Hello there.

Happy Monday, folks. You’ll never believe today’s headlines. The economy! Gas prices!

But let’s be real: The real story here is the shrimp scheme. Whaddya do when you have too many restaurants to burn them all down for the insurance money? Force them to buy shrimp til they’re bust. Someone’s gotta write the script for this. More below. 👇

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The spending gap between high earners and everyone else just hit another high score. Americans in the top 20% by income (over $175,000 annually) now drive nearly 60% of all consumer outlays, and their spending grew 6.5% year-over-year while the bottom 80% managed just 2.6%. That bottom number doesn't even keep pace with inflation, which means most households are actually losing ground in real terms.

Dealmakers are responding exactly how you'd expect: The whole M&A landscape is tilting toward premium everything. Airlines are cramming more business class seats into planes, credit card companies are launching $1,000-a-year premium cards, and even Pepsi bought a fancy tortilla company for over a billion dollars because apparently rich people love expensive tortillas.

The whole game plan now is pretty simple (if not bleak): chase the wealthy customers who can still afford to spend, and good luck to everyone else. More budget-friendly markets like cheap pizza chains are running fire sales because cash-conscious consumers have pulled back hard.

Here’s what we have to reckon with on the ground level: Consumer discretionary is no longer one trade. Companies selling to high earners (luxury goods, premium travel, wealth management) operate in a fundamentally different economy than those targeting the bottom 80%. The kicker is that a market correction could hit consumer stocks twice: once from portfolio losses, again from the spending pullback that follows. If you're holding broad consumer ETFs, it's worth checking whether you're actually betting on two diverging economies at once.

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US crude slipped under $70 this week for the first time since March, even after a cargo ship took a hit near Oman on Thursday. US officials pinned the attack on Iran, but ships kept transiting the Strait of Hormuz anyway. Persian Gulf exports have rebounded to roughly 75% of pre-war levels, and Saudi Arabia is loading tankers again at Ras Tanura. The supply squeeze that drove prices above $90 appears to be unwinding faster than expected.

But don't get too comfortable. Iran still controls whether ships can sail safely through that narrow waterway, and they know it. OPEC is also kind of falling apart right now. The UAE already bounced in May, and now Iraq is threatening to leave too if they don't get a bigger share of production. And Trump is publicly demanding the DOJ investigate oil companies for not dropping gas prices fast enough, which energy analysts have called political theater since pump prices lag crude by a couple of weeks regardless of politics.

For now, UBS still sees Brent ending 2026 around $85, well above current levels. If you've been waiting for a pullback to add energy exposure, ~$70 WTI is the cheapest entry point since before the Iran strikes.

The real game now is whether this oil market sticks around for a while, or if we look back and say that was the summer sale nobody believed in.

Elected officials have had a tremendous amount of success in the market recently.

We want to keep you updated on what they’re trading and when so you can leverage that intel as you plan out your own portfolio.

Remember to always DYOR.

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake with Invested Inc.