Jax Morning Brief
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.
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