Week in Review: SPCX, Iran, Warsh's Fed, and the Triple Witching That Closed the Quarter's Loudest Week

I do not write a weekly review most weeks. Most weeks do not earn one. This one did.

Between Monday's open and Friday's close, the tape absorbed the largest IPO in market history, a US–Iran interim accord that drained the Hormuz risk premium out of crude, Kevin Warsh's first FOMC with a hawkish dot plot and a five-task-force overhaul of the Federal Reserve, and a triple-witching expiry with the freshest mega-cap chain on the board.

Any one of those moves a quarter. Stacked into five sessions, they reset the second-half playbook. Here is the week in one place — what happened, what worked, what did not, and what I am carrying into next week.

SPCX opened the week at a $1.6T cap after Friday's 19% debut and added another 8% on Monday as institutional flow that missed the IPO chased the print into the close. The float is small relative to the demand, and that asymmetry was the entire story.

Crude was the other side of the same weekend. WTI lost 3.7% and tagged the 200-day around $80.73 on the first credible reporting that the US and Iran had moved a draft accord to within signing distance. The Hormuz premium that had carried the tape since spring started bleeding out in real time.

The space basket bifurcated immediately. RKLB caught a KeyBanc Overweight upgrade and ran into its confirmed June 22 Nasdaq-100 inclusion. ASTS, LUNR, and RDW underperformed — capital that wanted space exposure was in SPCX and RKLB, not in the cohort.

Cboe listed SPCX options on day three — exceptionally fast for a fresh IPO, and a direct signal that institutional demand had cleared every threshold the exchange tracks. Implied vol on the first weekly printed rich because no sell-side desk wanted to be short gamma on a name with zero realized history.

The headlines floated a $400 gamma-squeeze case. The mechanics that would actually produce one — short-dated calls bought aggressively, dealers caught net short, hedge buying into a thin tape — required two sessions of price discovery before anyone could read the dealer book honestly. The right posture was defined risk, not chase.

Crude crawled back to ~$80.10 in Asian hours as Trump put the Iran signing on the calendar for Sunday and said Hormuz would 'completely open' once it landed. The 200-day held on the first test.

Kevin Warsh held the funds rate, abstained from the dot plot, and announced five task forces to overhaul the Federal Reserve — communications, the balance sheet, the data framework, jobs/productivity, and the inflation framework. The dots from the rest of the committee turned hawkish, with one additional hike back on the table for 2026 and only one cut left in the strip.

Markets did not love it. The S&P closed -1.21%, the Nasdaq -1.34%, the 10-year yield ripped, and SPCX gave back roughly 5% as the long-duration trade came under pressure. The independence question — whether a Warsh-led Fed is structurally more political than the institution markets had priced — got asked all afternoon and did not get a clean answer.

The Wednesday print was the inflection. Until Wednesday, the week's tape was a momentum tape. After Wednesday, it was a discipline tape.

ASTS's BlueBird 8–10 satellites flew on Falcon 9 — the biggest single ASTS catalyst of the year and a near-doubling of network throughput. The launch went clean. The stock did not bid. Capital wanted RKLB and SPCX, not the cohort, and a successful launch into a non-receptive tape is information: the rotation inside the basket is real.

RKLB paused for the first time all week into the Nasdaq-100 inclusion print teed up for Monday's open. The mechanical bid from QQQ and every Nasdaq-100 tracker is still in front of it. The discretionary bid that has been front-running it took the day off.

Brent drifted under $77 as Versailles delivered an interim signing on the early side of the calendar. The market read it as one less geopolitical tail, not as a euphoria event.

Triple witching with the freshest mega-cap chain on the board, a fully repriced crude curve, and a hawkish FOMC two sessions in the rearview. Vol expanded into the open and compressed into the close as dealers ran the books flat for the weekend.

SPCX stabilized in the high-$160s after the Wednesday give-back, with the first weekly chain expiring without the gamma-squeeze loop the headlines chased. That is not bearish — it is the chain telling you the institutional bid is real but disciplined, and the marginal buyer is no longer a momentum trader.

RKLB held its bid into Monday's inclusion. The relative-strength longs I have been carrying in healthcare, quality cyclicals, and AI infrastructure closed the week green against a red index — exactly what rotation tape is supposed to do.

S&P 500: down on the week, with the entire give-back coming in the two sessions after the FOMC.

Nasdaq: down harder than the S&P, with long-duration tech leading the decline and the SPCX give-back amplifying it.

10-year Treasury yield: up sharply on the FOMC, the highest weekly close in over a month.

Brent / WTI: down meaningfully on the week as the Hormuz premium unwound; Brent printed under $77 by Friday.

SPCX: net up on the week despite the Wednesday give-back. Day-one chain expired without the squeeze loop.

RKLB: outperformed on three consecutive analyst upgrades and the confirmed Nasdaq-100 inclusion for Monday.

ASTS / LUNR / RDW: underperformed the cohort. A successful Falcon 9 launch did not bid ASTS — that is the read.

Worked: not chasing SPCX day one. Not selling vol into the first listed expiry. Holding the RKLB I added Friday. Staying flat at the crude 200-day instead of pressing the short. Carrying relative-strength longs in healthcare and AI infrastructure rather than rotating into the chase trade.

Did not work: the assumption coming into the week that the FOMC would be procedural. Warsh's task-force announcement was not procedural — it was a structural repricing of how this Fed will communicate, and the dot plot underlined it. Anyone positioned for a sleepy hold paid for it.

Open questions: whether the Warsh-era independence discount is a one-week reaction or a regime change, whether ASTS gets a delayed bid on the BlueBird deployment data, and how the SPCX float behaves once the IPO lockup math is fully priced.

RKLB: hold into the Nasdaq-100 inclusion print, reload on the first pullback to the breakout.

SPCX: no chase. Defined-risk spreads only, sized to the second-week chain.

Crude: flat. The Hormuz premium is out. The next directional view is a function of OPEC and the demand side, not the geopolitical side.

Rates: positioned for the curve to stay flatter for longer. A Warsh Fed that talks task forces is a Fed that is not in a hurry to cut.

Relative-strength core: healthcare, quality cyclicals, AI infrastructure. The rotation that started two weeks ago survived the loudest week of the year. That is the trade.

Cash: modestly higher than I would normally carry into a Monday. Five catalysts in five sessions earns the right to start the next week patient.

Most weeks the tape gives you one real signal and four head fakes. This week gave you four real signals, and the head fake was thinking any of them would be neatly contained.

The setup into the second half is cleaner than it was on Monday morning. The IPO is priced, the war premium is out, the Fed has shown its hand, and the rotation inside the cohort is no longer ambiguous.

I will be back on the tape Monday with the RKLB inclusion print and a fresh read on whether the Warsh dot plot was a one-meeting message or the start of a regime.