn't nearly as broad as the headlines would have you believe. Yes, tech lost 1.8% and energy lost, uh, 1.6%, but oil was down 2.8%. That's why transport surged so much, right? But look at everything else. Industrials up 1.1%, utilities up 1%, financials up 1%, consumer staples up 1.25%, healthcare up 1.25%. Basically materials up 1.6%, real estate surging by 2%. Only communications and consumer discretionary rose less than 1%, but they still gained 0.3% and 0.4% respectively. The damage in tech— well, you could see that everywhere. Disruptive tech lost 1.1%, cybersecurity down 2%, semis down 1.6%, automation robotics down 2%, software down 2.8%, web and internet services down 1.6%. On the other side, those sectors showing strength included the SMIDs up 1%, biotechs up 2.3%, pharma— big pharma up 1.2%, airlines up 3%, retail up 1.3%, homebuilders up 3.6%. So the message is very clear: diversification worked exactly the way that it's supposed to. But the geopolitics only lit the fuse. What kept it burning though was the CPI story and rates. With this morning's CPI print just hours away, investors, traders, and algos started to do a bit of de-risking, pulling money out of the names most sensitive to higher yields. And no group is more sensitive than technology. Street economists are now expecting headline CPI to be up 0.5% month over month, the core rate up 0.3% month over month, both slightly lower than last month. I guess that's the positive. Year over year though is a different story. Top line is up 4.2%, the highest in 3 years. Well above last month's 3.8%. Core CPI year over year up 2.9% versus last month's 2.8%. So both of those numbers are hotter than the last report. Now, you know what's next. The concern this morning is that the actual numbers are coming in even hotter than the hot numbers that we already expect. And remember, tomorrow we're gonna get the May PPI report, and those numbers are also expected to be significantly higher. So let's not kid ourselves. Investors, traders, and algos are increasingly concerned that stubborn inflation is going to force Fed Chair Kenny Polcari to maintain a more restrictive stance for longer than what many had expected. Now, we're all going to wait to see how Trump responds to that message. So get in the couch and grab the popcorn because that's going to be a show. Now, bonds got bought yesterday. The TLT and TLH both up a half a percent., while yields remain elevated. The 2-year is at 4.13%, the 10-year is at 4.53%, the 30-year is yielding 5%. Gold— that got sold yesterday— is under pressure again this morning as traders reassess the inflation outlook, real rates, and the dollar. It was down $67 yesterday, it's down $100 this morning, testing the 4,160 level, just $60 away from where I said it was going to test. So let's see how that holds. So now all this action is forcing investors to confront all four risks at the same time: geopolitical risk, inflation risk, interest rate risk, and valuation risk. And while all those risks have always existed, it's now all coming to a head. Remember, for the past two years, it was really one story— AI and all the adjacent pieces, right? If you owned it, you won. If you didn't, you spent your days explaining why not. And now you have to consider whether or not the AI trade is too crowded, and if names have been priced beyond perfection. We've been discussing that question for months, so it's not new. But the— there is another issue that's beginning to emerge, and it's liquidity. The market is preparing to absorb an unprecedented wave of AI, of AI-related IPOs: SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Now, SpaceX expected to raise $75 billion this week. OpenAI is reportedly preparing its own fundraising, and Anthropic continues to attract enormous amounts of capital. Ultimately, investors must decide where that money is going to come from. Sure, some of it's going to be fresh capital, while some of it is going to come from selling existing positions to fund participation in the next wave of AI. So think about that for one moment. The very stocks that benefited from the AI boom may ultimately become the source of funding for the next phase of the AI boom. And that brings us to SpaceX. The company is expected to price— well, it already, it already priced. Elon Musk already picked $135, and it's going to begin trading Friday under the ticker symbol SPCX on NASDAQ. Right, at $135 a share, the offering is going to value the company at about $177— $1.77 trillion and raise as much as $75 billion, making it the largest IPO in history. We know that. Now consider the contradiction: investors spent last week debating whether AI stocks have become too expensive, yet at the same time they're getting ready to buy a company valued at nearly 95 times sales. Talk about expensive! SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenues, but it lost $5 billion. The first quarter of 2026 alone, it produced another $4.3 billion loss. Yes, they dominate the launch business. Yes, Starlink now serves more than 12 million subscribers across 160 countries. They control more than 80% of the US rocket launchers. They have built one of the most strategically important tech companies in the world. It is extraordinary. There's no doubt. The valuation is a debate. Well, maybe it's not the valuation at all. Maybe the debate is about scarcity. Maybe investors simply just don't care what it costs. I wrote about this last week, uh, on my Substack titled Elon Doesn't Want a Roadshow, He Wants a Feeding Frenzy. You can get it on my Twitter @kenny_polcari. You can get it on my Substack. Kennypolcari.substack.com. Okay, SpaceX is, uh, is selling 555 million shares. Investors assuming that the market is going to be flooded with stock. That's a lot of stock, but think again. It's not even close. After the offering, the company is expected to have 13 billion shares outstanding. That means they're only selling about 5% of the company to the public. 5%. It's tiny. So the story is not the 555 million shares being sold. The story is about the 13 billion that are not. Institutions want it, retail investors want it, momentum traders want it, ETFs want it, Elon fans want it. And now NASDAQ, they appear willing to accelerate the company's path toward inclusion in major indexes, potentially creating another wave of passive demand shortly after the stock begins trading. That's a lot of demand for not a lot of supply. We're hearing already reports that the deal is already 4 times oversubscribed, and if that's true, that means that there's 2.2 billion shares of demand chasing 555 million shares of supply. And by tomorrow, that number could be 6 or 7 times oversubscribed. As I said in my earlier piece, Elon is manufacturing scarcity. And scarcity, well, that is a funny way of making investors forget about valuation. European markets are all lower, down about a half a percent. US futures are under pressure. Dow futures down 312 points or 6/10. S&P's down 50 points or 7/10. NASDAQ is down 300 points or 1%, while the Russell's down 20 points or 6/10. Now the S&P closed at 7,386, down 20 points. We're now down 5% off the high. Trendline support is down at 7,195. Or about 2.5% lower from here. The NASDAQ closed down 250 points. It is now down 8% off its high, and it tested support yesterday at 24,958 before bouncing and closing at 25,678. If futures remain weak, we're going to test that support level again this morning. If it fails to hold, then don't be surprised to see the NASDAQ test 24,000, which would be another 6% lower. You can give me a call at 561-931-0190 to discuss your goals and your timeline. Let's assess the risk in your portfolio and your tolerance for volatility, because I'm always happy to do a complimentary portfolio review and risk assessment. Okay, so what do we have for dinner tonight? We're gonna have the penne alla vodka. Now, while the tape is whipping back and forth between exuberance and fear and all that stuff, you want something rich and fast and reliable on your dinner table. And penne alla vodka, well, that never lets you down. So you want to start by heating a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter in a large sauté pan. Add in 1 finely chopped onion, let it soften. Do not rush it. You know me, I like to cook it slow. Add a couple of, uh, cloves of sliced garlic and a good pinch of red crushed red pepper if you like it. Do it here, let it all come together. Now pour in 1/2 cup of vodka, let it cook down for a couple of minutes, let the alcohol steam away. Now you're gonna add a 28-ounce can of crushed San Marzano tomatoes. Season that with salt and pepper. Let it simmer gently for 15 to 20 minutes until it thickens and becomes nice and flavorful. Look, take it off the heat now and stir in 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Watch as the sauce turns this beautiful blush pink color. Now bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the penne about 8 minutes. Leave it al dente. Always reserving the pasta water 'cause you're gonna need that. Toss the penne when it's done right into the sauce, add a handful of grated Parmigiano cheese, and loosen it with like a ladle of the pasta water until it coats every piece and it's nice and creamy and delicious. Always have extra cheese at your table for the guests. Pour yourself a glass of wine and remember, the markets will still be here in the morning. Until the next time I see you, take good care.
