👀 S&P Hits Record Nine — PCE Spikes to 3.8%, NCLH CEO Drops $2.5M on His Own Stock

LAST CALL - MEMORIAL DAY SPECIAL Use Coupon Code ‘INSIDER’ 😃 

Good afternoon and happy Sunday! Here is a quick market rundown and an 'inside' peek behind the curtains of what C-Level Execs, Wall St. Hedge Fund Gurus, and politicians are trading right now…!
📊 MARKET PERFORMANCE

The S&P 500 closed Thursday at 7,563.63, logging its ninth consecutive weekly gain. The Nasdaq settled at 26,917.47, up roughly 8% for the month of May alone — the strongest single-month run of the year. The Dow closed Friday above 50,668 after briefly crossing 51,000 on Friday for the first time in history before pulling back slightly into the close.

YTD the picture is dramatically different from where we started the year. The Nasdaq has been the engine; tech has done the heavy lifting while rate-sensitive sectors and consumer discretionary have been grinding through a rougher patch.

The divergence worth noting: equal-weight S&P has meaningfully lagged cap-weight. This rally is still being driven by a narrow cohort of mega-cap tech names. When Snowflake adds 36.5% in a single session and Dell pops 32% on earnings, the cap-weighted index moves. The average S&P 500 stock has had a considerably quieter month. That's not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to pay attention to breadth.

📌 KEY DRIVERS

🛢️ Oil, Iran, and the Market's Best Trick

The week opened with a familiar ritual: another round of conflicting Iran ceasefire reports. Oil dipped below $90 on fresh peace deal rumors Monday before bouncing back as Tehran denied key provisions had been agreed. By Thursday's close, WTI was trading around $90.65 a barrel — still elevated, still the dominant variable in every macro conversation, but down meaningfully from the $102+ prints we saw earlier this month. Markets have developed a pattern: sell the Iran escalation, buy the ceasefire rumor. The problem is the ceasefire rumors keep not materialising into actual ceasefire deals. At some point that trade gets exhausted.

🔥 PCE: The Number Nobody Wanted to See

The week's most consequential data point arrived Thursday. The Iran war's oil price shock lifted the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge to 3.8% in April from 3.5% the month before — the highest PCE reading in nearly three years. Core PCE rose at a slower-than-expected 0.2% for the month, but the annual rate moved higher to 3.3%. What's particularly uncomfortable: this is not a one-month blip. PCE has now moved from 2.8% in February to 3.5% in March to 3.8% in April — a rapid ascent that has erased expectations for 2026 rate cuts and now suggests hikes might be necessary.

Markets mostly shrugged it off Thursday — the S&P and Nasdaq hit new records the same afternoon the data dropped. Whether that's rational or a sign of late-cycle complacency is the question that will define the second half of 2026.

🏦 Warsh's Fed: The Most Hawkish Handoff in Years

The timing is notable: Jerome Powell's final FOMC meeting was April 29, 2026, with Kevin Warsh stepping in as new Chair immediately after. Warsh inherits an institution grappling with high prices and internal division — the April meeting produced four dissenting votes, the most since 1992. The new Chair is known for favouring lower rates in theory, but the data is not cooperating with that preference. Fed minutes show a majority believes "some policy firming would likely become appropriate if inflation were to continue to run persistently above 2 percent." The era of assured cuts is definitively over. Whether we get hikes before year-end is now a live debate rather than a fringe view. Watch every Warsh speech like it matters — because right now, it does.

💻 AI Earnings Season: The Trade Still Has Legs

Snowflake surged 36.5% Thursday — its best single day ever — after the cloud data platform beat on top and bottom lines and issued rosy Q2 guidance, while also announcing a $6 billion commitment to Amazon Web Services over five years. Dell followed with a 32% post-earnings pop on a Q1 beat and raised full-year guidance. These aren't random individual stock stories — they are confirmation that AI infrastructure spending is not decelerating. The capex numbers coming out of hyperscalers, the guidance from data platform companies, the chip demand signals — they all point to the same conclusion. The AI trade is not over. It may be the only trade working broadly in this environment.

✈️ Travel Stocks: The Iran Peace Proxy

Investors betting the Iran war is ending are buying up travel stocks. Even as the U.S. and Iran debate the state of a prospective peace deal, travel stocks rallied this week thanks to a drop in oil prices. The logic is straightforward: lower oil = lower fuel costs = better airline and cruise line margins = stocks go up. This is the trade that sets up the insider story below. When the macro narrative aligns with insider buying, that's when you pay closest attention.

✅ KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 📈 S&P 500 notched nine straight winning weeks — but equal-weight tells a more honest story about this rally's breadth

• 🔥 PCE at 3.8% is not a rounding error — it is a data series that has moved 100bps in two months and is still accelerating

• 🏦 The Warsh Fed has a four-dissenter problem before it has even settled in — this Fed is more divided than markets are pricing

• 🛢️ The Iran ceasefire trade is becoming repetitive — eventually the market will need an actual deal or it will stop responding to the rumours

• 💻 Snowflake and Dell confirm what the chip stocks have been saying for months: AI capex is real, it is durable, and it is accelerating

• 🚢 When a CEO spends $2.5 million of their own money buying their own stock in the open market three weeks after an earnings-driven collapse — that is a signal worth tracking with discipline

🔭 WHAT WE'RE WATCHING NEXT WEEK

📅 Fed Speakers — Warsh's First Real Test With PCE at a three-year high and rate hike language creeping into Fed minutes, every Warsh public appearance is now a market-moving event. Markets will be parsing every syllable for signals on whether the Fed is genuinely contemplating a hike or whether the inflation language is meant to keep expectations anchored. A single phrase shift from "patient" to "data-dependent firming" would send yields sharply higher.

🛢️ Oil and Iran: The Next Ceasefire Report The pattern is: rumour Monday, denial Wednesday, dip then recovery in crude. We're on about the fourth cycle of this. Watch WTI around $88–92 as the key range. A sustained break below $88 would be a genuine positive surprise for inflation expectations and could meaningfully change the rate outlook. A spike back above $96 on an escalation report would put the PCE conversation in a very different place.

📊 May Jobs Report — June 6 With inflation data now complicating the Fed's path in both directions, the jobs report takes on extra weight. A hot number would cement hike expectations. A soft number would revive the "inflation is transitory to the energy shock" narrative. The consensus range is wide — nobody is particularly confident about the call. Position accordingly.

📈 Nasdaq 27,000 — Technical Level to Watch The Nasdaq closed at 26,972 Friday, capping off an 8% increase in May. The 27,000 level is the next psychological threshold and a potential area where momentum traders take some off the table. Whether the index consolidates there or blows through it cleanly will tell you something about the durability of the current tech leadership.

🔍 INSIDER SPOTLIGHT: NCLH — When Four Directors and a CEO All Buy at the Same Time

This is the story of the week. Not the PCE print. Not Snowflake. This.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) reported Q1 2026 earnings on May 4. Shares dropped about 8% in a single session following the report — guidance was slashed, the yield outlook turned negative, and the new CEO is still working through problems that have been building for years. The stock, which had already fallen about 36% from its recent high, was trading near its 52-week low. Wall Street responded as expected: multiple analysts cut price targets. Truist went to $20 from $25. UBS went to $17. Deutsche Bank went to $18. Morgan Stanley trimmed to $20. The headlines were bad.

Then the insiders started buying. A lot of them.

On May 7, 2026, director Kevin Lansberry bought 11,400 shares at a weighted-average price of $17.28. Also on May 7, director Zillah Byng-Thorne and her spouse purchased a combined 29,467 shares — 25,015 directly at $17.67 and 4,452 indirectly at $17.83. On May 11, director Brian MacDonald bought 15,000 shares at a weighted-average price of $16.54. Director Jonathan Cohen followed with 30,000 shares at a weighted-average price of $15.83.

And then, on May 22 — three weeks after the earnings collapse — CEO John Chidsey bought 153,000 shares of NCLH common stock in the open market, lifting his direct holdings to 1,139,940 shares. At a weighted-average price of $16.37, that purchase alone represents approximately $2.5 million of the CEO's own money.

Let's count: five separate insiders. Multiple Form 4 filings across three weeks. Combined open-market purchases north of 238,000 shares. This is not one director with a scheduled purchase plan. This is coordinated conviction buying across the entire board room following an earnings-driven selloff.

What do they know? A few things the selloff might be ignoring. The cost side of the business is already delivering — EBITDA improvement is real and faster than the Street expected. The luxury brands (Oceania, Regent) are performing well. The Q1 beat on adjusted EPS came in at $0.23 against a consensus estimate that was materially lower. NCLH today trades at $18.22 with a 52-week range of $14.53 to $27.18. The insiders bought between $15.83 and $17.83. They have paper gains already.

The thesis for the contra trade: the Norwegian brand's revenue problems are self-inflicted and fixable. The new commercial team needs time. The macro tailwind — peace deal in Iran, lower oil, travel demand resilient — is real. And every insider at the company just told you with their own money what they think about the odds of recovery.

Insider buying after an earnings disaster is one of the most reliable signals in the dataset. Not because insiders are always right — they're not. But because the combination of a fundamentally sound business, a depressed stock price, a macro catalyst (Iran peace trade), and coordinated multi-insider buying is a setup that does not show up often. When it does, it deserves your attention.

NCLH reported Q1 2026 net income of $104.7 million, compared to a net loss of $40.3 million in Q1 2025 — a company that has demonstrably turned a corner on profitability, now sitting 36% below recent highs with its entire leadership team buying the dip.

Watch NCLH. The insiders are.

MEMORIAL DAY SPECIAL Use Coupon Code ‘INSIDER’ 😃 

That's the week. Stay sharp and have a good Sunday.

— Silas P. Insider Authority | insiderauthority.com

Insider spotlight of the week…#NCLH

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