Welcome back to Hitting the Bid Weekly!

Equities had a rough stretch mid-week, with Tuesday and Wednesday delivering back-to-back selling sessions. Tech and semiconductors led the decline, driven by a combination of sector exhaustion after a strong run and elevated geopolitical risk as U.S.-Iran tensions flared again. The Nasdaq $QQQ ( ▲ 0.68% ) bore the brunt of the selling, while the S&P 500 $SPY ( ▲ 0.17% ) and Russell 2000 $IWM ( ▲ 0.23% ) held up somewhat better.

By Friday, sentiment had stabilized after reports that additional U.S. strikes on Iran had been called off the day before and additionally helped by the market debut of Space Exploration Technologies $SPCX ( ▲ 4.36% ) and the broader market's tendency to shake off headlines faster than most expect.

Over the weekend, another MOU report between the U.S. and Iran made the rounds. Unlike prior iterations that eventually faded, this one appears to be carrying more weight. Risk assets are catching a bid to start the week as QQQ and SPY attempt to reclaim all-time highs. Whether that move holds remains to be seen, but the market's reaction suggests traders are assigning at least some credibility to the latest developments.

May CPI came in at 4.2%, in line with estimates but still running hot. The report keeps the Fed firmly on hold while leaving the inflation story unresolved heading into the most important event of the week.

This week, the FOMC decision lands Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET, marking Kevin Warsh's first meeting as Fed Chair. No rate change is expected, but traders will be closely watching the updated Summary of Economic Projections for clues about the path forward, particularly whether 2026 rate cuts remain on the table.

Markets are closed Friday for Juneteenth.

Key market moves this past week:

Not an exhaustive list — just a few I’m watching closely for potential market impact.

This section is a little longer than usual, so you can find the full write-up here. This week features two trade ideas: DraftKings $DKNG ( ▲ 0.36% ) and Target $TGT ( ▲ 0.62% ) . Here's a preview of what you'll find...

DraftKings surged 11% on June 9 after the company filed an 8-K showing its Predictions product posted a 24% month-over-month increase in annualized consumer volume to $1.3 billion and a 34% increase in total volume traded to $3.1 billion in May. The move pushed the stock above its May 8 swing high, clearing the $27-$28 area that had capped multiple rally attempts over the prior several weeks.

Target pushed to $137.87 on Monday, marking a fresh 52-week high, before closing the session at $133.17, almost exactly at the prior resistance level that acted as a ceiling throughout the spring. The stock is up more than 60% from its November low of $83.44. That kind of move deserves respect. But when a stock breaks to new highs intraday and gives back nearly all of the advance by the close, it is worth paying attention.

Last Friday, a little after 5 p.m. ET, Anthropic announced they received a government directive and immediately pulled access to its two most capable AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for every user, everywhere.

No timeline. No detailed explanation beyond concerns about a security vulnerability. No appeal process.

One day the tools were there. The next day they weren't.

I had only recently started using them, but it was enough time to get a glimpse of what the models were capable of.

The access question will eventually resolve itself. But it still got me thinking.

After reading the notice, my first reaction was basically, "Whatever. It doesn't really affect me." I could wait it out, assume access eventually returns, and continue with the same setup.

That instinct feels reasonable.

It's also exactly how people get caught flat-footed when the rules or circumstances change beneath them.

In markets, in work, and almost everywhere else, it's easy to build a dependency without fully realizing it.

Think about the last time you needed to call someone but your phone was broken, dead, or stolen. Most people don't remember many phone numbers by heart anymore. Your partner, siblings, closest friends. Everything lives inside a device you've never bothered to memorize.

A water-damaged phone or a phone left behind at home, and suddenly you can't reach the people you need most. The dependency was invisible until the signal disappeared.

Or think about losing a doctor you've seen for a decade. They know your history. You trust their judgment. The relationship has real value.

Then they retire or leave the practice, and you realize you had a relationship with a person, not a system.

Now you're starting over from scratch inside a healthcare system that doesn't exactly make it easy.

It shows up at work, too.

Think about the last time Slack, or whatever communication platform your team uses, went down on a day when you actually needed it.

Suddenly decisions, approvals, quick questions, and client communication have nowhere to go.

What looked like a communication tool turns out to be the central nervous system of the entire workday, and nobody notices until it stops working.

Every workflow that quietly depended on it is now paused and waiting.

Same mechanics. Different areas of life.

Professional sports makes the lesson even more obvious.

The NBA eliminated hand-checking in 2004. Defensive schemes built entirely around physicality became obsolete in a single offseason.

The coaches who spent the next three years lobbying to bring it back quickly flamed out.

The coaches who figured out what the new rules rewarded adapted and kept winning.

The rules change.

The waiting rarely helps.

After the Anthropic directive came through, I started researching how to run a local LLM on a secondary computer at home. I've been looking at Qwen and Gemma, both open-source models that are capable enough to handle a meaningful portion of my daily workload.

Neither matches what frontier AI can do, and I'm not expecting them to.

But they would be mine.

No usage caps. No government directive. No access suspended at 5 p.m. without warning.

Not a replacement.

A hedge.

And potentially a compounding unlock.

That's the move worth making anywhere a single dependency is doing a lot of invisible work.

The first step is simply naming it honestly.

Pick one thing this week, a tool, person, platform, or relationship, that would create a real problem if it disappeared tomorrow and that you currently have no backup for.

Most people can name three without thinking very hard.

The second step is smaller than it sounds.

You don't need a full replacement.

You just need enough of a parallel track that you're not completely exposed when the primary option goes down.

One direct client relationship alongside the referral partner.

One important phone number written down somewhere.

A local model running on a spare machine.

Partial redundancy isn't a contingency plan.

It's simply not being caught completely flat-footed.

The tools that matter most have a way of showing you exactly how dependent you've become at the moment you can least afford to find out.

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Hitting the Bid content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information contained is not, nor is it intended to be, trading or investment advice or a recommendation of any security, futures contract, digital asset or alike. I may hold a position in the trading vehicles discussed. Trading and investing contains risk. All investors should evaluate their own risk tolerance, financial situation, and investment duration before entering any trade or investment.