Market Pulse
S&P 500 bounced. The index rose 0.8 percent Thursday after Wednesday’s slide down to 7,482. Money went right back to the AI trade, tuning out everything else.
Nasdaq led. Up 1.3 percent, carried by the chipmakers. SK Hynix’s US trading debut helped the mood.
Dow modestly up. The Dow added 139 points after a brutal Wednesday that took it down 576.
Oil fell. WTI near 72 dollars, off 2.1 percent on the day. A build in US inventories drained the war premium the Strait of Hormuz had priced in the session before. Brent around 78.6.
Gold quiet. At 4,131 dollars it barely moved, down 0.23 percent. With a war running by the Persian Gulf, that calm is strange.
Dollar holding. DXY near 100.8, but without conviction.
Lithuania & Baltics
The finance chair goes to Valys. A telling detail: incoming minister Taurimas Valys pulled his own money out of the second pension pillar and tells people to decide for themselves. In the first quarter roughly 550,000 people, nearly 40 percent of participants, exited the second pillar, and the funds lost 4.4 billion euros in assets. A minister who does not save inside the system he will oversee is a sign of the times.
Air policing becomes air defense. The NATO mission over the Baltics is shifting from air policing to air defense. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe will decide on the larger capability. Estonia already spends nearly 7 percent of GDP on defense and takes in a new US unit this summer. The Baltics stopped waiting for someone to come and defend them, and started paying themselves.
New boss at Ignitis. Andrius Kavaliauskas takes over the utility. Another 193 million euros goes to setting up energy communities, a quiet but structurally important step toward decentralized generation.
Oxylabs, the second unicorn. The company raised 130 million dollars and became Lithuania’s second most valuable unicorn. Rare good news from the tech side while everything else talks only about defense.
Europe
The digital euro moves closer. The European Parliament gave the digital euro a green light. This is no footnote: a central bank digital currency reshapes the relationship between citizen, bank and state. It deserves its own watch, not one line.
Heatwave. Extreme heat is baking the continent, and unions are demanding worker protections. Climate pressure is slowly turning economic and political.
Ukraine
Strikes from the border to the Urals. Ukrainian drones set Russia’s Saratov refinery on fire, killing one, hit the Nizhnekamsk petrochemical plant in Tatarstan, three plants in all, plus tankers on the Sea of Azov and pipeline pumping stations. Ukraine is moving the war into Russia’s energy arteries.
Kyiv under missiles again. For the third time in six days Russia struck the capital with ballistic missiles. While Ukraine burns Russian plants, Russia aims at civilian cities. There is no symmetry here.
Pokrovsk axis. The SBU destroyed a Russian logistics hub holding drones and ammunition. Clashes continue along the whole stretch, and the front moves slowly and expensively.
Talk of mutiny. Reports of unrest inside the Russian army are circulating again, though hedged, with the caveat not to take them too seriously. A signal worth noting, not yet worth interpreting.
Geopolitics
Khamenei buried. Ali Khamenei was laid to rest in Mashhad, at the Imam Reza shrine, after days of mourning. Iran has lost the man who ruled since 1989. During the funeral, crowds chanted for Trump’s death. When a regime loses its symbolic apex, what opens is not stability but a fight over succession and a need to prove strength through action.
A new plot against Trump. Israel shared intelligence with the US about a new Iranian plan to kill Trump. Whether the plot is real or part of the story, it cements the line under which escalation with Iran is justified and ongoing.
Hormuz back at the center. Iran is pushing for control of the strait while the US threatens harder strikes. Transits are down, and part of the traffic now moves only along Iran-approved routes. As long as oil fell rather than spiked, the market is betting the flow holds. That is a bet, not knowledge.
Gaza. Israel rejects reports of a humanitarian crisis. The gap between what field organizations show and what the government says stays open, not closed.
Central Banks
The Fed’s inflation is deeper in. The Fed has a problem it cannot blame on energy or tariffs. Officials admit price pressure has spread into transport, airfares and services. That means inflation is no longer an external shock but grown into the structure. The path for rate cuts gets narrower than the market would like to believe.
What to Watch Tomorrow
Oil and Hormuz. Whether the inventory build keeps suppressing the war premium, or Iranian rhetoric brings the climb back. That balance sets the week’s mood.
Iran’s succession. How the new leadership behaves after the funeral and what tone it takes toward Trump. The handover moment is the most dangerous.
Fed communication. Any official comment on services inflation will move expectations for cuts.
Lithuania’s budget. The new finance minister’s first moves on defense funding and the pension incentive.
The digital euro. Whether a firmer timeline follows the Parliament’s approval.
The Bear’s Take
A day where everything says the same thing. Iran buries a leader, Ukraine burns Russian oil, Hormuz threatens, and oil falls. The market decided the war by the Gulf will not break the flow, and went back to chips. That confidence looks bold when the Fed is admitting inflation has settled deeper than it wants, and the dollar holds only on inertia.
Structurally it is the same pattern. The hegemonic cycle does not say everything collapses tomorrow. It says the center has to pay more of its own bills, defend itself, and prove its strength through action rather than authority. Estonia spends 7 percent of GDP on defense because it no longer trusts anyone else to pay. Lithuania’s incoming finance minister does not save in the system he will run. Each of these on its own is nothing. Together they show trust in the old institutions slowly leaking out, while capital and people look for somewhere to stand once the center stops being safe by default.