This was a strange week to watch. Apple held its biggest developer event in years and the stock sold off. SpaceX ran the largest IPO in history into a CPI print that hit a three-year high and still popped 19%. Oil fell sharply on Friday because a peace deal that has been weeks in the making might actually be close. And the Fed meeting on Wednesday carries more weight than any in recent memory, not because of the rate decision, but because of the man delivering it for the first time.
Here is the data, without the narrative pasted over it.
What Did Apple's WWDC Actually Deliver?
Apple opened the week with Tim Cook's final keynote as CEO at WWDC 2026. The headline was a rebuilt Siri, rebranded as Apple Intelligence, with deeper contextual understanding and broader ecosystem integration. The stock jumped to $317 intraday before closing down 1.89% at $301.54. Investors were not disappointed by what Apple announced. They were disappointed by what Apple did not say: no firm launch date for Siri AI, continuing a pattern of delays going back to 2024.
The valuation problem is real. Apple's PE ratio has expanded from its 10-year average of about 26x to roughly 36x as the market repriced it as an AI company. At 36x, "in beta with no timeline" does not cut it. Cook's farewell on stage was genuinely moving. Wall Street checked the AI delivery schedule and sold the stock anyway. The pattern is consistent enough now that it has a name: buy the rumour ahead of WWDC, sell the announcement. This was the fourth consecutive year it played out.
How Did SpaceX's IPO Actually Play Out?
SpaceX priced at $135 Thursday night, opened at $150 Friday, closed at $160.95. Up 19% on day one. The company raised $75 billion, the largest IPO in history, at a $2.1 trillion market cap. Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire on paper. Nasdaq's former chief Robert Greifeld said immediately after close that the listing has opened the window for Anthropic and OpenAI to follow.
What the debut actually tested was whether there is institutional appetite for large-scale AI infrastructure equity in a week where CPI came in hot and rate hike odds are climbing. The answer was yes, clearly. The IPO did not pull capital from elsewhere. If anything Friday's broad market close, S&P up 0.5%, Nasdaq up 0.31%, suggested the SpaceX pop lifted sentiment rather than draining it. The dual-class structure means Musk retains full voting control regardless of what public shareholders think. Worth knowing before buying.
What Did the May CPI Report Tell Us?
May CPI came in at 4.2% year over year, the highest reading since April 2023, up from 3.8% in April. Energy accounted for 60% of the monthly 0.5% gain. Gasoline is up 40.5% annually. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, rose just 0.2% for the month and 2.9% annually, below the 0.3% estimate. The inflationary surge is almost entirely energy-driven. The non-energy economy is not in a wage-price spiral, at least not yet.
The trajectory since January is steep: 2.4%, then 3.3% in March, 3.8% in April, 4.2% now. Oxford Economics and Bank of America both project CPI topping out between 4.5% and 5.0% this year. That is well below 2022's 9.1% peak but it is also well above the Fed's 2% target, and it is still accelerating. The one piece of good news in the report: new vehicles, household furniture, and prescription drugs all fell in May. Bank of America wrote on June 8 that "most of the tariff-driven inflation has run its course." The tariff problem looks contained. The energy problem is not.
What Is the Oil Market Actually Pricing?
Brent crude fell more than 3% on Friday to $87.33 as reports emerged that the US and Iran are closing in on an interim memorandum of understanding covering a ceasefire extension and the start of formal nuclear talks. WTI fell to $84.88. Brent is down roughly 20% from its 2026 peak above $110 but still more than 30% above pre-war levels. A credible deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz changes the CPI trajectory materially. Every dollar lower in Brent feeds directly into the headline number.
The Iran war started February 28 and within weeks had driven gasoline above $4 a gallon nationally. By May it had added roughly 1.8 percentage points to headline CPI. Friday's move is the market beginning to price a resolution. Bob Parker at ICMA told CNBC that even under a partial reopening scenario, infrastructure damage across Gulf refineries and pipelines means oil markets do not normalise until 2027. The direction is what matters right now, and Friday's direction was clearly lower. If an MOU gets signed before Wednesday's FOMC decision, Warsh's press conference gets considerably more interesting.
What Should Traders Actually Watch at the FOMC on June 17?
A hold at 3.50-3.75% Wednesday is near-certain. The rate decision is not the event. The event is the dot plot: Warsh's first Summary of Economic Projections as Fed Chair, released at 2PM ET alongside the statement. The March dot plot was produced under Powell before inflation ran from 2.4% to 4.2% in four months. Wednesday's dots will almost certainly show at least one 2026 hike in the median projection. The question is whether Warsh signals one hike or two, and whether he moves the Fed's formal bias from neutral to tightening explicitly.
Chase strategists put it plainly this week: they expect no rate change through year-end but anticipate "an explicit move away from a bias toward easing to a neutral stance." That shift alone would be hawkish relative to current pricing. Gold was up 3% Friday, Bitcoin recovered to $63,789 from its 19-month low of $60,746 the week before, and the 10-year sits at 4.54%. Those moves suggest the market is hedging both directions ahead of Wednesday. A dovish Warsh surprise sends gold, Bitcoin, and equities higher simultaneously. A hawkish dot plot with two hikes showing in the median does the opposite.
The Iran MOU and the Warsh dot plot arriving in the same week is not a coincidence anyone planned. It is just where the calendar landed.
Track live FedWatch rate probabilities, real-time yield curve data, options flow, market breadth, and macro indicators across 12 channels in one terminal. 14-day free trial, no credit card required. opticalpha.net/terminal