Good morning! The weekend was surprisingly calm, with both the US and Iran halting their strike campaigns. However, the Houthis kept the pressure on with strikes targeting Saudi Aramco. We cover the recent developments in the Strait of Hormuz section.
Then we move on to domestic politics as some price moves in crypto suggest we might see a breakthrough in the Clarity Act negotiations. In tech, we take a look at the new Claude Opus 5, which seems to be rather disappointing compared to its benchmark results.
Lastly, we cover a new story from Italy, where Andrea Pirlo’s path to becoming the National Team head coach was suddenly complicated by… Russia.
Let’s take a look at the markets to make sense of the news!
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The Midterms Tracker
RED
RED is flat on the day and remains around the 90.5-91.5 range.
Senate
SENR started to fall slightly. I saw an interesting analysis showing that Senate chances are affected by rising oil prices:
We’re beginning to see that relationship reflected in SENR as well.
House
HOUSER continues to trend down, indicating that Democrats are a strong favorite to win the House in the midterms.
Today’s charts reflect the expanded 2026 U.S. House constituent universe outlined in the production notice. The expansion affects both HOUSER and HOUSED indices, and in turn, affects the RED and BLUE composite indices.
Main Events Of The Day
#1 The Strait Of Hormuz
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In a surprising turn of events, the US halted the strike campaign during the weekend. This administration is famous for escalating outside of the market hours. However, CENTCOM raised questions about the effectiveness of further strike campaigns and underscored the limited interceptor availability:
On the other hand, the Houthis continue to strike Saudi Arabia. We have unconfirmed reports that the Saudi Aramco Abqaiq oil processing facility was hit this morning:
Further escalation between the two sides would be a major wild card in the Iran war.
#2 Blockades Are Still On
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Despite the effective ceasefire, both sides continue to block the Strait of Hormuz. We are effectively back to the post April 7th status quo, but with more tensions in Yemen.
Traders give only 48% chance the blockade will end by the end of August—a clear indication they have limited faith in any new agreement being announced soon. Some even believe that the pause is only due to Netanyahu’s visit to the White House. Who knows? There’s already a precedent of sorts for that.
#3 Ethereum to the Moon?
Moving to domestic politics, Ethereum rose over 5% over the weekend and is slowly approaching $2,000. Traders now give 75% chance we will see the psychological barrier broken by the end of the month.
Ethereum’s rise is connected to the Clarity Act. A vote on the landmark legislation is expected before the recess and just today a new draft was released:
The Clarity Act will provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for all digital assets and its passing is likely to cause a massive bull run in crypto. Is Ethereum’s price an early signal? I wouldn’t discard it.
#4 Claude Opus 5 Is Here
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Leaving politics behind, after a small hiccup, Opus 5 is live. Release notes promised us a model that is practically on par with Fable and the benchmarks delivered. Traders priced the highest bracket at only 22c just before the debut.
However, some people believe it is overfitted to the benchmarks and delivers a disappointing real-world performance:
#5 Changes In Italian Soccer
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Lastly, a small surprise from the world of soccer. Italy, after failing to qualify for the recent World Cup, decided to change its head coach. Andrea Pirlo, a former Italian superstar, was widely cited to take over the position.
However, just this morning the deal collapsed due to Pirlo’s links to Russian betting sites. Pirlo traded as high as 99c to get the job—surely some bonders were caught by surprise.
Wrap up
That’s all for today!
We will continue to monitor the situation on prediction markets.
Make sure to follow prediction markets live to get fresh information on the conflict. Stay strong and see you tomorrow for another Morning Brief!
Brought to you by Stand
Stand is a prediction market aggregator and the advanced trading terminal of choice for professionals. On Stand, traders discover trends, track traders, copy trade, get whale alerts, automate trades, and so much more.
This is not official investment or life advice. Do your own research. These are only my opinions and I encourage anyone to do their own research before putting any money anywhere.