Brussels Edition: Franco-German friction

Germany seeks to salvage plans for a new fighter jet after a partnership with France crumbled. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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Welcome to the Brussels Edition. I’m Gian Volpicelli, a European technology reporter based in Brussels, bringing you the latest from the EU. Make sure you’re signed up. The €100 billion FCAS fighter-jet program was meant to showcase European unity at a time of mounting global security threats and increasing doubts about the US commitment to the transatlantic alliance. It was ultimately scuppered after almost a decade of stuttering progress by a bitter feud between the project’s French and German partners that even intervention by President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz failed to resolve. The Future Combat Air System, which also involved Spain, was finally put out of its misery this week. Germany has been holding “talks with various stakeholders” to try to salvage plans for the next-generation European fighter aircraft, according to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. A rendering of the Future Combat Air System. Source: Airbus Germany could partner with Spain and Sweden to proceed with the initiative without France, or alternatively join the GCAP fighter project led by Britain, Italy and Japan. The government in Berlin may also ramp up purchases of F-35s. Germany already frustrated France in 2022 when it announced a €10 billion purchase of 35 of the US-made fighter jets instead of a European alternative. Pistorius admitted that the demise of FCAS “wasn’t really a surprise,” saying there had been signs of disagreement between French defense giant Dassault Aviation and aircraft manufacturer Airbus for some time. Germany and France would continue to deepen their defense cooperation in other areas, he said, for example, by jointly developing deep strike precision weapons to deter Russia. A coalition of eight aerospace and defense companies led by Airbus has pitched the idea of an alternative project to develop a new European fighter jet, according to the FT. The initiative, dubbed Team Gen 6, could potentially be pitched this week at the ILA Air Show in Berlin, the newspaper reported. The consortium’s members – Airbus, Autoflug, Diehl Defence, Hensoldt, Liebherr, MBDA, MTU Aero Engines and Rohde & Schwarz – have outlined the proposal in a letter to the German government, hinting that the companies could continue working with Spain as well as Sweden as an additional partner, the FT said. The Latest Apple announced it won’t launch Siri AI on iPhones, Apple Watches or iPads in the EU. The company said it had proposed solutions that would make the revamped digital assistant compliant with the bloc’s antitrust rules, but the Commission did not accept its suggestions. Europe’s imports of diesel and jet fuel stagnated for a second month in May as the Iran war grinds on. Shipments into the EU and the UK were down by more than a third from a year earlier. The US government urged NATO allies to use defense spending to replace gear from China’s Huawei in their networks and critical infrastructure. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is preparing to announce a ban on under-16s using social media within days, following parents’ response to a government consultation. Seen and Heard on Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina discussed the lender’s offer to buy Italian rival Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena for €30.6 billion in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “The only real offer now in the market is the Intesa Sanpaolo offer,” Messina said, dismissing Banco BPM’s rival proposal of a merger of equals as merely a “love letter.” He said a successful takeover would position his bank to engage in deals across Europe. Chart of the Day China’s imports from the EU dropped for the first time in three months in May, again swelling a trade imbalance that’s put it on a collision course with officials in Brussels. Though exports to the EU slowed and grew 7.6%, the weakest since October, China’s trade surplus with the bloc still widened slightly from April to stay above $30 billion. Coming up EU telecoms and digital ministers are gathering in Luxembourg. Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis is in Finland, where he will meet with President Alexander Stubb. Dubravka Šuica, Commissioner for the Mediterranean, will hold a call with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa tomorrow. Final Thought Photo illustration: 731; Photos: Bloomberg (1), Getty Images (5) Ten years after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, polls regularly show a majority in favor of rejoining the bloc. Politicians are increasingly open about their ideas for reestablishing bonds across the English Channel. But undoing the damage won’t be easy. None of the options short of a complete reversal of Brexit would restore more than half of the output lost by Britain breaking away from its largest trading partner, according to a new Bloomberg Economics analysis. Like the Brussels Edition? Don’t keep it to yourself. Colleagues and friends can sign up here. How are we doing? We want to hear what you think about this newsletter. Let our Brussels bureau chief know. We’re improving your newsletter experience and we’d love your feedback. If something looks off, help us fine-tune your experience by reporting it here. Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg’s Brussels Edition newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, sign up here to get it in your inbox. Unsubscribe Bloomberg.com Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue New York, NY 10022 |

The Rate Hike Risk Hiding in the May Jobs Report By Larry Benedict, editor, Trading With Larry Benedict On the surface, last Friday’s jobs report looked picture-perfect. Nonfarm payrolls data showed the economy added 172,000 jobs in May on top of April’s upwardly revised 179,000 figure. It comfortably beat expectations of 85,000. The labor market remains incredibly resilient. Unemployment is holding steady at 4.3%, while last week’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed job openings surged by 731,000 to 7.62 million – the biggest increase since November 2024. Add in recent data showing that both the manufacturing and services sectors continue to expand, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the economic outlook seems bright. But investors didn’t rejoice at this good news. Last Friday, the stock market experienced a dramatic sell-off… (If you enjoy this e-letter, I’d be very grateful if you recommended it to a friend. You can click here to forward it. Thank you!) Recommended Links The Oil "Red Zone" Is Coming. It Could Wipe You Out. The International Energy Agency is warning of a coming "red zone" in the oil markets, and it could be brutal for the U.S. economy. But if you see it coming, you could “skim” off big bucks. [ Get the Facts ] Do NOT Buy Shares of SpaceX Before Seeing This The New York Times called the upcoming SpaceX IPO “a generational moneymaking event.” But please DO NOT BUY shares of SpaceX before you click here and see Jeff's new Elon Musk update. Jeff hopes you see this before the IPO because after June 12, it could be too late. Resilient Economy = No Rate Cuts Here’s the thing about the stock market. What seems like good news on the economic front can spell trouble for stocks. For much of this year, the stock market has assumed that inflation would gradually ease. That would give the Federal Reserve room to cut interest rates. Lower interest rates are generally a good thing for the stock market, as it makes it easier for companies to borrow money and expand their businesses. (It also makes alternatives like parking your money in T-bills less attractive.) Expectations for slowing inflation remained intact despite oil prices surging through the $100 level when conflict broke out in the Middle East. Folks thought that the hostilities would be short-lived. Plus, Kevin Warsh just became the new Fed chair. As Trump’s pick, many believed he would push for lower rates. (Note that his first FOMC meeting as chair is just eight days away.) In response, investors jumped back into the AI trade, pushing indexes to a succession of new highs. But a stronger-than-expected economy complicates the picture around rates… When businesses are hiring and economic activity is strong, it’s hard for the Fed to consider cutting rates. Plus, there’s no evidence yet that inflation is under control. What’s more, inflation could easily accelerate if hostilities in the Middle East escalate, as we saw over the weekend. That’s what suddenly caught the market’s attention last Friday. Rates aren’t going down anytime soon. Instead, they could move higher… Tune in to Trading With Larry Live Each week, Market Wizard Larry Benedict goes live to share his thoughts on what’s impacting the markets. Whether you’re a novice or expert trader, you won’t want to miss Larry’s insights and analysis. Even better, it’s free to watch. Simply visit us on YouTube at 8:30 a.m. ET, Monday through Thursday, to catch the latest. The Trouble With Higher Interest Rates Following Friday’s data, U.S. Treasury yields moved sharply higher as traders reassessed the outlook around rates. Investors are now factoring in a 46.7% chance of a 0.25% rate hike by the end of the year, with a 22.1% chance of a 0.5% increase. If oil surges again, putting more pressure on inflation, those odds could increase further. Clearly, the market’s narrative around interest rates is changing. That’s important, despite all the hype around AI, SpaceX, and other potential IPOs. Higher rates increase borrowing costs and pressure business margins. They also make lofty stock valuations harder to justify, which is especially true for the AI stocks that have driven much of the rally. No doubt Friday’s sell-off was painful for a lot of folks. But it was also a timely reminder that markets can’t live on hype alone. At some point, things must come back to fundamentals. So if oil, inflation, and yields all stay higher than investors anticipated, there will be a reckoning. Stocks can’t keep moving higher when the underlying fundamentals change. Sometimes good news isn’t good news at all. As we saw on Friday, sometimes it forces the market to confront a reality that it had been trying to ignore. Happy Trading, Larry Benedict Editor, Trading With Larry Benedict Free Trading Resources Have you checked out Larry’s free trading resources on his website? It contains a full trading glossary to help kickstart your trading career – at zero cost to you. Just click here to check it out. The Opportunistic Trader 1125 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201 www.opportunistictrader.com To ensure our emails continue reaching your inbox, please add our email address to your address book. This editorial email containing advertisements was sent to reunisoft.cryptonews@blogger.com because you subscribed to this service. To stop receiving these emails, click here. The Opportunistic Trader welcomes your feedback and questions. But please note: The law prohibits us from giving personalized advice. To contact Customer Service, call toll free Domestic/International: 1-888-208-6550, Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm ET, or email us here. © 2026 Omnia Research, LLC. All rights reserved. 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With its IPO looming, we can finally get a closer look at SpaceX's operations...

Not rendering correctly? View this e-mail as a web page here. Here's What We Know About SpaceX By Rob Spivey, director of research, Altimetry For decades, Elon Musk's satellite darling has been something of a mystery... Most folks have heard plenty about SpaceX at this point. Its Starlink service launched satellites into space to bring Wi-Fi to previously underserved areas. And then there's the Blue Origin NS-31 flight, which sent celebrities like singer Katy Perry into suborbital space. But up to this point, all we knew about SpaceX was what Musk told us. That has changed, though... SpaceX is set to go public via an initial public offering ("IPO") in just a few days. It will trade as Space Exploration Technologies under the ticker SPCX. In preparation, the company published its investor prospectus (called an S-1 form) at the end of May. And that means we can finally get a closer look at SpaceX's operations. We kicked things off yesterday with an overview of each business unit – space, AI, and connectivity. (If you haven't checked it out yet, we recommend starting there.) Today, we'll take our analysis a step further... looking at each segment's future prospects – and what they should be worth. Let's start with the space segment – SpaceX's monopoly... You know from yesterday's edition that this unit services more than 80% of all space-bound launches in the U.S. It works with government agencies for trips to the International Space Station. And it helps other companies get their satellites into space. As a "toll collector," SpaceX benefits from, well, more stuff in space. That said, this is a pretty asset-heavy business. It has to operate complex rockets and keep its launchpads ready for takeoff. This means it needs to fund significant, ongoing research and development (R&D) and capital expenditures just to stay in the game. Recall that the company's space segment reached a respectable 12% Uniform return on assets ("ROA") last year, which puts it at the corporate average. As volumes increase, profitability should notch a slight improvement. Based on what we've seen from the S-1 and analyst research, Uniform ROA should rise to 17% this year. At the same time, the global space-launch market is set to double or triple by 2030. For SpaceX to keep its market share, it'll have to grow its asset base by about 30% per year. When you put those numbers together, it looks like this... We take these ROA and asset growth estimates and work backward to arrive at a valuation for the business. We'll cover this process more in-depth tomorrow... But for now, all you need to know is that the space segment is worth about $125 billion based on our calculations. Next, let's look at SpaceX's biggest question mark... The AI segment (also known as xAI) is losing money. It's tough valuing an unprofitable business... because it's only worth something if it eventually finds a way to make money. But we can start by considering what we already know... Recommended Links: REVEALED: A Tiny Company at the Heart of the SpaceX IPO Stansberry Research's most successful analyst broke four years of public silence last week to share what he calls the most important buy call of his career. He believes the looming G7 summit could push a small, virtually unknown company onto the front page of every financial-news outlet... and reshape the entire SpaceX IPO. Watch the full briefing here. A Melt Down Could Be Right Around the Corner Marc Chaikin, the Wall Street legend who called every major market turn since the COVID-19 crash, has identified a single point of failure that could bring the AI market crashing down. This situation has already taken trillions from investors in AI giants like Salesforce, Oracle, and even blue-chip Microsoft. So, BEFORE you buy a single share of SpaceX, make sure you see Marc's newest market forecast and warning. This segment's first step toward profitability is already in the works. SpaceX just agreed to lease data-center capacity to AI competitor Anthropic for $15 billion per year. That's expected to help SpaceX cut its losses significantly by 2027... but it's a big question mark from there. We have no doubt that the AI unit will keep growing. Its asset base was already up a staggering 95% last year. We're short enough on data-center capacity that AI companies will pay basically any price. We already saw Anthropic bite... and we know SpaceX is still investing in new data centers. We expect roughly 35% annual asset growth in the future. It all comes down to its profitability... Considering SpaceX owns huge data centers, runs a social media network, and is developing a large language model, the business is clearly trying to be a hyperscaler like Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT). Those are all great businesses... They averaged a 29% Uniform ROA last year. So that's what we're giving SpaceX credit for. If it does become a hyperscaler that can compete with today's biggest players, the AI business could be worth as much as $600 billion. Take a look... That seems like a best-case scenario for this segment. It will come down to how fast the company can keep growing and signing more customers for its data centers. As for the connectivity business, this one is simple... Connectivity is another name for SpaceX's Starlink service. The more customers it signs up, the more valuable it becomes. This business brings in about $11.4 billion in revenue today. But the investor prospectus notes that it has a $1.6 trillion addressable market. That's basically the value of the entire telecom industry. But we'd pump the brakes on that number. In the developed world, telecom companies already provide high-speed broadband at competitive prices. Starlink isn't going to displace the Comcasts of the world anytime soon. Where Starlink wins is everywhere else. Rural areas and developing markets are underserved because it's expensive to lay fiber-optic cables... not to mention a logistical challenge. Satellites don't have that issue. And with Starlink servicing more than 160 countries, it has a unique opportunity to capture market share around the world. Right now, the company has 90% market share in satellite Internet... and that market is expected to reach $50 billion over the next five years. The cellular market is expected to be around the same, at $46 billion. If we assume it keeps that share, it'll end up with nearly $90 billion of the telecom market. That's enough for the business to grow 34% annually, lifting Uniform ROA to 60%. At those levels of profitability and growth, this segment would also be worth $600 billion. The connectivity business is already well on its way to justifying that valuation. All told, these segments should be worth a combined $1.3 trillion... SpaceX has a monopoly in U.S. space launches. Connectivity is breaking into a $1.6 trillion market in a way nobody else can replicate today. Both are helping fund the AI business through its unprofitable phase. That's not the full story, though. Tomorrow, we'll put it all together... valuing SpaceX as a complete business using two of our favorite Uniform Accounting tools. Be sure to check back. Regards, Rob Spivey June 9, 2026 P.S. Twice in the past 18 months, a small, relatively unknown company became critical to Starlink... and shares exploded. Now, an analyst at our corporate affiliate Stansberry Research believes the same pattern is about to repeat for a third time. He shared all the details a few days ago... Catch the replay here for a limited time. Tell us what you think of this content We value our subscribers' feedback. To help us improve your experience, we'd like to ask you a couple brief questions. Click here to rate this e-mail A publication from You have received this e-mail as part of your subscription to Altimetry Daily Authority. If you no longer want to receive e-mails from Altimetry Daily Authority, click here. Published by Altimetry. You’re receiving this e-mail at reunisoft.cryptonews@blogger.com. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, call (800) 701-9346 (U.S.), 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Eastern time or e-mail info@altimetry.com. Please note: The law prohibits us from giving personalized financial advice. © 2026 Altimetry. All rights reserved. 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