Jax Morning Brief — Fed Pivots Toward a Hike, Apple Raises Prices as Memory Costs Soar

Jax Morning Brief — Fed Pivots Toward a Hike, Apple Raises Prices as Memory Costs Soar

Good morning. It's Thursday, June 25th, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: The Federal Reserve just did something it hasn't done in this cycle. It penciled out a rate cut for this year entirely, and a majority of officials now say the next move could be up, not down. ANDREW: And Apple raised the price of MacBooks and iPads by more than ten percent this morning, blaming a memory chip shortage that traces straight back to the AI boom. We'll explain why your next laptop is collateral damage from the data center build-out. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 finished essentially flat Wednesday at 7,358, down a hundredth of a percent. The Dow added about 72 points to close at 51,921, up a tenth of a percent. The Nasdaq slipped about half a percent to 25,359 — that's its fourth straight losing session, with Apple leading the way down. The ten-year Treasury yield sits at roughly 4.41 percent, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage is tracking around 6.55 percent according to Mortgage News Daily, actually approaching a one-month low. We'll get to why rates are falling even as the Fed turns hawkish. ANDREW: Let's start at the national desk, because the story driving almost everything else this week is the Fed. When we last talked, Kevin Warsh's first meeting as chair was happening live. Now we have the result, and it's a real shift. ANDREW: The Fed held its benchmark rate steady in a range of three and a half to three and three-quarters percent — that part was expected. What surprised people is the projections. Back in March, officials had penciled in at least one cut for this year. That cut is now gone. Nine of the officials see at least one hike this year, and six see at least two. And they revised their inflation forecast sharply higher — PCE inflation up to 3.6 percent for this year, from 2.7. JENNY: Wait, so in three months they went from expecting to cut, to half of them expecting to raise? What changed their minds that fast? ANDREW: Two things, mostly. Inflation has been stickier than they hoped — May's reading was a three-year high, driven a lot by energy. And the new chair, Warsh, made clear he's done with the soft, dovish bias. The committee even stripped out the language that hinted at future cuts. The statement itself got dramatically shorter. This is a Fed signaling it's willing to sit still, or move up, until inflation actually breaks. JENNY: And the market did not love that. ANDREW: It did not. A Bank of America note earlier this week explicitly floated a rate hike, and that helped knock semiconductor stocks and the Nasdaq lower for several days running. When traders price in the possibility that the next move is up, growth stocks get repriced first. The Fed did note the economy is still expanding at a solid pace, with strong business investment and steady job gains — so this isn't a recession warning. It's a Fed that thinks the economy can take the pressure. JENNY: And how is Warsh handling all this differently from his predecessor? You mentioned he's changed the style, not just the substance. ANDREW: He has. Warsh signaled he wants less hand-holding from the Fed — fewer promises about the future, a shorter statement, more room to react to the data as it comes. The upside is flexibility. The downside, for anyone trying to plan, is less certainty about what comes next. Markets had gotten used to a Fed that telegraphed every move months ahead. That era looks like it's over. ANDREW: The other big national thread is more encouraging. The U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding last week to extend their ceasefire by sixty days and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And this isn't just on paper now — commercial vessels are actually moving through the strait again. Oil has slid to a four-month low as a result. JENNY: So the thing everyone was terrified about a month ago — oil spiking because the strait was blocked — that's unwinding? ANDREW: For now, yes. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves through Hormuz, so when it reopened, the war-risk premium came out of crude. That's good news for drivers, and as we'll get to, it's quietly the reason mortgage rates are drifting down. The catch is the hard part is still ahead — the next sixty days of talks are supposed to settle Iran's nuclear program, and nothing there is resolved. JENNY: Andrew, that memory shortage you teased at the top — that's actually my beat, so let me take it. Because this is the clearest example yet of the AI boom showing up in regular people's wallets. JENNY: This morning Apple raised prices on Macs and iPads by more than ten percent — in some cases by as much as three hundred dollars. And the reason isn't tariffs, and it isn't a factory fire. It's that the price of memory chips — the DRAM and flash storage in every device — spiked as much as 98 percent in a single quarter. The industry is calling it RAMageddon. ANDREW: Ninety-eight percent in one quarter? What's pulling that much memory off the market? JENNY: AI data centers. Memory makers figured out they earn three to ten times more revenue building high-bandwidth memory for AI servers than they do building ordinary memory for laptops and phones. So they redirected their factory capacity toward the AI customers. There's no actual shortage of factories — they've just pointed the production lines at the higher-paying buyer, and consumer devices are left fighting over what's left. ANDREW: So this is the AI build-out literally crowding out the consumer electronics market. JENNY: Exactly. And you can see both sides of it in one day. Apple's stock fell about six percent on the price hike. But Micron, which makes the memory, just posted record results — over 41 billion dollars in revenue for the quarter, up from under 24 the quarter before. One company's pain is the other's windfall. And analysts think memory could climb another roughly 60 percent this quarter, so the iPhone refresh this fall may carry a higher price tag too. ANDREW: That's a genuinely useful way to think about where AI spending actually lands. JENNY: It is. And quickly on the enterprise side — Anthropic rolled out a feature yesterday called Claude Tag, which lets teams pull its Claude assistant directly into their Slack channels to take on tasks and connect to company data. It's a smaller story, but it's part of the same pattern we keep tracking — the AI labs pushing to embed themselves inside the tools businesses already use every day. ANDREW: And OpenAI is pushing on the hardware side of that same race, right? JENNY: It is. OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled a custom inference chip this morning — a piece of silicon designed specifically to run AI models more cheaply at scale. That matters because it's another move by the big labs to stop renting all their computing power and start controlling their own. It also, of course, points even more demand at exactly the memory we were just talking about — which is part of why nobody expects RAMageddon to ease anytime soon. ANDREW: So the same forces raising Apple's prices are the ones these companies are doubling down on. JENNY: That's the loop. Every dollar that flows into AI infrastructure tightens the squeeze on consumer devices a little more. JENNY: Andrew, over to you for home lending — because this is where that falling oil price actually pays off. ANDREW: It does, and this is the interesting tension this week. The Fed just turned hawkish, which you'd think would push borrowing costs up. But mortgage rates are doing the opposite. Mortgage News Daily has the top-tier thirty-year fixed at about 6.55 percent — that's the lowest it's been since mid-May, and it's approaching a one-month low. JENNY: So how does that square? The Fed sounds tougher, but the rate someone actually pays on a house is going down? ANDREW: Because mortgages track the ten-year Treasury, not the Fed's overnight rate directly. And the ten-year is being pulled down by that falling oil price out of the Hormuz reopening, plus some quarter-end buying from big money managers rebalancing their portfolios. Lower oil means a softer inflation outlook in the bond market, and that pushes yields — and mortgage rates — down, even while the Fed talks tough. It's a tug-of-war, and right now the bond market is winning. ANDREW: On demand, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported applications rose one percent last week. Refinancing was up three percent and is now running 17 percent higher than a year ago — refis are back up to about 41 percent of all applications. Purchase activity slipped slightly. So it's homeowners refinancing, more than new buyers, driving the action right now. JENNY: That makes sense — if you bought when rates were near seven, mid-sixes is finally worth a phone call to your lender. ANDREW: That's exactly the math households are running. Jenny, that's it from my desks — what's happening at home in Jacksonville? JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high near 91 degrees and sunny today, with just a 20 percent chance of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm. Classic late-June Florida. JENNY: And the story we've been tracking on the downtown culinary school took a frustrating turn. As we previewed last week, the Culinary Institute of America's board was supposed to decide whether Jacksonville gets its new southeast campus. That decision still hasn't been made public. At a city committee meeting Tuesday, the head of the Downtown Investment Authority told council members the institute hasn't announced anything and appears to be coordinating a joint rollout with local partners. ANDREW: So after the city pledged 35 million dollars in incentives, they're still waiting to hear yes or no? JENNY: Still waiting. The 35 million dollar package passed the council 16 to 2 back in late May, tied to that 160 million dollar hotel and convention hall on East Bay Street, with the school as the anchor tenant. The money's on the table — the institute just hasn't said whether it's taking it. Council members made clear Tuesday they're getting impatient. JENNY: And the JEA investigation reached a milestone. JEA's chief executive, Vickie Cavey, testified Monday before the city council's special committee looking into workplace culture at the utility. She's expected to be the last executive to testify. Council members pressed her on the dismissals of senior leaders and on a canceled lobbying contract, which she said the mayor's office did not influence. ANDREW: And the committee's report is due soon, if I remember. JENNY: By the end of the month — June 30th, so just days away now. After Cavey's testimony, the committee has most of what it's going to get. The question is what the report actually concludes, and whether it goes after policy changes at JEA or stops at criticism. We'll be watching for that next week. JENNY: One last local note for the calendar — Jaguars training camp opens July 29th at the Miller Electric Center, and admission is free, though you do need to register in advance. With the stadium renovation underway, this is the season the team plays at a reduced-capacity EverBank before heading elsewhere in 2027. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this week: that JEA committee report due Monday, June 30th. After months of subpoenas and testimony, this is the document that tells us whether the investigation produces real consequences at the utility or just a stern write-up. Watch whether it recommends specific charter or policy changes — that's the difference between a headline and an actual reform. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Thursday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Warsh's First Fed Decision, AI CEOs at G7, Iran Deal Set for Friday

Good morning. It's Wednesday, June 17th. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Kevin Warsh holds his first press conference as Chair of the Federal Reserve this afternoon, and Wall Street is waiting to see whether he sticks to his strategic ambiguity playbook or breaks new ground. ANDREW: Plus, the heads of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind are sitting down together at the G7 summit in France today. First time the three of them have appeared in front of world leaders at the same table. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The Dow closed at just under 52,000, up six tenths of a percent — a new record high. The S and P 500 was effectively flat, slipping less than a tenth of a percent to finish at 7,548.60. And the Nasdaq pulled back 1.15 percent to close at 26,376. The ten-year Treasury yield is sitting at 4.43 percent this morning, down about five basis points on the session. And the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at 6.54 percent according to Mortgage News Daily. All of that with traders essentially running out the clock on this afternoon's Fed decision. ANDREW: Let's start there. At 2 p.m. Eastern, the Federal Reserve releases its rate decision and an updated Summary of Economic Projections. At 2:30, Kevin Warsh steps up to deliver his first press conference as Chair. CME FedWatch is pricing a 98.4 percent probability that the Committee holds the benchmark rate at 3.50 to 3.75 percent. JENNY: So if the hold is essentially a foregone conclusion, what is the market actually waiting for? ANDREW: The dot plot. The March projections still penciled in at least one rate cut this year. Today's dot plot is widely expected to wipe that cut out entirely — and a growing hawkish minority on the committee is openly arguing for a 2026 hike. May CPI came in at 4.2 percent, the hottest reading in three years, with energy prices up almost 24 percent year over year. Warsh is inheriting the most internally divided Federal Reserve in three decades. JENNY: And there's a separate question about how he actually runs the room. ANDREW: There is. Warsh has telegraphed what he calls strategic ambiguity — fewer scheduled press conferences, an end to formal forward guidance, and there is real speculation he may decline to submit a personal dot in today's projections. We may learn the new communications cadence in real time this afternoon. Listeners should care because the format itself moves markets. Every word from that podium gets parsed for trading signal, and Warsh is signaling he wants to deliver less of it. JENNY: Trump has also been very public about wanting rate cuts. Does that pressure factor in today? ANDREW: It is the elephant in the room. Warsh was Trump's pick, and he has spent the run-up to this meeting going out of his way to talk about Fed independence. The signal to watch in the press conference is how directly he addresses the political backdrop — or whether he very pointedly does not. ANDREW: One more story driving sentiment this morning: the U.S.-Iran framework deal. After Sunday's announcement of a 60-day ceasefire extension and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the formal signing ceremony is now set for Friday in Switzerland, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar. The deal explicitly bars Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, with a 60-day window after signing to negotiate the comprehensive details. Brent crude has been drifting lower on the news, and that easing in oil is the cleanest disinflation channel the Fed has right now. If the signing actually holds Friday, it could change the tone of Warsh's next meeting more than it changes the tone of this one. JENNY: Andrew, before we leave the national desk — the mortgage market is wired directly into what Warsh says today. ANDREW: It absolutely is. So let me stay on this beat. Where are rates this morning? Mortgage News Daily has the top-tier thirty-year fixed at 6.54 percent. Bankrate's national average is 6.53. Freddie Mac's most recent weekly survey came in at 6.52. So we have stabilized in the low-to-mid sixes after the post-CPI spike, helped by that easing in the ten-year Treasury we mentioned — 4.43 percent yesterday, down about five basis points. JENNY: So what does the average buyer trying to close this week actually need to watch? ANDREW: The ten-year yield in real time at 2 p.m. If Warsh sounds more hawkish than the market is bracing for, the ten-year backs up through 4.50 percent, and the lender lock you got Monday morning is the lock you wish you had this afternoon. If he sounds balanced, we likely drift back toward 6.45 by week's end. JENNY: And the MBA put out its weekly applications data this morning. ANDREW: They did, and it tells you the consumer is leaning into the dip. Mortgage applications rose 8 percent for the week ending June 12. Refinance applications jumped about 10 percent — that is four straight weeks of building refi momentum. And purchase applications hit their highest level in more than 11 years, which is the more interesting number, because it suggests the pent-up spring demand that froze in April is finally getting unleashed. The risk to that story is straightforward — if Warsh signals higher-for-longer with conviction this afternoon, that purchase pipeline shrinks again by next Wednesday's MBA print. ANDREW: Jenny, over to you for the AI beat — and the gathering in France is the story. JENNY: It is. The G7 summit wraps today in Évian-les-Bains, and the closing day is built almost entirely around artificial intelligence. The headline visual: Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind sitting down at the same working lunch — the first time all three frontier-lab CEOs have appeared before world leaders together. ANDREW: That has to be slightly awkward. JENNY: It is the kind of awkward that money buys. The session is officially themed around — and I'm quoting the agenda here — ensuring a safe, rapid, and effective deployment of artificial intelligence. Unofficially, European leaders are openly pushing back on what they're calling American dominance of the industry. France's Mistral is at the table. So is Germany's Black Forest Labs, Japan's Sakana AI, Canada's Cohere, and the U.K.'s Synth. Frontier risk, infrastructure, and sovereignty are all on the agenda. The expected outcome is some kind of joint statement on AI safety guardrails. Whether it has any teeth is a separate question. ANDREW: Anything coming out of the lunch we should be tracking? JENNY: Two things. First, watch for any specific commitment from the U.S. labs on safety testing or red-teaming access for European regulators — that would be a real concession. Second, watch the language around export controls on frontier model weights. The Europeans want a seat at that table, and the U.S. has spent the last two years saying no. JENNY: One related thread on the enterprise side: Anthropic had planned a major credit overhaul for its Claude agent products to take effect this past Monday — that would have moved Claude Code, the Agent SDK, and GitHub Actions off subscription billing and onto a per-user credit pool at full API rates. Anthropic paused that change on June 15. For enterprise buyers, the message is that the pricing model is still very much in flux ahead of the dual Anthropic-OpenAI IPO timeline. OpenAI, for its part, is leaning into the moment — Sam Altman last month offered new business customers two months of free Codex usage to peel off Claude developers caught off guard by the credit-pool announcement. ANDREW: And SpaceX last Friday was the warm-up act for those AI IPOs. JENNY: It really was. SPCX priced at $135 a share, opened at $150, and closed at $161.11 — up about 19 percent on day one. The market cap pushed above two trillion dollars, making Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire on paper. For Anthropic and OpenAI bankers running their roadshows over the next few months, that trading print is exactly the demand signal they wanted to see before their own debuts. JENNY: Andrew, let me bring it home to Jacksonville. JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 88 and a low of 78 today, with morning showers giving way to cloudy skies this afternoon. Bring an umbrella for the school drop-off. JENNY: The JEA investigation continues to be the dominant local story this week. JEA's CEO, Vickie Cavey, is scheduled to testify before the City Council's Special Investigatory Committee next Monday, June 22. That's the testimony everyone has been waiting for. It follows last week's appearance by JEA's Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks and the utility's former chief legal counsel Regina Ross, who were grilled on uncollected capacity fees and on the workplace-culture allegations that prompted this whole investigation. ANDREW: And the Carrico thread is still overlapping all of this. JENNY: It is. About a thousand pages of Council President Kevin Carrico's subpoena response were released last week after a 100-plus-day delay. Among the more eyebrow-raising items: a text in which Carrico told a JEA board member he was declining renomination, citing — and this is his phrasing — a, quote, big favor he owed the local Boys and Girls Club CEO. Carrico's attorney has argued personal texts shouldn't have to be released at all. The committee's report deadline is June 30, and the open question is what those records ultimately do to the committee's narrative — whether they reshape the JEA storyline, or get folded into a separate State Attorney inquiry. ANDREW: One more thing on Carrico — there's a fellow council member who went after him publicly last week. Is that gathering steam? JENNY: It's gathering at least some. There are now multiple council members who have said, on the record, that Carrico's priorities are, quote, not on the people. Whether that translates into a formal leadership challenge is the question to watch over the next two weeks. JENNY: One more local item — the Culinary Institute of America's board of directors was scheduled to vote yesterday and today on whether Jacksonville will host its southeast campus. The City Council put up 35 million dollars in incentives last month to land the project, which would anchor 50,000 square feet inside Corner Lot's $160.5 million riverfront hotel and convention hall on East Bay Street. Jacksonville is competing against Atlanta, Charleston, and Nashville. As of this morning, we have not seen a public announcement from the CIA board. Watch the Jacksonville Daily Record and News4Jax later today. ANDREW: That's a real economic-development moment if Jacksonville wins it. JENNY: It is. Mayor Deegan has been very public that this is the kind of downtown anchor the city has been chasing for a decade. JENNY: Andrew, one thing to watch. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch today: at 8:30 this morning Eastern, the Commerce Department releases May advance retail sales. Coming on top of that 4.2 percent CPI print last week, a hot retail number would lock in the case for a hawkish dot plot this afternoon and could push the ten-year Treasury yield through 4.50 percent for the first time since April. A soft retail number gives Warsh the cover to sound more balanced at 2:30. Either way, mortgage rates and your equity portfolio are moving by lunchtime. The number to circle: a print above 0.6 percent month over month is the hawkish trigger. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Wednesday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — Trump Cancels Iran Strikes, Markets Surge, SpaceX Debuts Today

Good morning. It's Friday, June 12th, 2026. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: The story we've been tracking all week just turned on a dime. President Trump cancelled a planned overnight strike on Iran and now says a peace agreement could be signed within days. Markets ripped higher, oil tumbled, and the war premium that has driven this entire week's tape just started unwinding. ANDREW: And in another story we've been following, SpaceX priced the largest IPO in U.S. history last night at a one point seven eight trillion dollar valuation. Shares start trading today. We'll get to what the order book is telling us about the rest of the year's IPO pipeline. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed at 7,394, up one point seven five percent. The Dow surged 930 points to 50,849, up one point eight six percent. And the Nasdaq led the way, climbing two point five four percent to 25,810. It was the strongest session in weeks, and it was almost entirely about Iran. The ten-year Treasury yield slipped to four point five three percent as oil sold off, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking at six point five seven percent according to Bankrate, with Freddie Mac's weekly survey out yesterday at six point five two. We'll come back to those numbers in the mortgage section. ANDREW: Let's start with the story driving all of it. Late Thursday afternoon, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he had cancelled the planned strikes on Iran, saying discussions had been brought to the, quote, highest level of Iranian leadership and approved. He told reporters the two sides had made a, quote, great settlement, and that he expects the agreement to be signed in Europe within days. Just hours earlier, the same president had warned Iran would be hit, quote, very hard tonight. JENNY: So which one is it? Because we spent the last 48 hours covering an active kinetic exchange. CENTCOM strikes Wednesday, Iranian retaliation against U.S. bases in Bahrain and Kuwait, Brent oil near 94 dollars. How real is this de-escalation? ANDREW: That's the honest question, and the answer is, we don't know yet. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman told state media that reports of a finalized agreement are, quote, merely speculation, and that Tehran has not made a final decision. So we have the U.S. president saying a deal is essentially done, and the Iranian government saying nothing has been agreed. Markets chose to believe the optimistic version. Brent crude fell more than four percent to about 89 dollars a barrel. U.S. crude dropped to 86.51. The Strait of Hormuz technically remains closed to traffic, but the directional bet was clear. JENNY: And the political pressure on both sides is real. Trump wants a foreign policy win heading into the Fed meeting next week. Iran's economy can't take a sustained shutdown of the Strait. ANDREW: Right. The risk for listeners is that this is a Trump-style negotiation that swings back the other way over a weekend tweet. If you woke up this morning relieved, just remember the same president threatened maximum strikes and announced a peace deal in the same six-hour window yesterday. ANDREW: One more thing on the national side, and it ties directly to what happens next week. The Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday. Kevin Warsh's first meeting as chair. Markets are pricing a 98 percent probability of no change at the current three and a half to three and three quarter percent range. But the real event is the dot plot and Warsh's first press conference. Warsh has telegraphed that he wants what he calls strategic ambiguity, fewer scheduled press conferences, and an end to formal forward guidance. So the format of how the Fed communicates may be changing in real time on Wednesday. ANDREW: Jenny, on that note, the other story that traders couldn't take their eyes off yesterday is on your beat. Take us through it. JENNY: Thanks, Andrew. SpaceX priced its IPO last night at 135 dollars a share. The company is selling 555 million shares to raise roughly 75 billion dollars. That makes it, by a wide margin, the largest IPO in U.S. stock market history. The implied valuation is one point seven eight trillion dollars. Trading opens today on the Nasdaq under the ticker S P C X. ANDREW: And the demand side of this is the part everyone's talking about. JENNY: It's almost hard to overstate. According to Bloomberg, retail investors alone submitted more than 100 billion dollars in orders. Total demand, retail and institutional combined, ran north of 250 billion dollars. That's three and a half to four times oversubscribed. SpaceX originally planned to give retail investors 30 percent of the deal, an unusually generous slice. It quietly cut that allocation to the low 20s as institutional bids piled up. If you put in an order through Robinhood for 100 shares, you're more likely to get 20. ANDREW: So what does today's open actually tell us beyond SpaceX itself? JENNY: Two things. First, the appetite for very large, very profitable private tech is enormous, even with the macro picture as messy as it is. Second, and this is what bankers care about, S P C X is the bellwether for the rest of the AI and frontier-tech IPO pipeline. Anthropic filed confidentially on June 1st. OpenAI filed June 8th. If SpaceX trades up cleanly today, both deals get easier. If S P C X breaks the issue price, the conversation in those boardrooms gets very different over the weekend. JENNY: And speaking of OpenAI and Anthropic, Bloomberg also reported yesterday that OpenAI is weighing significant price cuts on its API tokens, specifically to counter expected cuts from Anthropic ahead of both IPOs. A pricing war between the two largest frontier labs would be brutal for margins on both sides, and it would land right in the middle of the S-1 process. ANDREW: That's a weird incentive. You usually want to dress up margins ahead of a listing, not gut them. JENNY: It's a market-share play. They both believe whoever owns enterprise adoption when they go public gets the higher multiple, and they're willing to sacrifice short-term gross margin to lock in customers. The enterprise customers reading those S-1s are going to be very happy this quarter. JENNY: Andrew, the move in the ten-year yesterday was a real shift. What does it mean for the mortgage market today? ANDREW: Thanks, Jenny. It's a small but real bit of relief after a tense two weeks. The thirty-year fixed sits at six point five seven percent this morning per Bankrate's Friday read. Freddie Mac's weekly survey, which posted yesterday, came in at six point five two. Mortgage News Daily has it tracking in the same neighborhood. That's down from the spike we got after Wednesday's hot C P I print, and it's a direct response to the ten-year falling back to four point five three. JENNY: For someone trying to close on a house this weekend, what does that translate to? ANDREW: On a 400,000 dollar loan, a quarter point lower rate is about 65 dollars a month, roughly 23,000 dollars over the life of the loan. But the more interesting story is what borrowers did before any of this happened. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday that applications for the week ending June 5 jumped ten point eight percent. Refinance applications were up 15 percent. Purchase applications up 7. Refinance share hit forty point two percent of all applications, the highest in months. JENNY: So people were locking ahead of C P I. ANDREW: They were locking ahead of everything. C P I, the Fed meeting, Iran. When borrowers see a tape this volatile, they pull forward. The question now is whether this Iran de-escalation, if it holds, lets the ten-year break lower toward four point four, which would take the thirty-year fixed back under six and a half. If the deal falls apart over the weekend and oil reverses, we'll be talking about seven percent rates again by mid-week. JENNY: A lot riding on a Truth Social post. ANDREW: That is the world we live in. ANDREW: Jenny, what's happening at home today? JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at 94 degrees and partly cloudy today. Sunshine early, clouds building this afternoon, and a stray thunderstorm possible later. Classic mid-June heat. Drink water. JENNY: The big local story this morning is at City Hall, and it isn't going away. The city released nearly 1,000 pages of subpoenaed records from Council President Kevin Carrico on Tuesday after a delay of more than 100 days. The subpoena came from State Attorney Melissa Nelson's office back in February. It covered Carrico's calendar, emails, and texts going back to January 2025, all related to his communications with JEA board members about appointments and about CEO Vickie Cavey. ANDREW: And what's in the records? JENNY: The reporting from News4Jax and First Coast News focuses on one text in particular. Carrico told JEA board member Arthur Adams he would not be renominating him, and that he planned to nominate the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club instead because he owed him, in Carrico's words, a, quote, big favor. A longtime member of the City Council went on the record yesterday saying Carrico's priorities are, quote, not on the people of Jacksonville. ANDREW: Are the records complete? JENNY: That's the second story inside this. Carrico's lawyer issued a statement yesterday saying personal text messages don't have to be released, and the council secretary has acknowledged that some personal communications were redacted from the file with no explanation provided. So the question of what's still being withheld is now a live issue. JENNY: This matters because it intersects directly with the JEA investigation we've been tracking. CEO Vickie Cavey is scheduled to testify before the Special Investigatory Committee on June 22nd. The committee's report is due by the end of the month. If the Carrico texts establish a pattern of board appointments being traded for personal favors, the charter-change conversation about how JEA is governed is going to get a lot louder. JENNY: Two quick local items before we go. The Jaguars wrapped mandatory minicamp yesterday at the Miller Electric Center. The headline is Travis Hunter. After spending the entire spring on what the team called mental reps following his October knee injury, Hunter actually played both ways in the final practice. Three catches on offense, played zone coverage on defense, made a stop. Head coach Liam Coen said Hunter ran 22.6 miles per hour in a pre-practice sprint earlier this week, which puts him near team-best speed numbers. He'll be a full participant when training camp opens in late July. JENNY: And on infrastructure, the city and the Florida Department of Transportation start a 9.6 million dollar multi-modal improvement project along Mayport Road on Monday. Expect lane shifts and detours through the summer if you commute through the Beaches corridor. JENNY: Andrew, take us out. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch this weekend: whether the Iran agreement actually gets signed. Trump said the deal would be inked, quote, in Europe within days. Iran's foreign ministry has not confirmed any deal. If you wake up Saturday or Sunday to a signed framework, the ten-year Treasury likely breaks below four point five, mortgage rates ease into next week, and the Fed has more room to sound neutral on Wednesday rather than hawkish. If the weekend ends with no signing and Brent crude back through 95 dollars, the Tuesday tape resets to where we were Wednesday morning. Watch oil at the Sunday futures open. It will tell you everything before the equity market does. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Friday. Have a great weekend. ANDREW: We'll see you Monday.

Jax Morning Brief — CPI Hits 4.2%, Iran Strikes Enter Day Two, SpaceX Prices Tonight

Good morning. It's Thursday, June 11th. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: Inflation hit a three-year high in May. Headline CPI ran 4.2 percent, almost entirely on energy, and stocks dropped hard. The US and Iran are now into a second night of strikes. ANDREW: And after the close tonight, SpaceX prices what will be the largest IPO in American history — about 75 billion dollars raised at a 1.75 trillion dollar valuation. We'll get to what that says about the broader AI trade. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed at 7,266, down 1.6 percent. The Dow dropped 1.9 percent to 49,918. The Nasdaq fell almost 2 percent to 25,169. That was the worst session in weeks, driven by a hotter than expected inflation print and another round of US-Iran strikes. The ten-year Treasury yield is sitting at 4.55 percent, a two-week high. And the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is tracking around 6.55 percent according to Bankrate. Energy did most of the damage in the CPI report, and energy is what the bond market is worried about right now. ANDREW: Jenny, the macro is the story today, so let's start there. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released May CPI at 8:30 yesterday morning. Headline came in at 4.2 percent year over year. That is the hottest reading since 2023. Month over month, prices rose half a percent. Energy alone was up 3.9 percent in May, and according to the BLS, energy accounted for more than 60 percent of the entire monthly increase. JENNY: But core CPI, the number the Fed actually cares about, that was milder, right? ANDREW: That is the wrinkle. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, rose just 0.2 percent on the month — that actually undershot forecasts. Over twelve months, core is at 2.9 percent. So if you squint, the underlying disinflation story is still intact. The headline is the energy shock from the Iran conflict. The real question is whether that energy shock seeps into the rest of the basket — into airline tickets, into delivery costs, into anything that uses fuel. JENNY: And the bond market clearly does not want to take that bet. ANDREW: It does not. The ten-year sold off two basis points to 4.55. Fed funds futures now price a 98 percent chance that Chair Warsh holds at next week's meeting. The dot plot is the real event — that is Tuesday and Wednesday, Warsh's first meeting as chair, and traders are watching whether the dots push the first 2026 rate cut into 2027. ANDREW: Speaking of the energy shock — the Iran story has now run a second day. CENTCOM launched a second round of self-defense strikes at 5:15 yesterday afternoon Eastern Time, hitting multiple targets inside Iran. That came after Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for drone attacks on the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, on the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, and a long-range missile strike on Azraq in Jordan. Brent crude was at 94 dollars a barrel as of yesterday morning, and the Strait of Hormuz is, in the words of one wire service, near-totally closed — though there is some oil still moving. JENNY: And the president's posture this morning? ANDREW: Trump posted that Iran will, in his words, pay the price for taking too long to negotiate, and he has signaled more strikes are possible. The Pentagon has not yet formally characterized the attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan as acts of war. That language matters, because it shapes the legal authority for whatever comes next. ANDREW: One more from Washington. Trump signed the Secure America Act yesterday. That is the 70 billion dollar ICE and Border Patrol funding bill that had been stuck in Congress for nearly six months. The House passed it 214 to 212 Tuesday night. The package funds ICE at 38 billion dollars, the Border Patrol at 26 billion, with another 5 billion in contingency, and it runs through January 2029 — essentially the rest of the president's term. It ends a 115-day standoff that had threatened a partial shutdown of enforcement operations. JENNY: Andrew, that connects to mortgages, doesn't it — what's happening on the home lending side after that print? ANDREW: Let's go there. The headline for buyers and borrowers is that the thirty-year fixed is now tracking around 6.55 percent. Rates have been bumping against 6.5 for several weeks, and yesterday's bond market reaction means that ceiling is being tested in real time. Housing economists are now pretty unanimous that rates will stay above 6 percent for the rest of the year. JENNY: So is purchase demand just dead, or is something else going on? ANDREW: That is the interesting part. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported yesterday morning that mortgage applications for the week ending June 5 jumped 10.8 percent week over week. The refinance index was up 15 percent. And here is the strange piece — the contract rate on a conforming thirty-year actually rose during that week, from 6.57 to 6.60. So borrowers were rushing to lock in ahead of the CPI print. People saw the energy spike coming, watched Brent climb, and moved early. The refi share is back to 40 percent of total applications. That is the highest it has been in months. JENNY: That feels like a one-week story though, not a turn in the trend. ANDREW: It is. This is a behavioral spike, not a rate-trend reversal. If anyone was on the fence about locking, that decision got a lot easier yesterday. The question for the industry now is whether next week's FOMC delivers any forward-guidance change. Right now the market is pricing zero cuts before the fourth quarter at the earliest. ANDREW: Jenny, there is a very big AI story breaking today — over to you. JENNY: There is. Tonight after the closing bell, SpaceX will price its IPO. By a wide margin, this is the largest public offering in American history. Fixed price, 135 dollars a share, 555.6 million shares sold, raising about 75 billion dollars at a 1.75 trillion dollar valuation. The stock debuts tomorrow morning on the Nasdaq under the ticker S-P-C-X. About 30 percent of the float is reserved for retail buyers. ANDREW: 1.75 trillion is, for context, larger than the GDP of most countries on earth. JENNY: It is. And SpaceX is going public into a CPI-shocked, Iran-rattled market, which is exactly why a lot of bankers are watching tonight's pricing so carefully. They skipped the usual roadshow range and went straight to a fixed price. That is unusual at this scale — it strips out the price discovery you would normally get. If demand fades because of the macro tape, there is no built-in cushion. ANDREW: And there is a context point that ties this back to the broader AI trade. JENNY: Yes — SpaceX is the first of three frontier-tech IPOs queued up for the back half of the year. Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 on June 1 at a 965 billion dollar private valuation. OpenAI filed its own confidential S-1 last Monday, June 8, at 852 billion. Bloomberg has been framing the three together as a third and fourth quarter stress test for the entire AI valuation framework. SpaceX is the warm-up act. ANDREW: And the question with OpenAI specifically is whether the financials can clear a public-market bar. JENNY: That is the big one. OpenAI was generating about 2 billion dollars a month in revenue as of March — call it 24 billion annualized. But the company also lost roughly a dollar 22 for every dollar of revenue last quarter. The cost of training and serving these models is brutal. Private investors have given OpenAI a long runway on that math. Public investors typically do not. ANDREW: One quick AI policy note before you move on. JENNY: Yeah — both OpenAI and Anthropic spent the last week backing state-level AI bills in California, New York, and Illinois, because federal AI legislation is just not moving. They are choosing to shape state law where they can rather than wait on Congress. Three blue-state legislatures advanced bills the labs endorsed. Worth watching, because state-by-state AI regulation is exactly the patchwork the labs have been telling Congress they want to avoid. ANDREW: Jenny, speaking of closer to home — what is happening in Jacksonville? JENNY: Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at a high of 87 degrees and a low of 73 today, partly cloudy, with the usual June chance of an afternoon thunderstorm. JENNY: Two local items. The City Emergency Preparedness Division is leaning hard into hurricane prep this week. Atlantic hurricane season is underway, the city is urging residents to download the JaxReady app and to register for the Special Medical Needs Registry if anyone in the household relies on power-dependent equipment. Last weekend, Farm Share Florida and a partner organization distributed free emergency supplies in town. The reason this matters specifically this year — the National Hurricane Center is forecasting an above-average season, and Jacksonville's exposure has only grown with the westside development push. ANDREW: Any update on the JEA investigation? JENNY: Carrying forward. The big date there is June 22 — that is when CEO Vickie Cavey is scheduled to testify in front of the City Council Special Investigative Committee. Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks and former legal counsel Regina Ross testified Monday. Brooks pushed back hard against the anonymous workplace-culture allegations and confirmed that roughly 250 commercial customers are now under review on a capacity-fee issue. The committee has until June 30 to issue findings and recommendations. JENNY: And one Jaguars note — mandatory minicamp wraps today at Miller Electric Center. The headline storyline all week has been Travis Hunter. He still has not taken a physical practice rep — he is coming back from the LCL tear last October — but he has been in every huddle, holding the play sheet. Head coach Liam Coen told reporters Tuesday that Hunter clocked 22.6 miles per hour in pre-practice sprints. The team's working target is full participation by training camp in late July. JENNY: Andrew, take us out. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch today: SpaceX pricing, after the market closes. The price itself is fixed at 135 — that is not a surprise. The signal is the indication-of-interest data the underwriters release, and then the open print tomorrow morning on the Nasdaq. If S-P-C-X trades up out of the gate, it tells you the AI-adjacent risk trade has absorbed the CPI shock and the Iran headlines. If it breaks issue, that is a much harder tape for Anthropic and OpenAI's bankers to read — and a much harder one for the broader equity market to ignore heading into next week's Fed meeting. JENNY: That is your Morning Brief for Thursday. Have a great Thursday. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.

Jax Morning Brief — US Strikes Iran After Hormuz Helicopter Downing, ICE Bill Passes, CPI at 8:30

Good morning. It's Wednesday, June 10th. This is The Morning Brief. I'm Jenny. ANDREW: And I'm Andrew. JENNY: A short-lived pause in the Middle East shattered yesterday afternoon. An Iranian Shahed drone hit a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz, the pilots are safe, and at five o'clock Eastern, US fighter jets launched what Central Command is calling self-defense strikes against Iranian air defense sites. ANDREW: And in Washington, the House passed a seventy billion dollar funding package for ICE and Border Patrol 214 to 212 — ending a 115-day standoff. The May CPI print drops at 8:30 this morning. We'll get to all of it. JENNY: Let's get into it. ANDREW: A quick look at the markets. The S and P 500 closed at 7,386.65, down about a quarter percent. The Dow gained 86 points to finish at 50,872. The Nasdaq was the laggard, down nearly a percent, closing at 25,678 — though that was a steep recovery from intraday lows of around three and a half percent after Trump teased the Iran response. The ten-year Treasury yield is sitting near 4.57 percent, the highest in about two weeks, and the thirty-year fixed mortgage rate climbed to 6.68 percent on Mortgage News Daily's daily index — the third-highest reading in nine months. ANDREW: Let's start in the Middle East, because this is now a very different story than the one we ended yesterday with. Iran's so-called suspension of attacks on Israel — the one announced Monday afternoon — held for about 36 hours. Yesterday afternoon, an Iranian Shahed drone struck a US Apache helicopter patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. Both pilots are safe. President Trump went on Truth Social within the hour saying the US "must respond," and at 5 PM Eastern, Central Command confirmed self-defense strikes against Iranian air defense sites, ground control stations, and surveillance radar near the Strait, using precision munitions from fighter jets. JENNY: So this is the first direct US-Iran kinetic exchange since the spring. What's the scope here — is this contained to the Strait, or is this widening? ANDREW: That's the question this morning. Iran's retaliation overnight, according to Bloomberg and NPR reporting, included strikes on US-aligned positions in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. That's three more countries pulled into this in a matter of hours. The Pentagon hasn't characterized those attacks publicly yet. What we know is that the Iran-Israel pause we covered yesterday is effectively done, and the framework Trump posted about — "total victory coming, negotiations continuing" — that framework is now gone. Brent crude was already above 94 dollars at the close yesterday. Watch the energy print at the open. JENNY: And the Strait of Hormuz piece matters because? ANDREW: Roughly a fifth of global oil supply moves through Hormuz. Iran cannot close it without inviting overwhelming response, but it can make insurance underwriters nervous, and that alone moves spot crude. If you see Brent push past 100 dollars this morning, that feeds straight into the CPI conversation we'll have in the next beat. JENNY: And there's a mortgage-market angle to all of this, but let's hold that for the next beat. The other big story out of Washington — the House finally passed ICE funding. ANDREW: 214 to 212. Three Republicans voted no, every Democrat voted no. The bill funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through fiscal year 2029 — essentially the rest of Trump's term — at last year's operating budget plus inflation. As we've been tracking, the holdup was the 1.8 billion dollar anti-weaponization fund the White House wanted attached. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers DOJ was "not moving forward" with it, Speaker Johnson stripped it out, and that's what cleared the math. Bill goes to Trump's desk today — about ten days past his June 1st deadline, but it gets there. JENNY: And the markets curtain-raiser for the day — CPI. ANDREW: 8:30 Eastern, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases May CPI. The April print came in hot at 3.8 percent year-over-year, and the Cleveland Fed's nowcast has been drifting higher. The May reference window also captures the early-stage Iran energy spike. If the headline number prints above 3.2 percent — which is well within the plausible range — that essentially closes the door on any June rate cut and starts a conversation the Fed has not had this cycle, which is whether the next move could be a hike. Chair Warsh is in pre-FOMC blackout through June 17th, so the market read happens in real time off the print itself. JENNY: Andrew, that's a perfect bridge — let's stay with you on home lending. ANDREW: Right, and this is where the Iran story stops being foreign policy and starts hitting people's closing costs. The thirty-year fixed jumped to 6.68 percent on Mortgage News Daily's daily index as of yesterday — that is the highest reading we've seen since December. The ten-year Treasury, which is what mortgages actually track, is bumping up against 4.60 percent. If the ten-year breaks 4.60 on a hot CPI today, the mortgage daily index is likely heading toward 6.75, possibly 6.80 by the end of the week, and the seven-percent psychological line comes back into play. JENNY: So practical translation for someone trying to close on a house right now — what changes between Monday and today? ANDREW: Today's lock looks meaningfully worse than Monday's. On a 400,000-dollar loan, the move from roughly 6.5 percent two weeks ago to 6.68 today adds about 50 dollars a month — call it 18,000 dollars over the life of the loan. The Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly survey, for the week ending May 29th, showed purchase applications down three percent and refi down two percent. Purchase activity is at its slowest weekly pace since April. Refi applications are at the weakest level since June of last year. The hesitation isn't speculative — it's showing up in the data. JENNY: And the servicing side — you flagged the FHA squeeze last week. ANDREW: It's still grinding. The FHA mortgagee letter from February has tightened loss-mitigation timelines on servicers, and that's showing up in the Q1 foreclosure numbers — about 119,000 filings nationally, up 26 percent year-over-year, the highest first-quarter total in six years. That's not panic territory — we're nowhere near 2010 — but it is the clearest signal yet that the post-COVID forbearance cushion is gone. Default-servicing margins are the canary, and Q2 earnings out in late July will tell us how stressed those operations actually are. ANDREW: Jenny, over to you on AI. JENNY: Thanks Andrew. The story I want to start with is a number that genuinely stopped me — Big Tech's combined AI capex projection for 2026 has now reached 725 billion dollars. Alphabet alone raised its full-year guidance to between 180 and 190 billion. Meta took its range up to 125 to 145 billion. And the question on Wall Street had been: is any of this actually generating returns? ANDREW: And is it? JENNY: Google Cloud's most recent quarter is the strongest data point yet. Revenue grew 63 percent year-over-year to 20 billion dollars — that growth rate more than doubled. Paid monthly active users of Gemini Enterprise were up 40 percent quarter-over-quarter, with new deals at Bosch, Mars, and Merck. And the enterprise cloud backlog hit 462 billion dollars — that's the contracted future revenue — which nearly doubled in a single quarter. That is the first hard evidence that hyperscaler AI spend is converting to bookings at scale. ANDREW: And on the IPO side — Anthropic and OpenAI are both in the queue now. JENNY: They are. Anthropic filed confidentially June 1st, OpenAI filed about a week later. Both are pointed at fall public debuts. Anthropic's last private valuation was 965 billion, OpenAI's was 852 billion in March. Combined with SpaceX, which prices tomorrow night at a 1.77-trillion-dollar valuation, we're looking at three of the largest public offerings in US history landing inside a single quarter. Bloomberg is calling it a stress test of public-market appetite for the AI trade. ANDREW: And there's the AI coding angle — Microsoft and Google trying to catch the frontier labs. JENNY: This is the underappreciated competitive front. CNBC had a piece earlier this month framing it as "absolutely critical" for Microsoft and Google to get into AI coding, which has become Anthropic's and OpenAI's strongest revenue line. Microsoft is reportedly weaving its agent into the Windows 12 taskbar and File Explorer with system-level access. Google is making the same push through Gemini Code Assist. The question is whether the hyperscalers can use distribution to close the model gap — or whether they end up paying Anthropic and OpenAI to power their own products. The IPO disclosures will give us our first real look at that revenue mix. JENNY: And speaking of Jacksonville, let me transition to the local beat. Weather-wise, Jacksonville is looking at 86 degrees and partly sunny today, with an overnight low around 73. Standard early-June pattern — no afternoon storms expected. JENNY: City Council last night approved the Yellow Water Road rezoning we've been tracking. The vote cleared both ordinances — 2026-0289 on the land-use change, and 2026-0290 on the PUD zoning. That opens 112.5 acres about a mile north of Normandy Boulevard to a 478-home residential development by Partridge Hill Capital — managed by Andrew Hayman and Morgan McMasters. The Jax Daily Record confirms the PUD allows up to 550 homes total if the developer chooses to scale up. ANDREW: Any meaningful pushback on traffic — that area is already strained. JENNY: Action News Jax reported traffic concerns dominated public comment, but the project moved through 6-to-nothing at LUZ committee on June 2nd, and the full council followed through. Worth noting — this is the second large West Jacksonville approval inside a month. Watch whether the property-tax exemption amendment, which the council auditor projects costs Jacksonville more than 300 million a year by fiscal 29, surfaces in upcoming land-use debates as the city models out lost revenue versus growth. JENNY: Two more locally. The JEA investigative committee heard testimony Monday from Chief Administrative Officer Jody Brooks and former legal counsel Regina Ross. The headline takeaway from News4Jax — Brooks confirmed she has not personally witnessed CEO Vickie Cavey yelling or pounding fists, contradicting the anonymous workplace-culture allegations driving part of the investigation. Brooks did confirm Cavey cried after an employee was injured. Cavey herself testifies June 22nd. ANDREW: That changes the political posture going in to the Cavey hearing. JENNY: It does. And on the Jaguars — mandatory minicamp continues this morning at the Miller Electric Center. Today is the public-practice day, 8:40 to 10:55, free tickets. The story coming out of yesterday's day-one practice is Travis Hunter. He's not taking physical reps yet, still rehabbing the LCL injury from last season, but the team clocked him at 22.6 miles per hour ahead of practice. Head coach Liam Coen said Hunter is still doing mental reps with the corners and receivers. GM target is full participation by training camp in late July. ANDREW: Before we let you go, one thing to watch today: the May CPI print at 8:30 Eastern. The number to focus on is 3.2 percent on the headline. Above that, and the June 16th-17th FOMC meeting changes character — you'll see the ten-year break 4.60, mortgage rates climb toward seven, and rate-cut bets for September move out to December or beyond. Below 3.0, and a lot of the post-Iran energy concern gets discounted. Either way, the print sets the mortgage market for the rest of the month, and SpaceX prices its IPO tomorrow night into whatever rate environment this CPI creates. JENNY: That's your Morning Brief for Wednesday. Have a great day. ANDREW: We'll see you tomorrow.