Jobs day. The US May payrolls report lands today into a Fed that has turned hawkish — Logan has flagged a possible rate rise this year · the AI trade is still digesting Broadcom’s >$250bn hit, even as the financing wave keeps swelling: Alphabet’s $85bn raise, the SpaceX and Anthropic IPO pipeline, and now a ~$420bn US power-utility merger · the Israel–Lebanon ceasefire holds into its first days as the US and Iran trade fresh strikes and the House votes to curb Trump’s war powers · oil eases and gold firms as the Lebanon front cools.
Europe/Rome 06:00 · Markets open · pre-US-open · Consolidating · payrolls the swing event
Levels below are the Bloomberg Europe live ticker read at ~06:00 Rome. US indices reflect the latest close — the session that slipped from record highs on Broadcom’s miss — while FTSE, FX and commodities are live. The week’s decisive data is today: the US May jobs report (Fri 5 June), now landing against a Fed that suddenly sounds readier to hold — or even hike — after Dallas Fed’s Logan.
Top of the morning
Jobs day: US May payrolls land into a newly hawkish Fed
Today’s employment report, due before the US open, is the week’s swing event. It arrives after Dallas Fed’s Lorie Logan said the Fed may need to raise rates this year and the Beige Book described steady jobs alongside firmer inflation — a mix that has the 10-year near 4.48%. A hot number would harden the hawkish turn; a soft one would test it. The unemployment rate (consensus around 4.3%) and average hourly earnings are the lines that move the rate-path debate.
The AI trade is still digesting Broadcom’s record hit
Broadcom’s disappointing AI-chip revenue outlook erased more than $250bn of market value and sent the stock down as much as 15% after hours — the first AI-earnings stumble big enough to pull the Nasdaq and S&P 500 off record highs. The structural counter-signal stands: TSMC’s CEO warned chip supply won’t meet AI-fuelled demand for years. CrowdStrike’s soft guidance added to a more cautious tech tape. The watch now is whether this stays a single-name wobble or becomes a broader capex-earnings test.
Israel–Lebanon truce holds — even as the US and Iran trade fresh strikes
The conditional ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, contingent on Hezbollah standing down, is holding into its first days after a Trump–Netanyahu call — a de-escalation on one front. The wider conflict stays live: the US and Iran exchanged new strikes, and in a notable domestic check the Republican-led House voted to halt the Iran war, a rebuke of Trump’s war powers. Markets read the easing through commodities — oil dipped and gold drew dip-buyers — though crude holds near $95 on residual Hormuz risk.
Europe’s big three court Putin; Washington tells allies to do more
Germany, France and the UK are sketching a plan to engage Vladimir Putin directly on Ukraine, sensing a momentum shift that strengthens Zelenskyy’s hand. In parallel, the US has told European partners to add more aircraft and vessels as it draws down its own presence — sharpening the burden-shift debate on the continent’s security.
The capital wave widens: IPO pipeline, Alphabet’s raise — and a $420bn power merger
The financing machine keeps building around the wobble. JPMorgan is preparing to pitch its ultra-rich clients on the SpaceX IPO — likely the largest debut ever — Anthropic has lined up Morgan Stanley and Goldman, and Alphabet upsized its equity raise to $85bn. FT adds a strategic twist: NextEra and Dominion are planning a roughly $420bn utilities giant, the AI-electricity-demand theme going corporate. A Vanguard fund topping $1tn underscores how much passive money stands ready to absorb the supply.
Credit cracks persist; Bitcoin slides to pre-Iran lows
Credit titans warned of a coming shakeout in deals that “don’t make sense,” and retail money is edging out of private credit — the clearest persistent crack under an otherwise orderly tape. Risk appetite cooled elsewhere: Bitcoin fell to its lowest since before the Iran conflict, heading for its biggest weekly loss since late 2022, after a large Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) sale unnerved crypto traders. A watch item for the cycle, not yet a systemic event.
Health watch: Ebola widens in DR Congo; ultra-processed-food review; US screwworm scare
FT and Bloomberg flag a widening Ebola outbreak (Bundibugyo strain) spreading to new areas of the DR Congo, with one infected person known to have travelled to the UAE — putting the vaccine response in focus. A new FT-flagged review argues ultra-processed-food harms track the contents rather than the processing itself: some UPFs are benign, others harmful by composition — a useful nuance for clinical messaging. Separately, a deadly screwworm parasite found in US cattle is a zoonotic-risk reminder for the food chain.
FT portfolio signal · tied to your holdings
What FT flagged for your book
Macro / regime read. The froth that took its first real poke on Broadcom is still being digested — and today the swing factor is the calendar, not an earnings line: US May payrolls land into a Fed that has turned hawkish. The myFT cluster is split. Bullish supply signals keep stacking: an Unhedged “equity tap” piece with more hyperscaler issuance to come, the editorial board warning the coming equity-supply surge (SpaceX, Anthropic) will test the AI bull run, a Vanguard fund past $1tn, and tech groups monetising AI hype by selling volatility via convertibles — a tell that the market is “twitchier than usual.” The counterweights the dashboard cares about are all live: an AI-earnings / valuation test (Broadcom −15% after hours, >$250bn erased), a firmer-rates backdrop (Logan possible hike, Beige Book inflation, 10y ~4.48%), a crypto risk-off leg (Bitcoin’s biggest weekly loss since late 2022 after the Strategy sale), and the persistent private-credit crack. War-chest deployment rules stay dormant — this is a regime tilt and a jobs-day swing, not a severe trigger.
Broadcom (shelf single-name — still the key one). A myFT alert puts the market-cap loss above $250bn with shares down ~15% after hours on a soft revenue forecast — your direct holding sits at the epicentre of the AI-chip repricing. TSMC’s warning that supply won’t meet AI demand for years supports the long-term thesis, but near-term the miss sets a high bar for the rest of the complex.
Alphabet (shelf single-name). Upsized its equity raise to $85bn — its first stock offering in more than two decades — to fund AI spending. Real dilution, but it bankrolls the build-out behind the thesis; the signal is conviction in the cycle, with capital absorption the watch.
Semiconductors / AI capex (theme hits). Nvidia opening a laptop front against Apple, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm, a “Japanese hardware stocks are having a moment” piece, and SpaceX’s $55bn Terafab plant all bear on the picks-and-shovels case behind your ASML, Broadcom, Alphabet shelf — supply-chain and geopolitics the offset, Broadcom a reminder the bar is now high. Side note: Indian equities are losing the AI-flows race to Taiwan and South Korea.
Macro regime — energy & rates. FT flags NextEra and Dominion planning a roughly $420bn power-utilities giant — the AI-electricity-demand theme turning strategic. With the 10y at ~4.48% and the Fed leaning hawkish, the rates leg of the dashboard is the one to respect into today’s payrolls.
Consumer caution (no single-name). Robert Armstrong’s “other economy” piece flags weakness in the consumer-packaged-goods world — a soft-consumer signal under the AI-led tape; relevant colour for the Costco / Nike / Booking discretionary corner, with no direct alert.
Pharma / health (no single-name). Health alerts skewed to the DR Congo Ebola outbreak and an ultra-processed-food review — sector and public-health context only, with no direct read on Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Vertex, UnitedHealth, Thermo Fisher or Intuitive Surgical.
Shelf single-names: today’s live alerts are Broadcom and Alphabet. No GLP-1 / Novo Nordisk / Eli Lilly / Vertex / UnitedHealth / Intuitive / Visa / Mastercard / Berkshire single-name FT items in the window. (Name-level alerts only surface here once FT routes them to this Gmail — see the iCloud→Gmail forwarding note if they stay sparse.)
Net: the AI trade is digesting Broadcom while the capex-financing wave swells (Alphabet $85bn, SpaceX/Anthropic IPOs, a ~$420bn utilities merger) and the Fed leans hawkish. Regime tilting from risk-on-froth toward consolidation — watch AI earnings, credit and rates. Not a deploy trigger. Today’s US payrolls is the swing event.
Markets snapshot
Bloomberg Europe live ticker at ~06:00 Rome. US indices are the latest close (slipped from records on Broadcom); FTSE, FX and commodities live. Daily % changes as shown on the ticker; oil and gold direction read from this morning’s “oil dips / gold rises” market leads.
Instrument
Last
Change / context
S&P 500
7,553.68
−0.74% · off record on Broadcom miss
Nasdaq
26,853.97
−0.89% · AI chips lead the pullback
Bloomberg 500
2,732.45
−0.77%
FTSE 100
10,332.30
−0.40% · softer with global risk
US 10-year Treasury
4.48%
yields firmer · Logan hawkish, Beige Book inflation
EUR/USD
~1.16
+0.07% · little changed into payrolls
GBP/USD
~1.34
−0.04% · marginally softer
Crude Oil
$95.29
−0.76% · eases as Lebanon truce trims premium; holds ~$95
Gold (spot)
$4,489.70
+0.51% · dip-buyers return after the ceasefire
Figures transcribed from the Bloomberg Europe “Top Securities” ticker; FX shown to two decimals as on the ticker. Equity direction confirmed against the “stocks fall from record on Broadcom” lead; oil and gold direction taken from the “oil dips” and “gold rises as dip-buyers return” stories on this morning’s homepage.
Global markets & macro
Markets enter jobs day in consolidation. Broadcom’s disappointing chip outlook erased more than $250bn of value and sent the stock down as much as 15% after hours, dragging the Nasdaq (−0.89%) and S&P 500 (−0.74%) off record highs — the “more greed than fear” tape finally meeting a real stumble. Yet the AI-financing wave keeps building around it: Alphabet upsized its raise to $85bn, Anthropic lined up Morgan Stanley and Goldman, JPMorgan is set to pitch SpaceX to its ultra-rich clients, and — the freshest twist — NextEra and Dominion are planning a roughly $420bn utilities giant to ride AI-driven power demand. TSMC’s warning that chip supply won’t meet AI demand for years frames the paradox: structural demand intact, near-term expectations stretched. CrowdStrike’s soft guidance and Bitcoin’s slide to pre-Iran lows — after a large Strategy sale — round out a more cautious risk tape.
Rates are the quieter, firmer story, and the one that matters most today. Logan said the Fed may need to raise rates this year, and the Beige Book showed steady jobs but firmer inflation, holding the 10-year near 4.48%. That resets the stakes for the US May payrolls report due before the US open: economists look to an unemployment rate around 4.3% and to wage growth, with a hot print hardening the hawkish turn and a soft one testing it. FX stayed quiet ahead of the number — the euro near 1.16, sterling around 1.34. Beneath the surface, two cracks: private credit, where titans warn of a shakeout and retail money is edging out, and the consumer-packaged-goods “other economy” that FT’s Armstrong flags as softening. In EM, the rupiah slid toward the 18,000 level with markets braced for intervention, and Indonesia tasked its central bank with boosting “real sector” growth.
Geopolitics & world news
The Middle East is sending mixed signals, tilting toward de-escalation. The conditional Israel–Lebanon ceasefire — contingent on Hezbollah standing down, and arriving after a Trump–Netanyahu call — is holding into its first days. But the broader conflict stays live: the US and Iran traded fresh strikes, and in a notable domestic check the Republican-led House voted to halt the Iran war, rebuking Trump’s handling of it. Markets read the balance through commodities — crude dipped toward $95 as the Lebanon front cooled, while gold drew dip-buyers even with yields firm. A Bloomberg feature on the “Iran shock” accelerating Asia’s and Europe’s energy transition is the longer-run thread worth keeping in view.
Europe’s security board is shifting too. Germany, France and the UK are sketching a plan to engage Putin directly on Ukraine, sensing a momentum shift that strengthens Zelenskyy’s hand, even as Washington tells allies to add aircraft and vessels as it draws down — sharpening the burden-shift debate. Elsewhere: the US and allies warned of a LinkedIn-based China espionage threat; and in the Americas, former Mexican president López Obrador broke his silence to back Sheinbaum amid rising tensions with Washington. For the medical reader, the standout remains clinical and biosecurity-flavoured: the Ebola outbreak (Bundibugyo strain) is widening across the DR Congo with a cross-border travel scare reaching the UAE, putting the vaccine response in focus, while a deadly screwworm parasite found in US cattle is a reminder of zoonotic risk to the food chain.
Clinical desk · NEJM current issue (4 June 2026)
This week in the New England Journal
A deeper read of the issue’s practice-relevant trials, with the numbers that matter at the bedside. (NEJM publishes weekly on Thursdays, so the 4 June issue remains current today.)
Cardiology — LAAC moves toward the anticoagulation-eligible
CHAMPION-AF randomised 3,000 AF patients who were suitable NOAC candidates (mean CHA₂DS₂-VASc 3.5) to a Watchman Flx device or a NOAC. At 3 years the composite of CV death, stroke or systemic embolism was 5.7% vs 4.8% (difference 0.9 pp, 95% CI −0.8 to 2.6) — meeting noninferiority — while non–procedure-related bleeding was roughly halved (10.9% vs 19.0%, HR 0.55), a superiority win. Caveats worth holding onto: strokes were numerically higher with the device (3.6% vs 2.5%; ischaemic stroke/systemic embolism ~0.3%/yr more), the highest-risk patients (CHA₂DS₂-VASc ≥5) were under-represented, only one device was studied, and the trial was industry-funded with an absolute (not relative) noninferiority margin. The companion editorial asks directly whether indications should now widen. Practical read: a stronger case for LAAC as a shared-decision option in bleeding-averse but anticoagulation-eligible AF — the 5-year stroke data will be the tell.
Critical care — high-flow oxygen: fewer intubations, same mortality
SOHO (42 French ICUs, 1,110 patients with P/F ≤200) found day-28 mortality identical at 14.6% vs 14.6% (P=0.98) for high-flow nasal oxygen vs standard oxygen. Intubation by day 28 was lower with high-flow (42.4% vs 48.4%, difference −5.9 pp), but serious events during spontaneous breathing (cardiac arrest or pneumothorax) were numerically more frequent (2.3% vs 1.1%). Read: this tempers the mortality rationale for HFNC; the intubation benefit persists, so the case stays individualised rather than universal.
Oncology — a step-change in pancreatic cancer
Daraxonrasib (RASolute 302). Phase 3, 500 patients with previously treated metastatic PDAC (92% RAS G12); this oral RAS(ON) inhibitor roughly doubled median overall survival vs chemotherapy (13.2 vs 6.6 months, HR 0.40, P<0.001) and improved PFS (7.3 vs 3.5 months, HR 0.45). Grade ≥3 events were actually lower than chemo (61.8% vs 69.6%) and treatment-related discontinuations far lower (1.2% vs 11.2%). In a disease where median survival is under a year, this is the standout result of the issue.
Perioperative apalutamide (PROTEUS). Phase 3, 2,109 patients, ADT ± apalutamide around radical prostatectomy. Pathological complete response / minimal residual disease rose to 8.9% vs 1.0% (OR 10.2) and 5-year metastasis-free survival to 78.2% vs 73.5% (HR 0.80, P=0.02); grade 3/4 events were higher (39.6% vs 31%, mostly rash). The first practice-changing neoadjuvant signal in prostate cancer — though the absolute MFS gain (~4.7 pp) is modest, and the editorial’s “watershed” framing is about direction more than magnitude.
Also: all-oral decitabine–cedazuridine + venetoclax gave complete responses in ~47% of newly diagnosed AML; adjuvant selpercatinib lengthened event-free survival in RET fusion–positive early-stage NSCLC.
AI in the clinic (your beat)
The governance layer is catching up to deployment. A Perspective on ambient AI documentation maps the recording-consent problem — two-party-consent states, where audio is transmitted, and the patchwork of state law that every ambient-scribe pilot now runs into — alongside an NEJM AI review on large language models in informed consent (opportunities vs thin evidence), a privacy analysis of AI scribes, and a behavioural-health letter warning that chatbot empathy can outpace accuracy. Collectively: useful tools, but consent, privacy and monitoring are the gating issues, not raw capability.
Infectious disease — ties to this morning’s Ebola thread
A correspondence characterises the 2025 Sudan virus (an ebolavirus) outbreak in Uganda, and another reports that IV artesunate still performed acceptably in children with partially artemisinin-resistant severe malaria (PfK13 mutations) — reassuring that parenteral artesunate remains usable. Directly relevant context as the markets pages flag a widening DR Congo Ebola outbreak with a cross-border travel scare.
Briefly noted
Obexelimab cut flares and glucocorticoid use in a phase-3 trial in IgG4-related disease; secukinumab hit its mark in relapsed polymyalgia rheumatica but missed in giant-cell arteritis; dual CAR T-cell desensitisation enabled kidney transplantation in two highly HLA-sensitised candidates; and a clinical-practice review distils what actually moves childhood vaccine hesitancy (clinician recommendation, presumptive framing, empathy).
Read from your open NEJM tab via Control Chrome — the current issue plus the full CHAMPION-AF, SOHO, RASolute 302 and PROTEUS abstracts. Figures summarised in original prose under copyright caution — not reproductions, and not medical advice for any individual patient.
Today & week ahead (CET)
Fri 5US May jobs report (nonfarm payrolls, unemployment ~4.3% expected, average hourly earnings) before the US open — the week’s marquee print, landing against a Fed sounding readier to hold or hike · euro-area retail sales · Canada jobs
Fri 5Geopolitics — Israel–Lebanon ceasefire monitoring · US–Iran strike headlines · oil on Hormuz risk · Bloomberg Money now live
WkndCeasefire durability · any Fed-speak reaction to payrolls · SpaceX IPO process (JPMorgan pitch) · Alphabet $85bn raise & NextEra–Dominion merger follow-through
WeekUS May CPI (mid-week) the next macro test after payrolls · AI-earnings read-through after Broadcom · private-credit redemptions · Bitcoin’s slide · Fed rate-path repricing