Union Partners Digital Asset

Gov Inst Manager / Crypto / Macro & Global politics

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

U.S. House passes Ukraine Support Act by a vote of 226-195, approving military aid for Ukraine and new sanctions targeting Russia.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Wow, the S&P Dow Jones Indices has just officially announced that they will NOT be changing their inclusion rules to make it easier for “MegaCap” companies (such as @SpaceX) to be fast-tracked into the S&P 500.

Their reasoning:
"S&P DJI determined that exceptions to the financial viability, seasoning, and IWF requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization. The decision not to adopt the proposed exceptions preserves core index principles by maintaining consistent application of these key requirements. Although there may be trade-offs between strict adherence to these eligibility requirements and broad representativeness, the current methodology provides substantial market coverage and sector balance. As a result, the indices can continue to meet their stated objectives while preserving their role as representative and investable benchmarks for the U.S. equity market.

No changes will be made to the eligibility criteria including financial viability screens, seasoning period, or minimum IWF, for the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, or S&P SmallCap 600 as a result of the S&P Dow Jones Indices consultation on the treatment of MegaCap companies. Accordingly, there will be no changes to existing methodology for this index family."

This means that the earliest @SpaceX could be eligible to be added to the S&P 500 would now be June 2027.

The requirements that will now remain in place are:
• No changes to S&P 500 eligibility rules for mega-cap companies.
• Mega-cap companies will still need to wait 12 months after their IPO before being considered for S&P 500 inclusion.
• S&P will not waive profitability requirements for mega-cap companies. The company must have positive GAAP net income in the most recent quarter, and the sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters.
• S&P will not waive minimum public float requirements for mega-cap companies. At least 10% of a company's shares must be publicly tradable ("free float").

The S&P rejected proposals that would have:
• Reduced the IPO seasoning period from 12 months to 6 months
• Waived profitability requirements
• Waived minimum public float requirements

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

Open Letter
To the President of the Russian Federation
From the President of Ukraine

When you came to power in Russia more than 26 years ago, many people in Ukraine viewed you positively. That is how it was. But that is now in the past.
Now, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians view it positively that our long-range drones paid a visit to the opening of your forum in St. Petersburg, covering a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers. As you know very well, that distance is not the limit of our capabilities.

[Reuters @Reuters]

China accused US Secretary of State Marco Rubio of distorting facts and interfering in internal affairs after he said memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing could not be erased by censorship https://t.co/06AwRPF0Mp

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

US and European intelligence services have discovered that China is using job recruiting apps in an attempt to recruit spies within the West, hiring defence contractors and ex government workers on lucrative contracts to work for fake consultancy firms-WSJ

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

Ukraine is seriously hammering Russia now, I genuinely think if this continues for the next 6 months they will sue for a peace deal.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: US data center construction spending jumped +28% YoY in April, to a record annualized rate of $50.7 billion.

At the same time, public spending on transportation came in at $49.9 billion.

This means data center construction spending has outpaced government transportation spending for the first time in history.

Since 2022, spending on data centers has surged by +357%.

Over the same period, government spending on transportation has increased +16%.

As a result, data centers now account for 2.3% of all US construction spending.

The AI buildout is reshaping US infrastructure spending.

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran rejects all of Trump's new claims to NYP as "Trump's fantasies" and "completely inconsistent with reality," denying that Iran has been talking to the US in the past days, that Mojtaba Khamenei is involved in negotiations, that Iran has agreed not to have a nuclear weapon, or that the deal framework is being approved in Iran, per Tasnim.

Iran has not provided any response to the US regarding the draft memorandum of understanding in recent days and has ended all exchange of texts and communications until Iran's conditions regarding Lebanon are met.

[Hedgeye @Hedgeye]

Google is now selling $80B of its own stock to fund AI capex, ending a decade of buybacks

[Hedgeye @Hedgeye]

🇰🇷 South Korea becomes world's 6th largest stock market driven by technology boom

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

The Kremlin in a statement today said the war in Ukraine could end by the end of today given a Ukrainian withdrawal out of Russian occupied regions.

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

The founder of Wall Street's most feared short seller was just found guilty of securities fraud and now faces up to 25 years in prison after allegedly making $20 million.

Andrew Left built Citron Research into one of the most influential financial platforms in the world. When he posted that a stock was overvalued, the price would drop within minutes.

Millions of retail investors trusted his analysis and traded on it.

According to prosecutors, before publishing any negative report, Left would secretly take a short position first.

He would then post publicly, the stock would drop on his words, and he would quietly close his position and pocket the gains.

He did this on at least 26 occasions across 23 companies between 2018 and 2023, including Nvidia and Tesla.

Prosecutors also allege Left was secretly coordinating trades with a hedge fund before publishing reports and fabricated invoices and routed payments through a third party to conceal the relationship.

When federal investigators questioned him, he told them Citron had "never" coordinated with a hedge fund.

On January 8, 2019, Left shorted Roku before markets opened. At 9:41 AM he posted on Citron's Twitter that Roku was "uninvestible." The stock dropped immediately.

He allegedly made $700,000 in a single day, then publicly told his followers he had no position in the stock.

The jury convicted him on 13 of 17 counts after three weeks of deliberations in Los Angeles.

[Reuters Business @ReutersBiz]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hosted South Korean tech leaders, including SK Hynix's chief, at a dinner to strengthen partnerships https://t.co/vK3p1sMFG8

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

This is absolutely incredible.

Investors now perceive Nvidia to be as creditworthy as the US government.

Nvidia's $NVDA, 5-year credit default swap (CDS) is trading at ~38 basis points, slightly below the US sovereign CDS, at 40 basis points.

In other words, markets consider the world's largest company to be less likely to default on its obligations than the US federal government.

This comes as in FY2026, Nvidia carried only ~$8.5 billion in total debt against ~$10.6 billion in cash and generated nearly $100 billion in free cash flow, giving it one of the strongest balance sheets of any company in the world.

Even if Nvidia's earnings dropped -90%, it would still rank among the 100 most profitable companies in the world.

Markets are treating Nvidia as one of the safest companies on the planet.

[Bull Theory @BullTheoryio]

BREAKING: Anthropic just filed confidentially for an IPO at a $965 billion valuation.

If SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all list this year, it would be the first time three companies worth nearly $1 trillion or more went public in the same year.

[Investing.com @Investingcom]

*IRAN TO STOP TALKS WITH US IN PROTEST OVER ISRAEL: TASNIM

*IRAN'S TASNIM: 'AXIS OF RESISTANCE' TO ACTIVATE ALL FRONTS

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: US oil prices surge over +8% to $94/barrel as Iran ends all negotiations with the US.

[Undiscovered Compounders @UCompounders]

@KobeissiLetter With a technological revolution of this scale, it's not surprising.

If SaaS hadn't taken such a beating, it probably would have been much lower.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

The market is experiencing a historic divergence:

The ratio of the equal-weighted S&P 500 to the S&P 500 index is down to 1.1, near the lowest since 2003.

This ratio is now below the 2008 Financial Crisis low of ~1.2 and is down -28% since February 2023, the biggest drawdown since the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble.

Over this period, the S&P 500 has rallied +81%, more than double the gain of the equal-weighted index, at +34%.

These massive gains have been fueled by technology stocks, with the Nasdaq 100 index surging +151% over the same period.

Tech stocks are all that matters.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

French President Macron:

Unfortunately, we witnessed unacceptable scenes of violence in Paris and other cities for much of last night.

That is not football. That is not sport. That is not what we love.

We will be uncompromising with those responsible.

We do not want to see this anymore. Enough is enough. It's over.