# Daily Brief 2026-06-12
Markets snapshot
– Bounce and doubt. On Thursday Wall Street shot up on hopes of Iran peace: S&P 500 +1.75% to 7,394, Nasdaq +2.54% to 25,810, Dow +930 points (+1.86%) to 50,849. By Friday the strength was gone, the indices split, the Dow added about 0.4%, Nasdaq gave back half a percent. – Gold holds the line. After Thursday’s jump (+3% to 4,240) it slid back toward 4,200 on Friday. The peace signal drains the fear premium, but gold still sits above the levels people dreamed about a year ago. – Oil falls. WTI dropped about 2% to roughly 85 dollars, down 16% on the month, about minus 20% from the 2026 peak. The whole curve hangs on one question: will Hormuz open. – Dollar and bitcoin. DXY (the dollar index) at 99.66, down 0.29%. Bitcoin around 63,400, up almost 3% on the day, but still far from its highs. Risk appetite is coming back selectively, not across the whole front.
Lithuania and the Baltics
– A coalition without Aušra. The Social Democrats, “Demokratai už Lietuvą” and the Farmers and Greens Union finished the draft coalition agreement and carried it to the party leaderships. The new bloc would hold 75 of 141 seats, parting ways with “Nemuno aušra”. The prime minister’s future is still an open question, but the ideological noise would fall. – The migration pact took effect. As of today the EU migration and asylum pact is in force, redrawing border procedures and the distribution mechanism. Lithuania at the same time agreed with Cyprus to relocate 58 migrants under the pact’s provisions. – Rail Baltica bills. Two companies are demanding about 14 million euros from Latvia over a terminated railway construction contract. A project meant to be a symbol of Baltic unity is more and more turning into a field of legal disputes. – The president’s signature. Gitanas Nausėda signed the amendments to the LRT law. The public broadcaster’s governance is changing quietly, but it matters when the information space is part of defense.
Europe
– Macron and Meloni will meet. Paris announced that Emmanuel Macron will host Giorgia Meloni on June 25 in Antibes for the first France-Italy bilateral summit since Meloni came to power. Topics: defense, space, energy. Two voices of a sovereign Europe trying to align while Berlin stays quieter. – Poland pushes back. Warsaw declared that EU refugee quotas do not apply to it, and at the same time officially brought F-35 fighters into its arsenal. The message is simple: it strengthens defense and refuses to share the common burden.
Ukraine
– The front holds. The war goes on by the logic of attrition, Russia has no significant territorial gains through 2026. Ukraine’s long-range drones reached the Urals for the first time, more than 1,800 kilometers from the border. The interception rate rose to about 90%. – China at Moscow’s shoulder. EU intelligence confirmed reports that China secretly trained about 200 Russian soldiers (on drones, electronic warfare, armor) who later ended up at the front. A money flow? No, something deeper: a transfer of military competence between two revisionists. – The aid scissors. Military support stays high, the drone lines are even being expanded. But financial and humanitarian aid slowed over the first four months because of delayed EU funding. Weapons are not lacking, money for reconstruction increasingly is.
Geopolitics
– Iran and Hormuz. Trump announced another 60-day ceasefire and says the deal is almost finished. Iran claims the draft agrees to open Hormuz to pre-war shipping levels, the White House called an earlier such report a fabrication. The oil price is buying peace before the ink has even dried. – The oil logic. Minus 20% from the year’s peak is not only about Iran. It is a signal that the market believes in cooling demand and OPEC+’s inability to hold the floor. Cheap oil helps the consumer, but it chokes the exporting autocracies. – The China-US backdrop. The wave of trade tensions has calmed, but the structure has not changed: two systems that no longer trust each other’s technology. Every deal is a ceasefire, not peace.
IPO radar
– SpaceX debuted. SPCX began trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, priced at 135 dollars, raising about 75 billion dollars at a 1.77 trillion valuation. It is the largest IPO in history. On the first day the stock jumped about 30% to roughly 170, the market value climbed above 2.2 trillion, into seventh place in the world. – Anthropic is getting ready. On June 1 the company confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC at a 965 billion dollar valuation, an IPO possible as early as October. OpenAI follows, aiming for September at around a trillion. Databricks is negotiating a new funding round at 165 to 175 billion. – Why it matters. Private capital has swollen to the size of states and is now looking for an exit through the public market. When the largest IPOs in history coincide with cheapening oil and hope for peace, it smells like the top of the cycle.
What to watch tomorrow
– Iran’s signature. Whether a real document appears, not a statement. Oil will react instantly both ways. – SpaceX day two. Whether the 30% jump holds or it was first-day euphoria. It is a thermometer for the whole IPO cycle’s appetite. – Lithuania’s coalition. Whether the party leaderships approve the agreement and who stays as prime minister. – DXY 99 level. If the dollar breaks down, it strengthens gold and risk at the same time.
Meška’s note
Peace and the largest IPO in history in the same week? The market celebrates as if risk had been called off for good. But the cycle does not know how to celebrate, it only moves the pressure from one place to another.
Cheap oil and SpaceX at 1.77 trillion are two sides of the same coin: liquidity is still flooding into the riskiest assets, while the energy price falls because the world believes in a slowdown. When those two things coincide, the bill usually comes later. I am watching not the headlines but what happens when the ink under Iran’s document dries and you have to live with reality, not with hope.