And how to play each one. ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
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 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏
 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏



 

[Morning Watchlist]

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OIL'S FEAR BID IS GONE, FERC JUST REWIRED THE AI TRADE, AND THE BANKS
ARE ON THE CLOCK                  

_A quick note from Behind the Markets_

Happy Monday.

Wall Street's back at its desk pretending last week was "normal." It
wasn't.

Energy just repriced. The Fed just signaled it's not done. And the
next shoe isn't a meme stock — it's capital requirements, power
bottlenecks, and whether consumers can keep spending when savings get
tapped out.

Let's talk about the week ahead like independent investors — not
like sell-side marketers.

-------------------------

1) OIL'S RISK PREMIUM IS EVAPORATING — AND THAT CHANGES THE
INFLATION TAPE (FAST)

If you want the cleanest "Monday morning" macro signal, it's this:

Oil just moved like a war ended.

Brent crude dropped BELOW $78 late last week — its lowest level
since early March — as the first tankers crossed the Strait of
Hormuz again and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iraq prepared to
restart halted output. Crude has now erased nearly all the gains from
the conflict, down roughly 38% FROM ITS APRIL PEAK.

Here's why you should care even if you never touch an energy stock.
Lower energy prices can cool headline inflation quickly. That changes
the Fed narrative, the bond market narrative, and the "soft landing"
story. It also changes what breaks next — because lower energy
doesn't magically fix credit, refinancing, or the consumer.

The contrarian angle: Wall Street will sell this as "risk-on."
Sometimes it is. But sometimes it's just a shift in where the pressure
shows up. If energy drops while core inflation stays sticky, you can
get the worst mix: bonds still tight, but the commodity hedge is gone.

So who actually _benefits_ from crude falling? Not the producers —
the refiners. When crude (the input) drops faster than gasoline and
diesel (the output), the spread in between widens. And that spread is
where refiners make their money.

COMPANY: VALERO ENERGY (SYM: VLO)
One of the largest independent U.S. refiners; turns crude into
gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel

Valero runs roughly 3 million barrels a day across 14 refineries, and
it makes money on the CRACK SPREAD — the gap between what it pays
for crude and what it gets for refined products. Falling crude on the
back of Hormuz normalization, right as summer driving season props up
gasoline and diesel demand, is close to an ideal setup. Q1 2026
already showed it: refining operating income swung to $1.8 BILLION
from a loss a year earlier, and EPS of $4.22 crushed estimates.

VLO currently trades around $253, near the upper end of its range,
with analyst targets clustered nearby and crack spreads that several
analysts expect to push refining earnings to multi-year highs. The
honest caveat: refining is brutally cyclical and margin-driven. If
crude _rises_ again on a Hormuz setback, or if a demand scare hits,
the crack spread compresses and VLO falls with it. This is a margin
bet, not a buy-and-forget. But of all the ways to play oil rolling
over, owning the refiner beats owning the barrel.

BOTTOM LINE: Oil down is not automatically stocks up. Watch whether
the "inflation relief" gets swallowed by tighter financial conditions
anyway.

-------------------------

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-------------------------

2) FERC JUST MOVED: AI DATA CENTERS ARE GETTING A GRID FAST LANE —
AND SOMEONE ELSE EATS THE BILL

AI isn't a software story anymore. It's an industrial buildout with a
political bill attached.

On June 18, FERC voted UNANIMOUSLY to issue "show-cause" orders to the
six largest U.S. regional grid operators — PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO,
ISO-NE, and NYISO — forcing them to justify or rewrite how big new
loads like AI data centers connect to the transmission system.
Crucially, the orders push LARGE-LOAD CUSTOMERS TO BEAR MORE OF THE
INTERCONNECTION UPGRADE COSTS rather than spreading them across
ordinary ratepayers, with compliance filings due in 60 days.

This is the part Wall Street keeps skipping. The grid can't absorb a
surge in load growth without upgrades. Upgrades mean costs. Costs mean
a fight over who pays.

If regulators force data centers to pay "cost to serve," the buildout
slows and concentrates in places with existing capacity. If they push
costs onto ratepayers, you get backlash — and eventually rules.
Either way, the "AI trade" gets less dreamy and more regulated.

And either way, somebody has to actually build and sell the hardware.
That's the boring, high-conviction angle.

COMPANY: HUBBELL (SYM: HUBB)
Electrical and utility grid equipment — transformers, switchgear,
connectors, and distribution gear

Hubbell sits right on the choke point this FERC order is about. Its
Utility Solutions arm makes the transmission and distribution
equipment — the grid hardware that has to get built and installed
before a single new data center can interconnect. As the buildout
accelerates and the interconnection queue gets worked down, the demand
flows straight to suppliers like Hubbell. The company just closed a $3
BILLION ACQUISITION OF NSI INDUSTRIES on June 9, deepening its
electrical-products portfolio.

HUBB currently trades around $485, with a 52-week range of roughly
$386 to $566 and analyst targets averaging in the mid-$500s. The
business throws off real cash — over $5.8 billion in revenue,
mid-teens net margins, and a long dividend track record. The caveat:
it's a premium-valued industrial (high-20s P/E) that's already run
hard on the grid theme, so it'll pull back if the AI-capex narrative
cools. But unlike the model-makers, Hubbell sells a physical product
the grid literally cannot expand without.

BOTTOM LINE: The highest-conviction AI angle right now is boring:
power equipment, grid services, and the bottlenecks that decide which
projects actually get built.

3) NEXT WEEK'S REAL CATALYST FOR BANKS: STRESS TEST RESULTS + CAPITAL
RETURN POLITICS

Retail investors still underestimate how policy-driven bank stocks
are. Not just Fed policy. Regulatory policy.

The Fed will publish the 2026 bank stress test results on WEDNESDAY,
JUNE 24, AT 4 P.M. ET, covering 32 large lenders against a severe
global recession scenario — one that models 10% unemployment, a 30%
home-price decline, and a brutal 39% DROP IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
VALUES.

Here's the nuance Wall Street will gloss over: the Fed has already
said this year's results WON'T CHANGE CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS — stress
capital buffers are frozen through 2027 while it overhauls the test.
So the test won't _mechanically_ force capital changes. But it still
shapes perception: stress outcomes inform how much capital banks feel
comfortable returning, capital return shapes the multiple the market
pays, and in a market where growth is expensive again, "boring"
buybacks and dividends become a bigger deal.

Also: commercial real estate is still the slow-moving train wreck
nobody wants to price cleanly. So you get this weird setup — bank
stocks can rally on capital-return optimism while the underlying
credit cycle keeps deteriorating under the hood.

That divergence is exactly what independent investors can exploit: by
being selective, and by refusing to average down into obvious
landmines. Which means favoring the fortress over the fragile.

COMPANY: JPMORGAN CHASE (SYM: JPM)
Largest U.S. bank; diversified money-center with a fortress balance
sheet and minimal stress-test risk

When the question is "who sails through a severe-recession stress test
and keeps returning capital," JPMorgan is the default answer. It's the
most diversified, best-capitalized bank in the country — consumer
banking, investment banking, and asset management all under one roof
— which is exactly the profile that absorbs a CRE shock better than
a regional concentrated in office loans. Q1 2026 net income came in
around $16.4 BILLION with EPS of $5.94, beating estimates.

JPM currently trades around $331, just off an all-time high near $338,
and pays a dividend it just keeps raising (next ex-date in early
July). The honest caveat: at a record high and a premium book-value
multiple, you're paying up for quality — there's little "margin of
safety" in the price, and a genuine credit downturn would still ding
even the strongest bank. But the whole point of this section is to own
the fortress, not the fragile regional sitting on a pile of office
paper. JPM is the fortress.

BOTTOM LINE: Stress tests are a headline. The real question is whether
capital-return optimism is masking the next wave of credit pain.

-------------------------

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BECAUSE ONCE THE TRAP SNAPS SHUT, IT'LL BE TOO LATE TO ESCAPE.

-------------------------

4) THE DATA THAT CAN HIT MARKETS HARDEST: CORE PCE + "THE CONSUMER
FINALLY CRACKS" TELLS

This is the week the market stops talking about "the Fed meeting" and
starts talking about "the Fed's next move."

The main event is CORE PCE — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge —
due later this week. If core PCE runs hot, the market hears one word:
hike.

But don't just watch the inflation print. Watch the consumer mechanics
underneath it. Here's the anti-Wall-Street checklist. If spending is
holding up because savings are falling, that's not strength — that's
a fuse burning. If delinquencies tick up while stocks levitate, that's
not "resilience" — that's lag. And if small caps can't refinance
cheaply, "good GDP" won't save them.

This is where self-directed investors think like a credit investor
instead of a headline trader. And it points to a specific kind of
business: the one that _gains_ when the consumer gets squeezed and
starts trading down.

COMPANY: WALMART (SYM: WMT)
Largest U.S. retailer; defensive, necessity-driven, and a prime
beneficiary when shoppers trade down

When savings thin out and budgets tighten, shoppers don't stop
spending — they shift it. They trade down from specialty and
department stores to value retail, and they buy more groceries and
essentials. Walmart is the biggest beneficiary of that exact behavior,
and it has been steadily winning higher-income shoppers, too. It's the
closest thing to a "consumer cracks" hedge that still participates if
the consumer holds up.

WMT currently trades around $117. The honest caveat: it's a defensive
name trading at a rich multiple for a retailer, so it's not "cheap,"
and a genuinely strong consumer would let flashier discretionary names
outrun it. But in the precise scenario this section is warning about
— sticky inflation plus a fraying consumer — Walmart is built to
take share, not lose it.

BOTTOM LINE: The market can survive hot inflation or slow growth. What
it can't survive is both — especially with leverage in the system.

-------------------------

_This has been disseminated on behalf of Banzai International_

BNZI GAINS MOMENTUM AS A ZACKS BUY RATING, STRATEGIC AI EXPANSION,
COST REDUCTION INITIATIVES, AND ENTERPRISE GROWTH CATALYSTS BEGIN
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attention following its recent Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) upgrade, driven by
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opportunities, and operational improvements.

The company currently maintains gross margins above 80%, serves more
than 150,000 customers, and management has taken significant steps to
strengthen the business through a $5.5 million annualized cost
reduction program, debt reduction efforts, and a strategic alliance
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-------------------------

_BEFORE YOU GO_

Contrarian question for the week:

If oil is rolling over and Wall Street is cheering "disinflation"…
why are long rates still acting like they don't believe it?

That tension is where Monday's real trade setups will come from.

We are issuing this disclosure in compliance with Section 17(b) of the
Securities Act, which requires us to disclose any compensation
received or expected to be received in cash or in kind in connection
with the purchase or sale of any security.

We would like to inform you that we expect to receive compensation in
connection with the purchase or sale of the securities of Banzai
International, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNZI). The compensation consists of up to
$8,750 and will be received from Sideways Frequency.

This communication should not be considered as an endorsement of the
securities of adviser Banzai International, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNZI) and we
are not responsible for any errors or omissions in any information
provided about the securities of Banzai International, Inc. (NASDAQ:
BNZI).

We encourage you to conduct your own due diligence and research before
making any investment decisions. You should also consult with a
financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

This disclosure is made as of 06/22/2026

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