Morning Briefing
June 5, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
The economy added 172,000 jobs in May, more than economists had expected. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.3%. With revisions, March and April added 93,000 more jobs than previously reported. That puts average job growth in 2026 at about 114,000 per month, much stronger than the 10,000 average last year. That’s much faster than the rate at which people have been coming into the labor market because the Trump administration has squeezed net immigration to near zero.
June 1, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot Claude, confidentially filed on Monday for an initial public offering–possibly as early as this fall. With its IPO filing, Anthropic would be among a trio of high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, along with the SpaceX and OpenAI. SpaceX’s IPO is expected this month, with prediction markets putting 75% odds on June 12 for the first day of trading on the NASDAQ. OpenAI has been preparing to file in the coming weeks.
May 30, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
It’s jobs week. On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its labor market report for May. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect that the unemployment rate will hold steady at 4.3% and that the economy generated 89,000. That figure would be higher than in recent months and bring the three-month average to the highest level in more than a year. That would be more than enough to support talk on Wall Street of a durable acceleration in hiring. Which would be one more nail in the coffin for the argument that an interest rate cut is needed to spur the economy.
May 28, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, rose at a 3.8% year-over-year basis in April, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today. Core PCE inflation advances 3.3% on year-over-year basis. The Fed’s increasingly irrelevant inflation target is 2%.
May 27, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The bad news is that food inflation is climbing. The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture food price outlook, published last Friday, projected a 3.2% advance in grocery prices this year. Experts such ass Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, expect mire like 4% to 4.5%. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it,” Volpe told Bloomberg. The really bad news is that the Federal Reserve’s standard inflation fighting tool–an increase in interest rates to slow the overall economy–is likely to be ineffective since the increase in prices is being driven by supply-side problems that include bad weather, tariffs, and a shrinking cattle herd. Beef prices rose to a record in April thanks to the smallest cattle herd in 75 years.In April, food prices rose by the most in nearly four years.
May 25, 2026 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, LLY, Morning Briefing, Stock Alerts |
What do the stocks of AI chip maker Nvidia (NVDA) and weight-loss drug leader Eli Lilly (LLY) have in common? Their lofty valuations depend on years and years of fast growth.
At a trailing 12-month price to earnings ratio, Nvidia isn’t especially expensive–as ling as it can grow revenue at the 81% rate projected for 2027 or even the 39% projected for 2028. The worry–what makes investors nervous about Nvidia is evidence of increasing competition in the are for AI chips. At some point, the worries go, chips from Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Chinese competitors have to start taking market share. How much and when? boom the important issues.
Same with shares of Eli Lily. At a trailing 12-month price to earning ratio of 37 an a forward PE of 28 on the next 12-month’s earnings per share, Eli Lilly isn’t expense as ling as it can keep growing revenue at the 31% projected for 2026. But revenue growth is projected at just 15% for 2027 on analysts belief that patent expirations and competition in the market for GLP-1 weight loss drugs will slow growth.
It’s important for investors in Eli Lilly that growth for 2027 and beyond comes in higher than that.
And the company’s recent earning report band its announcement of the preliminary trial results for a new weight loss drug offer reason for optimism.
May 24, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Even though we don’t know the timing and scope–or even the existence–of any deal, investors watching the financial market’s reaction to Iran peace news over the last few weeks can begin to put together a trading strategy for the end of the war.
May 22, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
U.S. consumer sentiment fell in May to a record low and long-term inflation expectations worsened significantly The University of Michigan’s final May consumer sentiment index decreased 5 points to 44.8 from April, according to the survey released Friday. The gauge was weaker than all projections in a Bloomberg survey of economists as well as the preliminary reading of 48.2. Consumers expect prices to rise an annualized 3.9% over the next five to 10 years, up from 3.5% in April and the highest in seven months. They also saw costs advancing 4.8% over the next year. One of the big worries at the federal Reserve is the possibility that expectations for future inflation are becoming “unanchored.” This data will do nothing to lessen that worry.
May 19, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Bond markets shuddered on Tuesday, pushing the yields on U.S. Treasuries to levels not seen since the global financial crisis nearly 20 years ago, as investors grew increasingly anxious about rising inflation and an energy shock to the U.S. and global economies from the war in Iran. The yield on the 30-year Treasury note rose to 5.18% on Tuesday, its highest level since 2007. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, a widely used benchmark for mortgage rates annd consumer lending, closed at 4.67%, up 8 basis points on the day. The 10-year Treasury yield is up three-quarters of a percentage point since the war began The average 30-year mortgage rate has risen to 6.36% from below 6% before the war, according to data from Freddie Mac.
And it’s not just U.S. yields that are climbing.
May 17, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The starting gun went off on the Inflation Wars Tuesday when the Senate voted 54 to 45 to confirm Kevin Warsh as the new chair of the Federal Reserve. He will replace outgoing Fed chair Jerome Powell whose term expires on May 15. (Powell has said he will remain on the Fed’s board until his term in that position expires on January 31, 2028.) The Inflation Wars are pretty straight forward. The economic data say hold interest rates steady–or maybe even raise them; the politics say Cut interest rates NOW, inflation be damned. There simply isn’t a way to compromise this disagreement. One side will win, and the other lose. And the stakes are very high.
May 15, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
Government bond markets tumbled around the world today, Friday, May 15. yields surged from Japan to the United States on fears that price shocks from the Iran war will force central banks to raise interest rates to contain the impact. The rout was led by longer-dated bonds that are the most vulnerable to accelerating inflation, sending 30-year yields toward their highest since 2023. U.S. 10-year yields rose more than 11 basis points to peak just shy of 4.60%, capping the biggest weekly jump since President Donald Trump’s tariffs threw markets into a tailspin in April 2025. The yield on the 30-year Treasury closed at 5.12%, above the psychologically important 5% level. The yield on the 30-year Treasury is now up 22 basis points in the last month.
May 14, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Wholesale power prices on the largest electric grid in the United States jumped 76% in the first quarter due to soaring demand from data centers. The total cost of wholesale power on the 13-state grid managed by PJM Interconnection averaged $136.53 per megawatt-hour in the first three months of the year, according to a report from Monitoring Analytics, the grid’s independent market monitor. That compares to $77.78 per megawatt-hour during the same period in 2025.
