May retail sales rose 0.9% against a 0.5% estimate, the biggest monthly gain since January. Gains were broad. Online stores, furniture, motor vehicles all up. Only electronics declined. Pending home sales came in at 3.8% versus a 1.0% estimate, with buyers accepting 6% mortgages as the new normal.

Both prints landed before 2pm. Then the Fed leaned hawkish and the 2-year yield jumped 9 basis points immediately. The Dow barely moved. The S&P fell slightly.

A consumer beating estimates while the Fed tilts toward hiking is a specific setup. Revenue holds. Costs rise. Borrowing stays high. The margin squeeze comes later.

Today's retail beat is real but it is not protection against what the dot plot just signaled. Multiples compress when the Fed signals tighter policy into a spending cycle. The squeeze on margins follows the spending data by one or two quarters.

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The Fed held rates at 3.5% to 3.75%. That was expected. Everything else was not.

The dot plot median moved from 3.4% in March to 3.8% now, implying at least one hike before year end. Nine officials project a rate increase in 2026. Warsh himself declined to submit a forecast, leaving 18 dots instead of 19.

The statement shrank from 345 words to 132. The easing bias is gone. Forward guidance was removed entirely. Warsh said the Fed is clear-eyed about its mission and announced task forces on communications, balance sheet, and data. He opened with "Good day" instead of "Good afternoon." Small signal. Intentional.

This is the regime change. Less talk. Shorter statements. No dot of his own. When the chair goes quiet, markets price in extra uncertainty. That extra uncertainty shows up in the front end of the yield curve first, then the long end over weeks.

The 2-year yield jumping 9 basis points in minutes is the first Warsh tax on the market. Rate-sensitive names that held through the peace rally now face a second headwind. Watch the 2-year yield Thursday. Above 4.1% means the hike is priced as base case heading into summer.

Before the decision, chips ripped. Intel (INTC) jumped nearly 7%. Broadcom (AVGO) gained. Micron (MU) rose. Applied Materials (AMAT) surged. Then the Fed leaned hawkish and SpaceX (SPCX) slipped 5%, and some of the chip bounce came with it.

Two diverging stories are now running inside the AI trade. Deutsche Bank raised its Micron (MU) price target to $1,500 from $1,000, citing a worsening memory shortage and accelerating AI demand. That thesis is about a physical shortage that rate hikes cannot fix.

The other story is physical infrastructure. Cummins (CMI) broke out of a six-week base on double-normal volume, with AI data center generator demand as the thesis. Western Digital (WDC) hit a new all-time high, up 166% since April. Dell (DELL) rose for the fourth time in five sessions.

The split is getting cleaner. Memory chips tied to AI training are supported by a shortage. Physical infrastructure powering data centers is breaking out. Everything in between is waiting for earnings confirmation.

Own the physical infrastructure side over chip names most sensitive to enterprise AI capex decisions. A hawkish Fed slows enterprise spending before the memory shortage resolves. Cummins and Western Digital face less of that risk.

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At the G7, Trump said the Iran deal is not final and the US will go right back to bombing if he doesn't like the agreement. WTI rose nearly 1% within minutes. That price reaction is everything you need to know about where oil markets are right now.

Two days ago WTI fell 10% on deal optimism. Today one sentence at a press conference adds 1% back. The oil market is now priced to parse every Trump statement on Iran in real time.

The International Energy Agency separately said oil production will take months to recover even if the Strait opens Friday. Tanker traffic through the Strait has not gone up considerably since the announcement Sunday. The physical reopening is slower than the headline suggested.

Hold energy exposure at minimum until Friday's signing. If the ceremony happens without incident, the oil trade closes and energy names continue their unwind. If conditions change, WTI bounces hard and every inflation assumption the bond market made this week gets retested Monday.

SpaceX (SPCX) fell 5%, slipping back below Amazon (AMZN) in market cap. Vanda Research noted the retail frenzy is cooling. In its first three days, retail bought as much SpaceX as Nvidia (NVDA), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon, Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), QQQ, and SPY combined. That pace was never going to last.

CarMax (KMX) fell nearly 9% after its new CEO said operations are not efficient enough and the digital experience is disconnected from in-person sales. The stock is down 25% over the past year. Not yet a recovery play.

BMW cut its full-year guidance, citing Chinese demand and Iran war impact, dragging Mercedes and Volkswagen lower. Japan's semiconductor exports rose 61% year over year in May, the fastest in years. AI chip demand is running hot across the supply chain even as individual chip stocks sell off any given week.

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Warsh's 132-word statement will be studied for months. He removed forward guidance, abstained from forecasting, and announced a structural review of how the Fed communicates. This is not a signal about one meeting. It is a signal about every meeting for the next two years.

Markets close Thursday for Juneteenth. The Iran deal signing is Friday in Switzerland. If it happens cleanly, the oil trade closes. If Trump's not-final language signals actual deal risk, everything the bond market priced this week gets retested Monday. One weekend. One signature. Again.