Markets Happy Hour Podcast July 2, 2026: Tight Lips; Stopped Ships

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by special guest Roy Kuo, CIO of Galilei Investment Office, and we dive in to a sweeping discussion across global markets. Our conversation starts with a mixed inflation number, whereby consumer prices are driving the sustained inflationary level more than the energy prices, although as one of our charts shows, gasoline prices remain far stickier and less responsive to geopolitical news around the Strait of Hormuz. While jobs numbers continue to be a little sideways, the most recent employment number reflecting a small fall off in employment numbers, but when taken alongside the previous months positive numbers the effect is expected to be marginal. Mortgage rates remain high, which will put pressure on the lower end consumer, although Roy did not expect interest rates to place a stay on economic activity. Moving to equity markets we have just closed the strongest quarters for the Nasdaq and the S&P since 2020, while in contrast Microsoft has seen its worst month since 2020, and gold has seen its worst quarter in 13 years. We turn to the conversation around the frontier models and their relative role compared to the suppliers of compute as well as the proprietary layers, and reference a somewhat memorable recent CNBC appearance of Alex Karp of Palantir who has "said the quiet part out loud" when it comes to the tense relationship between the providers of the frontier models and the companies using them and supplying their data. We finish with another reflection on Alan Greenspan, as Roy's views on his legacy have changed over the years, as he notes. He believes that the damaging effects of the moral hazard created by the Greenspan put are continuing to be felt and that it is leading to a far more risk seeking type of market behaviour.