Ingram's June 2026

IN A NUTSHELL

by Ken Herman

Up, Up, And Away!!

With a new pilot at the helm, how will the Fed navigate rates?

The Fed Factor

Earlier this month, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. Pause on that number for a second. For most of financial history, a billion dollars was an almost incompre hensible number. The entire U.S. economy did not cross the $1-trillion mark until 1969 (the year we landed men on the moon). The first trillion-dollar market cap for a single stock came in 2018, when Apple crossed the threshold. That’s when we became aware of many billionaires, mostly from the techno- logy sector. The first person to be worth $100 billion was Bill Gates, in 1999. Now, one man is apparently worth a tril- lion dollars, as Musk’s SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share. Then SpaceX opened well above that mark and ran as high as $168 before closing near $161. As of this writing, that trad-

The Federal Reserve can obvi ously also impact markets, as done in late 2018 by over-tightening, or in 2022 with belated tightening. It looks like the next big swing in the stock market may come from the Fed and its new Fed chairman, who has ideas that are very different from predecessor Jerome Powell) about how to manage the Fed’s balance sheet and monetary policy. While it may be pointless to spec ulate ahead of time on the timing

ing value is up to approximately $200 per share, pushing Musk’s personal stake past the trillion-dollar line (on paper at least). This Time, It’s Just One Guy Keep in mind that when Apple became the first publicly traded company in his tory worth a trillion dollars, it did not represent a single individual—it was a com- pany with 42 years of product growth, hundreds of thousands of employees, a global supply chain and tens of billions in annual profit. Surprisingly, now one man is worth as much as $1 trillion! However, it should be noted that a trillion in 2018 dollars would have had substantially more purchasing power than a trillion in 2026 dollars. Obviously, the

of future events, my guess is that the Fed will wait three to six months to get a handle on any significant sup- ply-side inflation caused by the Iran war, and then it may manage its balance sheet oper- ations with greater gusto. Considering the fear of looking too political, the Fed should probab ly wait until after the November elec-

The Trump admin istration went from bombing threats with Iran to, for lack of a better term, hope for peace. If that peace holds, we may have just witnessed a correction, not a true downturn.

strength of our dollar has shrunk significantly since 2018. This market looks to me today like maybe a best-case scenario. The Trump administration went from bombing threats with Iran to, for lack of a better term, hope for peace. “We are about to sign the truce papers this week- end,” he said before the signing agreement in France. If the truce holds, the market decline we experienced in the recent two weeks will only qualify as a correction, given no further spikes in oil or Treasury yields. The two main threats in the U.S. power structure— those capable of disproportionately pushing the market around—are the Federal Reserve and the president himself. As leaders of monetary and fiscal policy their actions can cause huge swings, both up and down, even in a good econ omy. The Trump administration did that with raised tariffs last year, and to a lesser degree with the Iran war this year (the timing of which could possibly have been postponed until after the November midterm elections).

tions. However, there is no law saying when the Fed can act, as it is a judgement call coming from the Fed, whose independence I fully sup port. In the meantime, my guess is that this market rally continues, and it will probably create fresh all time highs in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 this summer. If there is no active or renewed war in Iran hanging over the market, the index es in my opinion should also broad en out.

Ken Herman served as the Managing Director of Bank of America Global Capital Markets and was the Mayor of and served on the City Council in

Glendora, Calif. E | Editorial@

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June 2026