If you watched YouTube finance content this week, one theme hit you over the head like a $5/gallon diesel nozzle: the US-Iran war isn't a blip — it's a structural market event. WTI crude is approaching $99/barrel, Brent crossed $112, and the S&P 500 just posted its fourth consecutive losing week, breaking below its 200-day moving average. Bloomberg's Balance of Power crew, Cramer on Mad Money, and even The Economist are reading from the same grim hymn sheet.
On the rates front, Charles Schwab's Kathy Jones flagged that traders have already priced out cuts and are now betting 50/50 on a Fed hike by October. Mortgage rates hit 6.53%, refinancing apps cratered 30%, and the housing market is quietly freezing over. Meanwhile, Bill Miller IV — son of the legendary Bill Miller — is pounding the table on small and mid-cap value, calling today's SMID-vs-large-growth valuation gap as extreme as 1999. That's either the contrarian call of the decade or a falling-knife situation, depending on how long the Strait of Hormuz stays shut.
Patrick Boyle and Jim Cramer both called out private credit's dirty secret this week: $1.8 trillion in shadow loans priced like they're fine, gated so you can't get your money out, and increasingly exposed to AI-disrupted enterprise software companies. The only thing more dangerous than being in private credit right now is being in it and not knowing it — which, per Cramer, describes a lot of retail investors right now. Tom Lee is still holding his 7,700 S&P year-end target, which at this point feels less like a forecast and more like performance art.
