🇺🇸 Rate increases requested by the biggest Obamacare plans.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois is atop the list with a request for a 27% rate increase.

📊 CHART WATCH 📊

🇹🇷 Turkey’s Lira is making fresh lows against the Dollar (as is tradition). It’s now worth 2.4 & a third cents.

It’s been one long slide since the start of 2008 (-97.14%), and it’s down a similar amount since March of 2001 (the last time the Lira saw Dollar parity).

It’s lost something like 85% of its value since the start of the COVID slide alone.

📉 CHART WATCH 📉

🇹🇷 Turkey's current account deficit in May of every year from 2000–2025, in billions of dollars…

🍆 CHART WATCH 🍆

🇪🇺 11 EU countries have deficits exceeding the targeted 3%.

🌎 CHART WATCH 🌎

🇨🇳🇸🇬🇹🇼🇰🇷🇭🇰 Economy-wise holdings of US portfolio assets (as of April 2025)

🇺🇸 CHART WATCH 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Retail represents the largest percentage of overall shares traded since Trump gave them all stimulus checks & a market down 35%.

📊 CHART WATCH 📊

🇺🇸 2x Long VIX Futures ETF - Fund Total Assets Hits 642.6819

People are hedging.

📈 CHART WATCH 📈

🇯🇵 2025 Japanese House of Councillors election results…

Biggest Losses: The largest party, the Liberal Democratic Party (conservative) lost 18 seats, Komeito (centrist) lost 6 seats, and the communists lost 4.

Biggest Gains: Sanseitō (“ultraconservative”) went from 1 seat to 15, and the newly reformed Democratic Party for the People gained 12 for a total of 22.

🗳 CHART WATCH 🗳

🇺🇸 Margin Debt As Percentage Of Real Disposable Personal Income

Retail is a big part of the market today, and yes, a whole lot of it involves margin…

📉 CHART WATCH 📈

🇺🇸 The Dollar is once again rejected at the 50-day moving average.

💲 CHART WATCH 💲

💸 Unlike its Dollar pair, Bitcoin has not hit a new all-time high against the Euro since January 20th.

By contrast, $BTCUSD has had 7 days with new all-time highs since then.

💸 CHART WATCH 💸

Fantastic returns thus far this year in the defense industry:

🇩🇪 $HAG Hensoldt +201%
🇩🇪 $RHM Rheinmetall +200%
🇬🇷 $THEON Theon +141%
🇸🇪 $SAABB Saab AB +140%
🇺🇸 $KTOS Kratos +124%
🇺🇸 $ATRO Astronics +117%
🇫🇷 $EXENS Exosens +113%
🇺🇸 $RKLB Rocket Lab +102%

🛡 CHART WATCH 🛡

🌍 Global Core Inflation (and 5 Year Range)

💸 CHART WATCH 💸

🇪🇺 Total 2024 Population Change in European Countries

📉 CHART WATCH ↗️

🇺🇸 Retail gasoline & diesel prices remain relatively stable.

Retail gasoline prices for all grades averaged $3.25 per gallon (-9.5% y/y) last week for the third straight week. Prices remained above their low of $3.13 in the week of December 9. The recent high was $3.79 in the week ending April 22, 2024. Their all-time high of $5.11 occurred in the week ending June 13, 2022.

The retail price for on-highway diesel fuel rose to $3.81 per gallon (0.9% y/y) in the week of July 21 after rising slightly to $3.76 in the prior week. The latest diesel price stood well below a high of $4.63 in the week ending September 18, 2023 and a peak of $5.81 in the week ending June 20, 2022.

📊 CHART WATCH 📊

🇺🇸 The S&P 493 outperformed the MAG 7 for a change.

📈 CHART WATCH 📉