Monty’s Missive #6: Jun 14, 2026
The one about the Dark Side of the Moon hiding a weak consumer economy.
—Image by NASA. Monty on the Moon. If you can’t see it, consult an eye doctor.
When will we stop reading Truths from POTUS? My bet is never, because they’re like a social media train wreck you just can’t not see. And when will “the market” never not react every which way when one of them is sent out, just to be revised or contradicted potentially two hours later?
My bet is only when the veil of confusion about the true intent of them is lifted from an enthralled public. What’s the true intent? FUD, plain and simple. Monday: striking Iran with 49 Tomahawks – a roughly $100M short-term spectacle at $2M a piece for just the missile. Wednesday gave us the “tomorrow we’ll bomb Iran” yet again, only to be reversed on TACO Thursday with “a peace deal is around the corner, no bombing”.
They’re exhausting by design is my personal guess. And FUD serves to keep the public’s attention rapt on what actually doesn’t matter, so they miss what actually matters. And what matters is that the powers that be devalue our money every day at a breathtaking rate these days by adding boatloads of debt - Iran being just a tiny bit.
FUD is as old as the first cavemen discovering fire and the other half – or the cavewomen, potentially – berating them about the dangers of “bright-hot burn-burn-OW!” (in cavespeak). It was only after the first rump of mammoth was enjoyed barbequed that the FUD changed for enthrallment with fire and everyone was happy with grilling. The danger didn’t go away despite yummy mammoth rump. Any old fire will still burn down your barn if unkept.
Just a spark is enough to start a veritable barnpocalypse if enough material is fed to the fire it’ll consume the whole farm. I wonder when the first spark for our current calm-on-the-surface market springs over to that massive heap of unsolved problems and ignites the whole lot?
We can’t know it, but we can stay vigilant despite all the FUD and euphoria.
This week, read about:
01 – Opening the Week with more Israel Strikes on Iran
02 – No Future – The European Future Combat Air System’s Dead
03 – Don’t believe the BLS Job Stats Without Knowing Details
04 – German Engineering is dying a slow, agonizing death with Stuttgart 21
05 – ECB rises target rate +0.25% (25 bps) – too late, too little (again)
06 – SOXX Watch & SpaceX takes off… for now
07 — Closing thoughts
01 – Opening the Week with more Israel Strikes on Iran
Opening the week with Israel attacking Iran besides warnings from President Trump and reportedly “heated phone calls”.
Source: Bloomberg, June 8
02 – No Future – The European Future Combat Air System’s Dead
It would be comical, if it weren’t so sad: the Europeans just can’t catch a break with “union projects”. Hopes were high in the participating defense companies Airbus & and Dassault Aviation:
--Hopes up in the Air (last week)
This week, however, the rumors of failure that were vehemently denied were confirmed.
The FCAS in alphabet soup defense project is officially pronounced dead by Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Macron of France. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but notice how Spain, Germany and France are mainly socialist-driven governments. Maybe they just all think they’re good at planning?
The main issue, it seems, has been finding a good basis for the collaboration to forge complex systems like Drones and a “Eurofighter” jet replacement. You could argue that the evidence is mounting that the Eurofighter “Typhoon” class jet might not be that great coming from a recent simulation against Chinese fighter jets. Maybe Update 4.0 makes all of this “go away”?
In any case, this time there’s not going to be an actual fighter as far as we can tell now. So, no new Eurofighter-like corruption affairs, fingers crossed and “bonne chance” for a new supplier to fill the gap!
Here’s an idea: Lockheed will probably gladly sell a few more way-too-expensive F-35s like they did to Denmark?
Most important question: will they help save the climate by reasserting air superiority?
03 – Don’t believe the BLS Job Stats Without Knowing Details
The headline figures are enticing. BLS reported yet another staggering “increase” in overall employment. First, the impressive number of +172,000 jobs added to the economy looks (and feels) great.
But if you dive deeper, which I wish more people would do that rely on these numbers as their “guidepost to gauge economic health” the reality is a bifurcated economy.
Observe the details:
I can only repeat my own research based on economic history – if Health Services is the one sector that significantly leads jobs added, this points towards weakness in the real producing economy.
It paints over significant losses in highly paid sectors – because the headline number won’t tell you the average hourly wage these new job holders actually earn. Usually, you’d not expect a general health services employee to take home what a “Head of IT Services” takes, would you? And if you do, I’d like to meet you if you have a job in your health services that pays equally, it sounds enticing!
Put differently, Kobeissi posted the bifurcation taken from Bloomberg earning / wage participation stats, which should make this bifurcation clear:
—Via Kobeissi on X
Now we have to bifurcations in the economy, a clear rupture in high wage earners and low wage earners on “economic participation”.
The best way to express how the K-Shape hits the economy is to look at consumer discretionary spending – and this bifurcated heavily between Top 20% of earners compared to the Lower 20% of incomes:
Source: Oxford Economics Research
TL;DR: The “spending economy” (retail, services) is carried by the top 20% of wage earners, while the lower deciles, especially the lowest quartile is losing ground.
So if high paid jobs are replaced by low-paid ones – the ratio is about 1:3 to replace the same spending level. Does that sound “normal” to you?
Share this with anyone who thinks the economy can’t break.
04 – Where’s German Engineering & planning? It’s dying a slow, agonizing death with Stuttgart 21 and Volkswagen
—Source: Google-translated n-tv.de
Is “German Engineering” still a thing, even?
Stuttgart 21: 438% over budget, 177% over time.
Project Construction started in 2010.
Now 1,000 km of “wrong cables”. Can’t make it up.
Did someone read the blueprint upside down?
Suggestion to the comms department by me:
Change the narrative to “We always planned to take 21 years of construction, you must have misinterpreted.”
(and then pray you make it! You still have 5 years.)
China: Beijing Daxing new airport = 5 years construction. No “wrong cables” that we heard of.
Meanwhile:
Germany - Stuttgart 21 =
+338% over budget - 11.4 B € vs. 2.6 B planned - 2024 numbers, expect way more now…
+77% over time - 9 years planned, 16 years in…
And Volkswagen’s CEO Oliver Blume announced on June 11 what many had feared: massive job cuts in Germany’s auto giant are coming
19,000 will be gone by end 2026 - and a total of 28,000 until 2030. Is Volkswagen bugging out of Germany? You could assume so!
— Image montage by author with eyes rendered by genAI. Herbie sad.
05 – ECB rises target rate +0.25% (25 bps) – too late, too little (again)
— Madame Lagarde (on an ECB Press conference)
I’ll bet 1,000 Euro Christine Lagarde can’t answer this: what will 10 eggs and 2 gallons of Diesel cost next year including transport to her supermarket?
Hint: She doesn’t know either. No one does. But we can have a pretty safe guess: way more than today.
The rate decision was sleepy upwards move that was “anticipated” by many in the market, which makes it sound like it’s all performative theater more than intrinsic monetary policy, ECB raised their target rate from a snoozy 2.0% flat to 2.25%. This is mainly to “appease fears” that its board members are, yet again, asleep at the wheel.
And you could argue that yes, they are actually asleep since January 2026, when headline inflation jumped due to energy prices spiking, yet again – and the Iran debacle only put more fuel to the fire.
Let’s discuss the touted “2% inflation target”. This is a very debatable and arbitrarily set rate, at which “modern” central banks seek to devalue our purchasing power per year. Plain and simple. There’s no real reason to set it at 2%, they couldn’t hit 2% if their life depended on it because it’s like batting a perfect game blindfolded, hoping to hear the ball approach by hearing the “swoosh”. Inflation lags by a large factor, it reacts to crazy energy policies and it certainly is out of your control if U.S. decides to close the Strait of Hormuz by attacking Iran in February 2026.
As the case stands for ECB their statistic is even worse than that of the Fed. Its board governs an area of totally disparate, separate economic regions, all tied to the same currency with no means to control individual economic outcomes. So they’re not the United States of Europe with one federal tax rate, they are the EU with 27 different state tax rates and economies that are either developing, failing or slowly descending – it’s like herding an unfenced gigantic field with 27 very volatile kittens who love to run every which way, while the governors pretend they can steer any of them.
And despite all that: if your overall inflation picture looks like the below you’re just bad at your job. Period. You’re beholden not to stability of money, but to its devaluation, it seems:
—Purchasing Price Index (Harmonized Consumer Price Index, EU20); since 2000. Monetary Devaluation Nightmare.
-- Inflation in the past 12 months (Euro Area; Tradingeconomics.com)
06 – SOXX Watch & SpaceX takes off… for now
First, SOXX has had a scary drop of roughly 10% after Friday June 5th seemed to have stalled the exponential ascent of Semiconductor stocks.
But of course, in this market, euphoria and hopium reign supreme – and hence the episode was just a short stutter - no pun on shorts intended.
—SOXX on June 12th, 2026 – 4h resolution line chart for visibility.
The charts showing a typical V-formation that “modern traders” now have probably gotten used to in “buy-the-dip”. I wonder when it’ll fail massively for the first time. And there will be this first time, even in this market. Actually the first one almost failed but then SpaceX and general “Iran euphoria” as silly Truth social posts went out and about and the market “was appeased” yet again by this one:
This went out during the early trading hours, and you can see the market immediately switching to “risk-on” mode. This likely saved the V from failing harder.
Let’s talk charts for a minute:
A line chart is a bit of a tricky situation because it doesn’t show the real breadth of the hourly candles, just the closing prices to draw that line you see. It basically is a simplistic version of the more complex charts – like candles, that give you all the available info in a better visual.
Take a look at it live on TradingView and use the candles you like best. I use Japanese Bars as they are the cleanest way of seeing the extent of prices traded within your chosen resolution. The hints are all hidden in the price and volume – that’s the only info the market gives us mere mortals. And it’s from there the additional indicators like MACD and RSI are formed. The candle chart for SOXX tells a more nuanced story.
—Same 4h resolution with Japanese Bars, containing all the info you need.
Let’s see if the red resistance is broken by SpaceX. My bet goes towards yes. In this market you have to believe in others doing the believing.
07 - Closing thoughts: SpaceX and their IPO valuation of $75 B.
Earth date: Friday 12th of June, 2026. Space: Infinite possibilities. SpaceX has been priced at the $135 upper band of the initial assumptions per their own announcement.
The final underwriting figure is 555,555,555 shares. This is to confuse us very likely. It’s a weird number. An additional 83,333,333 shares are still available if the underwriters can sell them to the public. And the public seems ready, as anticipated by observing the usual cultist-like following Elon Musk enjoys. It’ll make some people immensely rich – it’s just very likely it’s not you or I but Elon Musk and the early investors who will be raking in the rewards of public money flows.
The IPO share price generates $75 B, as they intended, so it all works out.
And while the venerated S&P didn’t (for now) change their index inclusion, NASDAQ and MSCI World ETFs likely will include the behemoth into passive fund flows very soon.
So 401(k)s and similar passive buying will ensure a monthly cash flow and “share offtake guarantee” for after lockup period for early investors with literally bucketloads of shares. Will they sell out? My bet is, yes. Their early investment and amount guarantees early (private) investors can make out with a high capital appreciation due to their early access – and they can just keep 1/5th or less of their initial stake and still “participate” in a likely “initial pricing mania” phase.
It’ll be one interesting day on Friday and the week after to see the initial and very likely aptly “rocket-like” performance of the stock. I’d be amazed if the initial “launch” was anything but stellar – but in case you did get “in” it’s your decision to make away like a burglar with whatever it is you’re getting above 135. Maybe you’ll even get 350 - that’s a South Park joke for the initiated.
For the uninitiated and potentially uninterested: maybe that fella below will buy your SpaceX stock for 350 – and you better hope it’s three hundred fifty and not three-fifty:
Keep in mind that the overall float in the public - for now - is just barely 5% of the share count of the company, despite initial claims by Musk he “eyed 30% SpaceX stock in public hands”.
Maybe he was just misunderstood? Because the initial offering insinuates a “passive ownership” of roughly 30% of the initial public float. All this float will very soon be moving to “passive hands” of ETF mechanical buying and rebalancing.
It’ll all change once lockups for the early investors and stock awards expire en masse. Then we’ll see if the price can keep up with the flood.
Passive complacency might break the camel’s back if something goes south in SpaceX’s or AI’s vast buildout. They might hit a wall of missing raw materials for their ambitions – just a guess. Or some financing goes bust after all for any of their grand data center plans – for SpaceX is just the envelope in which massive AI investments are nicely wrapped in a “nice story” bundle with high-gloss renders of space rockets shipping stuff to the moon base… sounds like a reprise of Iron Sky (still one of the great trash movies about the Moon). But this SpaceX movie will happen in reverse in which we populate the moon to extract its resources “for the good of mankind”, ad-libbing from their claims loosely. And I do hope Iron Sky wasn’t right and they find something wicked on the Dark Side of the Moon… for now it’s as usual just about the money:
Yep, correct. It is about the money.