Markets snapshot
– S&P 500 closed nearly flat, down 0.02 percent at 7563 points. The Nasdaq slid 0.16 percent, the Dow Jones dropped harder, down 0.63 percent. Indices paused after the record set on Tuesday and Wednesday. – WTI crude hovered around 89 USD per barrel, ending the month roughly 12 percent in the red. The single driver: rumours that Washington and Tehran have agreed on a 60-day ceasefire extension and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. – Gold jumped to 4470 USD per ounce. With oil sliding, that direction looks odd, yet gold buyers are looking further ahead, at the inflation echo and central-bank reserve strategy. – Bitcoin broke down to 73 thousand USD, minus 6 percent on the week, minus 3.5 percent yesterday. A wave of liquidations swept the market as ceasefire uncertainty returned in parallel with Iranian missile warning shots in Hormuz. – DXY (US Dollar Index) finished at 99.28, barely up. The dollar is balancing between monetary-policy expectations and the easing oil shock.
Lithuania and the Baltics
– The Registrų centras scandal remains the epicentre of the day. More than 600 thousand residents’ personal data, real-estate records and personal ID codes have leaked, including records of Prime Minister Ruginienė’s own family. Hackers extracted data for at least four months, the government learned in April, the public only now. Director Adrijus Jusas resigned, MP Urbonaitė yesterday publicly accused institutions of shifting responsibility, and when the self-service check tool opened to residents it crashed under the query load. – The German “Lithuania” brigade launched the “Freedom Shield 26-I” exercise in Pabradė. It is the first large-scale test before full deployment in 2027 and a direct response to the 20 May drone incidents on the eastern border, when Vilnius airspace was closed and leadership was moved to shelters. – Ukrainian PM Svyrydenko arrives in Lithuania for a joint government session. Agenda: weapons production cooperation, energy, a new Lithuanian support package for Ukraine. It is the first such visit format under Ruginienė’s cabinet. – Grid synchronisation is being monitored quietly in the background. A CINEA team visited the Mūša and Telšiai substations and assessed the synchronous condenser. Sixteen months without the Russian network, the system is holding up better than expected in February.
Europe
– Macron and Merz are now openly clashing over Europe’s economic strategy. France is pushing a “Made in Europe” preference in public procurement, Germany and Italy oppose it. The joint bonds question is back on the table, because military spending forces a search for financing that national budgets can no longer carry. – The ECB held the deposit rate at 2 percent on the 30 April decision. Lagarde says policymakers are neither hiking nor cutting at present. Eurozone inflation jumped to 3 percent in April, energy prices are forcing the Council to wait.
Ukraine
– The front line shows no major territorial shifts. Pokrovsk, Chasiv Yar and Kupiansk remain the main axes of Russian pressure. Ukraine’s defence ministry reports repelled assaults, but they continue daily. – Long-range strike is what works best for Ukraine. Refineries in Tuapse, Novorossiysk and Syzran have either halted or run at reduced capacity after drone attacks. Output from central Russian refineries has fallen by more than a fifth, and a wave of regional gasoline shortages has begun to spread across the domestic market. – Diplomacy is stuck. After the 16 May round in Istanbul, accusations run in one direction, the other side is not honouring prisoner-exchange agreements, but the procedural channel is still alive.
Geopolitics
– Galați is the NATO axis of yesterday. A Russian Geran-2 drone struck a residential apartment building in the Romanian port city, two people were injured, including a child. It is the 28th recorded Russian drone breach of Romanian airspace, but the first to hit a residential dwelling. Romania declared the Russian consul general in Constanța persona non grata and is closing the consulate. EU Commission President von der Leyen confirmed that a 21st sanctions package is being prepared. PM Ruginienė reacted briefly: “this must not become a new normal”. – Hormuz. The US and Iran reached a preliminary memorandum on a 60-day ceasefire extension and free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has not yet signed, Khamenei is also waiting. Oil dropped, but Iran launched warning missile shots near vessels. – US sanctions at the same time target eight Iranian oil tankers. Washington is walking on two legs, negotiating and pressuring. – The Beijing summit ended with Trump’s talk of “fantastic deals” and a Chinese order for 200 Boeing jets. There is no specific list of tariff reductions, the rare-earths question is still open.
Central banks
– US PCE (personal consumption expenditures inflation index) April data was released yesterday before the open. Headline inflation rose from 3.5 to 3.8 percent, the highest since May 2023. Core PCE came in at 3.3 percent, in line with forecasts. The Hormuz energy shock is spreading into the consumer basket, not just the fuel line. – The market reacted to the report with a yawn. Equities printed fresh records several times during the day and flattened by the close. That tells us investors have already priced the inflation uptick as an “oil effect”, not a Fed pivot moment.
IPO radar
– Anthropic earned a 965 billion USD valuation after a Series H round, leapfrogging OpenAI (730–852 billion USD) into the top slot in the AI market. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia. Anthropic raised about 65 billion USD of new capital. – SpaceX/xAI after the merger is now valued at 1.25 trillion USD. Musk has already filed for an IPO. The two AI giants now compete not only on product, but on capital structure as well.
What to watch today and over the weekend
– Trump’s decision on the Iran memorandum. A “yes” reopens Hormuz, oil drops, risk assets rise. A “no” extends the status quo, but Iran retains the option to tighten. – NATO’s eastern flank after Galați. A Council session is likely, with new air-defence capability obligations; Lithuania and Poland have already signalled tougher rules of engagement. – EU 21st sanctions package. Details land next week, the focus is on energy and secondary-market finance. – Registrų centras and the acting director. A resident notification system, a Seimas session on responsibility allocation, and a government statement on cyber-infrastructure funding. – PCE follow-through in early June via ISM and NFP (non-farm payrolls). If the labour market softens, the Fed gets cover to hold, regardless of inflation. – Bitcoin’s 70 thousand USD level. A technical chart line, but also a real money-flow point from ETFs.
Meška’s note
Yesterday felt like a miniature on the relationship between surface and depth. On the surface, oil falls, the ceasefire seems to happen, indices spin near records. Underneath, PCE shows that the first layer of the Hormuz shock has already migrated into food, services and rent categories. That transit does not end in a week, even if the strait reopens tomorrow.
Anthropic’s valuation, leaping above OpenAI, looks like a tech story, but through the cycle lens it is pure capital-flow signal. Money runs to where macro instability is believed not to erode the result. The AI sector and gold now sit on the same side, oil futures and the dollar on the other. Anthropic at 965 billion USD and gold at 4470 USD per ounce are two faces of the same phenomenon, but it is a structure the market only notices when something breaks.
In Lithuania the Registrų centras case and Galați sit in the same frame, two sides of the same coin. Cheap attack, expensive recovery. Hackers spending four months inside the databases of 600 thousand people and a Geran-2 drone hitting a Romanian apartment block live in different technologies, but the math is the same. Defence costs many multiples of offence, and budgets are not yet built for that ratio. This is no longer a war question, it is an infrastructure question.