👀 Oil Crashes, Iran Breaks the Ceasefire, and a BDC Insider Just Bought $4.6M of His Own Stock

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 Dow closed the week at 51,876.11, basically flat on Friday (-44.51, -0.09%) but still grinding to new highs intraweek, up roughly 0.6% for the week. The S&P 500 finished at 7,354.02, down nearly 2% on the week as mega-cap tech weighed on the cap-weighted index. The Nasdaq took the worst of it, closing at 25,297.62 after its fifth straight losing session — down 4.6% on the week alone.

Here's the number that matters more than any single day's close: the cap-weighted S&P 500 is down 7.5% YTD, while the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index is up 10.8% YTD. That's not a rounding error — that's an 18-point spread between "the market" everyone quotes and the market most stocks are actually in. When the index you watch on TV and the index your portfolio probably resembles are telling two completely different stories, the cap-weighted number stops being useful and starts being a Mag7 proxy. Worth remembering next time someone tells you "the market" did something.

🤖 KEY DRIVERS

🤖 The AI Capex Reckoning Is Starting
The Nasdaq's five-day losing streak has a name: OpenAI. Reports surfaced that the company is leaning toward delaying its IPO into 2027, and the read-through hit every name levered to AI infrastructure spend. Chip stocks led the slide, with the semiconductor complex flirting with correction territory. This isn't a "tech bad" story — it's a financing-the-buildout story, and the market just started pricing in the possibility that the money doesn't show up on schedule.

🛢️ Iran Just Reminded Everyone the Ceasefire Is Paper-Thin
Crude fell hard this week — WTI down over 4%, Brent down even more — on reports that tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was flowing again. Then Friday happened: Iran launched attack drones at cargo ships transiting the Strait, with at least one confirmed hit. The White House called it a ceasefire violation. Oil stayed lower on the day regardless, which tells you the market still isn't pricing real supply risk — but if this escalates even slightly, that complacency gets expensive fast.

🏦 The Fed Box Just Got Tighter
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari flipped his outlook this week, now expecting one rate hike this year instead of holding or cutting. That's a meaningful shift from a historically dovish voice. Combine that with sticky inflation expectations and a White House that wants lower rates, and the Fed is navigating a genuinely uncomfortable spot — caught between political pressure and incoming hawkish data points from its own ranks.

💰 Breadth Is Quietly Doing the Heavy Lifting
While the Mag7 gets all the headlines for dragging the Nasdaq lower, the broader market has actually been fine — more advancing names than declining ones most sessions this week, even as the indexes you watch on the news ticked red. The Dow hit a fresh intraday record this week, and it did it without a single tech name in its top contributors. That's a rotation story, not a "market is breaking" story, and it's worth not confusing the two.

🏭 Old Economy Is Having a Moment
Industrials and financials carried the Dow this week — Caterpillar up sharply on one session, J&J and other non-tech names doing the quiet work. Meanwhile M&A picked up: Merck's $11.3B acquisition of Bio-Techne sent that stock up nearly 20% in a day. When dealmaking picks up in unglamorous sectors while everyone's watching chip stocks, that's usually a sign capital is starting to look for value outside the AI trade.

📈 Insider Conviction at Prospect Capital (PSEC)
While the market chopped around all week, Prospect Capital CEO John F. Barry was buying. Not once — three separate open-market purchases across June 22, 23, and 24, totaling over 2.06 million shares for roughly $4.66 million of his own money, all at prices between $2.25 and $2.27. No options, no grants — straight cash purchases on the open market. After the buys, Barry directly holds over 89.2 million shares. When a CEO puts that kind of money on the line three days running while the stock sits near multi-year lows, that's not a routine 10b5-1 filing. That's a guy who thinks the market has it wrong.

✅ KEY TAKEAWAYS

📉 The S&P you're watching on TV is down 7.5% YTD — the S&P your portfolio probably tracks is up nearly 11%. Know which one you're actually in.

🛢️ Oil fell on "peace," then Iran fired drones at tankers anyway. The ceasefire premium baked into crude is thinner than it looks.

🤖 The AI trade just met its first real financing question — an OpenAI IPO delay isn't a rumor the market shrugged off.

🏦 Kashkari going hawkish is the tell. When the dove starts talking about hikes, the rate path just got more contested, not less.

🏭 Money is rotating into industrials, financials, and M&A — quietly, while the headlines stay fixed on chips.

💼 Barry just spent $4.66M of his own cash buying PSEC three days in a row. Insiders don't do that to make a statement — they do it because they think the math works.

🔭 WHAT WE'RE WATCHING NEXT WEEK

📅 July 4th Holiday — Shortened Trading Week
Markets close Friday for Independence Day, which means thinner volume and the potential for outsized moves on light liquidity heading into the holiday. Don't read too much into Thursday's close.

👷 Non-Farm Payrolls
The jobs report drops next week and lands right in the middle of the Kashkari hawkish pivot. A hot number gives the rate-hike camp real ammunition; a soft one reopens the door the Fed's been trying to close. This is the print that decides which Fed narrative wins the next month.

🛢️ Strait of Hormuz — Watch for Escalation, Not De-escalation
Friday's drone strikes are the first real test of whether the ceasefire holds. If Iran continues targeting tanker traffic, the oil complex's recent calm gets re-priced violently and fast. Watch crude futures opening Monday for the market's first real read.

📊 PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) Near Correction Territory
The SOX is down close to 10% from its highs. If chip stocks can't stabilize next week, the AI-infrastructure-financing story stops being a one-week headline and starts being the dominant market narrative into July earnings season.

🔎 Insider Spotlight: Prospect Capital (PSEC) — CEO John F. Barry
Three open-market buys in three trading days, over $4.66 million committed, no derivatives involved. With the stock trading in the $2.25–$2.27 range — well off its highs — and the BDC's COO also a recent buyer, this is the kind of insider cluster that earns a second look regardless of what the headline price action says. Worth tracking the next Form 4 filing closely to see if the buying continues into July.

That's the week. See you next Sunday.

— Silas P. Insider Authority | insiderauthority.com

Insider spotlight of the week…#PSEC

^{Here is a snapshot of last week’s recent insider activity…}

Politicians

C-Level Execs

Hedge Funds

👉 Want direct access to all insider moves — including U.S. stocks, politicians, hedge funds — in real time? Our Elite Insider Dashboard surfaces high-signal trades as they hit the tape. Stay ahead of the herd.

🔗 [Join Elite Insider today]

Want to learn how to leverage INSIDER TRADING ACTIVITY to potentially beat the market?

Look no further than ELITE INSIDER (EI) — a complete ‘all in one’ software dashboard and scanner that tracks the political, corporate, and hedge fund insider trading activity.

EI includes cluster buying, largest trade and most active trade scanners, interactive charting + data suite and our Insider Portfolio Alerts (IPA). It’s time to bridge the gap from main street to Wall Street by following smart money insiders.

See you on the ‘INSIDE.’

P.S. Interested in joining hundreds of traders using our 0DTE mechanical systems to generate consistent, long-term income all without wasting hours analyzing setups? Check out Option Income Project here.