evening wrap, June 2

market vibes

“Experience nine times out of ten is merely stupidity hardened into habit.” Herman Woulk, Winds of War

One of the most belicose weekends of the last three years lit a fire under gold and silver today with XAG and SLV call gamma ripping the roof off silver. PM Keir Starmer annouced the UK was in motion to be “war fighting ready”. We all know where France stands and Merz is aligned with Ursula von der Leyen and the EU to spend a trillion building armed forces. In a nutshell, Europe’s ruling class has lost its mind, willing to risk nuclear war to destroy Russia. I doubt Putin is going to wait for them to “arm up.” But … this is history traveling in time, as ever it was.

A report on Telegram said Senators Graham and Blumenthal were in Kyiv this weekend (cost $800k USD) as Zelenskyy launched a drone strike 3,000 miles into Russia. The White House plausibly said they were “not informed of the attack.” Apart from that omission, there was very little commentary or complaints about it from Trump, so far.

Elsewhere, various prisoner exchanges were agreed at the Russian and Ukrainian meeting in Istanbul. The Houthis fired a missile at Tel Aviv, bold considering the Trump ultimatum. On Wall Street, stocks and bonds discounted these items in a bizarre exception to history. Usually, a credible threat of thermonuclear war sends assets toward safety. Not so in the new AI world. Stocks enjoyed a mild late rally, and bonds fell with the dollar.

Let’s update some charts.