June 22nd Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

Oil's down, futures are flat, and Iran's got the whole news cycle.

Buried under all of it- Microsoft just signed twenty years of Chevron natural gas to run a data center in Texas. A company that spent years preaching green just bet two decades on gas to keep its AI fed. That tells you how badly they need the power.

Micron reports Wednesday too, and memory's still so tight Apple is raising prices over it.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Iran Roadmap Cools Oil, But The Plumbing Lags

Qatar and Pakistan brokered a 60-day path to a final deal, and Brent slipped under $80 even with Iran still claiming the strait is shut. The falling price skips over something Vance said out loud this morning: the Strait of Hormuz still needs de-mining before tankers move freely, and that runs in weeks, not days.

2. Microsoft Bets On Gas To Keep AI Running

Microsoft signed a 20-year deal for Chevron to power a West Texas data center with natural gas, big enough to light roughly 2 million homes. The headline is a green-pledge company turning to fossil fuel. The trade is who sells the gear, because GE Vernova and Caterpillar supply the turbines, and that pulls the AI story off the chip names and into old-economy industrials.

3. The Rate-Hike Bets Got Loud

Treasury yields pushed to multi-month highs to start the week, with the 2-year back at early-2025 levels. The speed is the story. A week ago a Fed hold this year was the base case, and now it's nearly off the table, with Bank of America out calling for three increases.

Market Overview

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Getty Images $GETY ( ▲ 1.34% )  

The premarket standout after agreeing to feed its library into OpenAI search and ChatGPT. The deal puts a price on training content, so every other library owner now has to decide whether to license on these terms or hold out for more.

Intel $INTC ( ▲ 10.64% )  

Higher after Trump said Apple will design and build chips with it stateside. That hands Intel's contract chipmaking arm its first marquee customer.

Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 1.17% )  

Lower after a senior DeepMind scientist left for Anthropic, days after another leader jumped to OpenAI. The timing stings because Alphabet is lining up an $85 billion stock sale, so it has to convince buyers the brain trust isn't walking out the door.

Western Digital $WDC ( ▲ 4.79% )  

is higher with the rest of the memory group as chip prices keep climbing. The same shortage padding its margins is the one Apple just blamed for price hikes, and KGI cut Apple to Hold this morning on that exact squeeze. So the memory makers win the trade while the device makers wear the cost, and now the analysts are taking sides.

SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 3.56% )  
is set for a possible third down session running, and it just launched its first senior unsecured notes to pay off a bridge loan. A company two weeks public already tapping the debt market changes the story, and Canaccord is warning about a more dangerous layer of air under these names.

What to Watch

IPO’s

MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year.

Index Rebalance (Today, At The Open)
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 reconstitutions take effect this morning, and that's forced buying and selling with no fundamentals behind it. Marvell and Flex join the S&P while Pool and Campbell's drop out; Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Rocket Lab, Nebius and Teradyne go into the Nasdaq-100.

Fed's Waller (Today)
Governor Waller only gives welcome remarks, so nobody expects policy. But in a tape this twitchy about the Fed, the risk is an offhand line on inflation that yields decide to trade. Low odds, high sensitivity.

Qatar LNG Plant (Developing)
A blast during startup at the Ras Laffan complex left workers missing and lifted European gas prices. This is the sleeper. If the repair timeline stretches, it reopens the energy and inflation worry just as oil is the one thing calming down.

- John

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