Moody’s finally did it. The last of the big three credit agencies stepped into the role of financial coach and gave Uncle Sam the full Dave Ramsey treatment. Picture the U.S. calling into the show: “Hey Dave, I make $4.9 trillion a year, but I spend $6.6 trillion, have $34 trillion in debt, and just took out another loan to pay off my last loan. What should I do?” And Moody’s (channeling Dave) just sighed and said, “Brother, you need to start eating rice and beans… and cut up the credit card.”

Yep, Moody’s officially downgraded the U.S. government from its pristine Aaa to a slightly less shiny Aa1. Not exactly a shocker, considering we’re running a $1.7 trillion deficit and spending over $870 billion a year just on interest payments. That’s more than we spend on defense… and definitely more than Dave would approve of. If America were one of his callers, he’d be yelling, “You’re broke because you act like Congress!”

The agency cited “rising deficits” and “elevated interest costs” as the final straws. In other words: you can’t keep leasing Teslas and ordering DoorDash when you’ve maxed out every credit line. Dave would say it’s time to sell the car, pick up a second job, and “live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else.” But instead, Washington’s debating whether to finance another round of spending with yet another round of borrowing.

Moody’s just said what every spreadsheet has been screaming for years: it’s time to get on the debt snowball, cut the nonsense, and start working 100-hour weeks like you're way behind on baby step two. Maybe that means Nancy Pelosi and Dan Crenshaw start picking up Saturday shifts at Chick-fil-A… anything to help us taxpayers chip away at the $34 trillion tab.

But to no one's surprise, Markets woke up this morning and initially acted like the sky was falling. Dow futures dropped more than 300 points premarket, and Treasury yields spiked… 10-year climbing past 4.5%, and the 30-year vaulting over 5% for the first time since 2023. But just when it looked like the bears were out in full force, the bulls charged through the gates. By the close, the Dow was up 0.2%, the S&P was basically flat, and the Nasdaq had an early 1% drop to finish only slightly in the red.

UnitedHealth, on the other hand, was the comeback kid of the day. After plunging 32% over the past two weeks amid a DOJ investigation, suspended guidance, and a CEO switch-up, the stock rallied 8%, adding to a two-day surge of 14%. It was the kind of bounce that made traders forget the company’s fundamentals for a hot minute. That said, it was a bad day for finance bros… Tesla and Palantir got dragged down with the rest of tech. Tesla slipped over 3% as the “Elon’s back” rally lost steam. 

Palantir also dropped more than 3% despite hosting high-profile NATO events and continuing its government contract spree. Oh, and Reddit got wrecked after Wells Fargo downvoted it, citing AI-powered Google search as an existential threat to its traffic. All in all, the stock fell more than 4%.

Over in the AI chip world, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang made headlines at Computex in Taipei by revealing the China chip ban has already vaporized $15 billion in potential sales. Worse, Nvidia wrote off $5.5 billion in inventory… the largest write-off in tech history. Huang called it “deeply painful” (I’m sure he’ll be fine).

And what do you know? Bitcoin, ended up floating above $105,000. Coinbase, fresh off its inclusion in the S&P 500, helped power the rally as laser eyes all over Twitter celebrated the win.

With a quiet economic calendar ahead and retail earnings from Target and Home Depot coming up, the only question now is whether rising yields will crash the party… or if Wall Street keeps pretending the U.S. just got its credit score dinged at a used car lot and not by Moody’s.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.