Good morning. S&P futures are higher this morning after the NY Knicks hit the jackpot in Vegas and defeated the San Antonio Spurs last night to win the in-season NBA Cup. Dare we dream of even bigger wins in 2026? Futures momentarily came off their best levels after reports of uncertainty around Oracle’s planned $10B Michigan data center, as funding talks with Blue Owl stumble. Futures have since moved back towards the highs. Speaking of AI, Amazon was reported to be talking with OpenAI about a $10B investment that would value the company at over $500B, while Hut 8 signed a 15-year data center deal with Fluidstack, providing some counterbalance to the Oracle news. And speaking of valuations, Alphabet’s Waymo autonomous driving company is looking to raise ~$15B at a $100B valuation while Databricks is reportedly raising $4B at a $134B valuation. Yesterday saw the S&P slip 0.2% but finished off it’s lows with a late session rally. The equal-weight lagged, down 0.6%. The latest employment data was messy as expected and showed a modest increase private sector jobs, weakness in government jobs and increase in the unemployment rate as the participation rate rose. Yields fell several bp across the curve while crude continued to slide. Fed governor Waller spoke some dovish language earlier this morning, saying the labor market is very soft, payroll growth is not good and inflation should come down over the next few months while rates are 50-100bp above neutral. Williams and Bostic are scheduled to speak later today. Treasury yields are flat to slightly higher across the curve with a bit of steepening while the Dollar moves higher particularly against Pound (BOE rate cut expectations) and Yen. Brent crude is trying to regain $60 as it rises on geopolitical news. Precious metals are seeing gains as well while crypto is lower with Bitcoin and Ethereum down modestly.

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