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Kaplan was recently accused of berating and threatening the staff of the couple's production company.

Kaplan was recently accused of berating and threatening the staff of the couple's production company.

This wouldn't be the first time the "Pitt" star reprimanded fans for their "disrespectful" behavior during her Broadway play.

This wouldn't be the first time the "Pitt" star reprimanded fans for their "disrespectful" behavior during her Broadway play.

Market Correction Risk: Why Summer 2026 Looks Risky

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The S&P 500 hit a fresh record high last week. The median stock in the index is sitting 13% below its 52-week peak. That divergence is not a footnote or a curiosity. It’s the loudest warning the market has flashed since the dot-com era, and it’s arriving at the worst possible moment on the calendar. Market correction risk is climbing, and this summer it’s stacked on top of three other forces that almost never converge at the same time.

After three decades of watching market cycles play out, I’ve learned that the dangerous moments are those in which everything looks fine on the surface and rotten underneath. That’s exactly where we are right now. The market correction risk we’re staring at into the summer isn’t driven by a single bearish data point. It’s driven by four of them showing up together, and ignoring any of them would be a costly mistake.

The Breadth Divergence Is As Bad As It Gets

The narrowness of the current rally is not opinion. It is arithmetic.

The S&P 500 has rallied roughly 14% off its late-March washout to a new high near 7,125. Look under the hood, and you find a market hollowed out. The equal-weight S&P 500 has declined about 1% over the same period. The Magnificent Seven is up roughly 10%. The semiconductor index is up 30%. Everything else is sitting on the curb.

That kind of dispersion has only happened a handful of times since 1980. Goldman Sachs’ equity strategy team flagged it directly in a note this week, warning that this level of breadth has historically preceded larger-than-average drawdowns over the following six to twelve months. They’re not the only ones flagging it. Hedge fund net tilt to momentum is sitting near a multi-year high, and gross leverage remains at the upper end of the five-year range. When everyone is positioned the same way and the leadership is two names deep, the unwind is never gentle.

While breadth is the headline. The supporting cast of technical signals is just as ugly.

The 14-day relative strength index on the S&P 500 has spent most of the past three weeks above 70, the threshold that has historically marked overbought conditions. We’ve seen a textbook negative divergence: price made a new high last week while RSI made a lower high. That same pattern showed up at the January 2018 top, the February 2020 top, and the late 2021 peak. None of those were resolved kindly.

The advance-decline line for the broader NYSE has rolled over even as the index pushes higher. The percentage of S&P 500 stocks above their 200-day moving average has dropped to roughly 56%, while the index itself is printing new highs. We saw a similar decline in breadth as the market was advancing, just before the “Liberation Day” selloff in 2025.

The Volatility Index is sitting in the mid-teens, which sounds reassuring until you remember that the VIX was at 12 in January 2020 and 15 the week before the bottom dropped out. Low realized volatility breeds complacency, complacency breeds leverage, and leverage breeds unwinds. We have all three. None of these signals, individually, predicts market correction risk with precision. Together, they identify a market that has used up its margin of safety.

As we have noted before:

“Markets do not crash from euphoric tops. They crash from complacent ones, and right now we have a complacent market with collapsing breadth, deteriorating technicals, and the worst seasonal window of the year staring it in the face.“

Summer Seasonality Is Real, And This Year Is Worse

The “sell in May and go away” cliche gets dismissed every spring by someone who hasn’t bothered to look at the data. The data is unambiguous.

Going back to 1950, the May-through-October window has produced an average S&P 500 return of roughly 1.7%, while the November-through-April window has produced an average return of over 7%. The summer months, specifically June through September, account for the bulk of that weakness, and the historical pattern in years where the market entered May at or near all-time highs is materially worse than the long-run average.

Mathematical statistics support this: $10,000 invested in the market from November to April vastly outperformed the same amount invested from May through October. Interestingly, the max drawdowns are significantly larger during the “Sell In May” periods. Previous major market declines occurred in October 1929, 1987, and 2008.

However, not every summer works out poorly. Historically, there are many periods where “Sell In May” did not work and markets rose. 2020 and 2021 were examples of periods when massive Federal Reserve interventions pushed prices higher in April and the subsequent summer months. However, in April 2022, the decline in prices was sharp as the Fed began an aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes the previous month.

I want to be clear about something. Seasonality alone is not a reason to sell. It’s a backdrop, not a trigger. But when you stack a weak seasonal window on top of collapsing breadth and stretched positioning, you’ve removed the natural support that usually shows up to absorb selling. Buyers thin out in the summer. Volume dries up. Volatility spikes on increasingly small catalysts. That’s the setup we’re walking straight into.

Midterm Election Years Are The Most Volatile Of The Cycle

Here’s a fact that almost no one talks about until it’s too late. Midterm election years are, on average, the worst of the four-year presidential cycle for equity returns and the most volatile by a wide margin. From May through October, the S&P 500 historically delivers its weakest returns of the four-year cycle, with deeper average drawdowns and more frequent corrections than non-election years.

Going back to 1962, the average maximum intra-year drawdown in a midterm election year has been around 17%, materially worse than the roughly 13% average for non-midterm years. The summer and fall of midterm years are particularly rough. The S&P 500 has averaged a peak-to-trough decline of nearly 19% between April and October of midterm election years. Then, almost without exception, the market bottomed in late October and rallied hard into year-end and through the following twelve months.

The pattern is not a coincidence. Policy uncertainty rises into November. Corporate guidance turns conservative, and fiscal posturing in Washington dominates the headlines. Capital markets dislike uncertainty, and there’s no time on the four-year calendar with more of it than the summer leading into midterms. We are now six months from the November vote, and the polling, the policy backdrop, and the geopolitical overhang make this midterm cycle more contentious than most. The historical record is clear: market correction risk runs hottest during this specific window of the four-year cycle.

Iran, Oil, And The Inflation Pipeline

The market has been remarkably good at compartmentalizing the conflict in the Persian Gulf. That works until it doesn’t.

Brent crude is sitting above $109 a barrel, roughlyl 40% above its level on the eve of the conflict. WTI has tracked closely behind and currently sits at ~$102 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz remains a chokepoint for roughly 20% of global oil flows. Any escalation that genuinely threatens that transit lane is a step-function risk for energy prices. As discussed in “Hormuz,“ so far the market has been able to stave off the impacts of higher oil prices. However, there is a clock on that capability. The longer oil prices remain elevated, the greater the risk becomes for the market.

“The duration of the conflict, specifically when the Strait of Hormuz returns to normal shipping traffic, is the single most important variable for every downstream economic and market forecast. Here is how we frame the three scenarios:” – Bull Bear Report

The reason the math gets worse with time is that energy is the cleanest pass-through to inflation. Every $10 sustained increase in oil adds roughly 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points to headline CPI within three months. A similar amount flows into core inflation a quarter later as transportation costs feed through to goods. The Fed has been holding the line on rate cuts for exactly this reason. If the Iran situation worsens, oil pushes through $130 or $140. At that point, the case for any easing this year evaporates entirely, and the case for an actual rate hike re-enters the conversation.

That is not a market that has been priced in. Equity multiples right now are sustained on the assumption that disinflation continues and the Fed eases later this year. Take both of those legs out from under valuations, and the math gets ugly fast.

Managing Market Correction Risk

The honest counterargument is straightforward. AI capital expenditure is the single largest spending cycle the corporate sector has seen in a generation. The latest GDP for Q1 2026 showed that 75% of the growth came from capital expenditures which offset weakness in Personal Consumption which comprises 70% of the calculation.

Furthermore, the hyperscaler earnings continue to come in ahead of expectations, and while the breadth problem is an issue, it can be resolved as easily through a “catch-up” of laggards as a “catch-down” of leaders. That’s a real argument, and we should consider it seriously.

However, there’s a problem with that last argument. A “catch-up” requires a catalyst, and the catalysts on the table right now are not friendly to the laggards. Consumer stocks are the largest weight outside of tech, and oil at these levels is a direct tax on consumer disposable income. Industrials and materials need an improving global growth picture, and the war is doing the opposite. Financials need a steepening yield curve and falling credit spreads, and we have neither. The path to a benign rotation runs through an improvement in the macro backdrop that I do not see arriving in the next sixty days.

The narrow leadership can extend. Goldman’s own work shows the median narrow-breadth episode lasts about three months, with the late-1990s outlier stretching to over two years.

Let me be clear that I am not calling for an imminent crash. I am saying that the conditions for a sharp, violent drawdown are as fully assembled as I have seen them in a long time, and the seasonal calendar is the worst possible place to find out. As

The actionable takeaways are not exotic. They are the basics, applied with discipline.

None of these moves requires timing the top, and none of them requires a bearish call. They require recognizing that the risk-reward at this level is asymmetric in the wrong direction, and behaving accordingly.

As noted above, it is crucial to remember that markets do not crash from euphoric tops, but rather from complacent ones. Currently, that complacency in the market is becoming more obvious, given collapsing breadth, deteriorating technicals, the worst seasonal and political cycles of the year, and an active geopolitical conflict driving energy prices to multi-year highs. Every one of those forces, taken alone, is something I’d flag for clients. Together, they make market correction risk between now and the November election the highest I have seen since early 2022.

I’m not telling you to get out of the market, but I am suggesting that you take some action today to mitigate the risk of tomorrow. Rebalance your portfolio, take profits, and raise cash levels while you can, on your terms.

Let me be clear about what I’m saying and what I’m not. The risks are elevated, but elevated risks are not certainty. Markets can, and often do, exactly the opposite of what every reasonable signal suggests they should, and nothing in this analysis guarantees a correction will arrive this summer. The narrow rally could extend. Iran could de-escalate overnight. The seasonal pattern could break. However, what is dangerous is doing nothing while the risk stack looks like this one.

If the market defies the odds and grinds higher into year-end, yes, you’ll underperform for a stretch. That is a recoverable outcome. Underperformance can be made up through disciplined participation over the next 12 to 24 months. Lost capital cannot. A 30% drawdown requires a 43% rally just to break even, and the math gets uglier the deeper the hole. That is the asymmetry that should drive every decision right now. The investors who survive long market cycles are not the ones who catch every uptick. They are the ones who refuse to be wiped out when the setup turns against them.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 09:30

Man, that's a lot of kids to try and keep straight.

The Red Sox sound about as hopeless as any team in baseball right now as the locker room begins to turn on each other. After trying to put a positive spin on things and firing their stud manager, Alex Cora, Boston looked lost this past weekend against the Houston Astros, mustering just seven runs in...

The "Charlie's Angels" actress and the Good Charlotte Member tied the knot in January 2015 and have since welcomed a daughter and two sons.

The "Charlie's Angels" actress and the Good Charlotte Member tied the knot in January 2015 and have since welcomed a daughter and two sons.

"He does not like that name."

“Proposition 57-–that's all Gavin Newsom. It's affecting us victims and families.”

Hantavirus, which is typically contracted from infected rodents, made headlines in March of last year when it was determined to be the cause of death of Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman's wife. Here's what to know.

It's just the right time to plan what you're giving.

Can The GOP Oust Thune To Get The SAVE America Act Passed?

In 2024, voters handed the Republican Party a trifecta in Washington - the White House, the House, the Senate - and yet one of the most broadly popular pieces of election-integrity legislation in recent memory is collecting dust in the upper chamber.

The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and mandate photo identification to cast a ballot. It has already passed the House, and polls show that voters across party lines, and even racial lines, support it. It reportedly has the votes to pass in the Senate, but it can’t break the 60-vote threshold to end the filibuster. Republicans have called for nuking the filibuster to get it passed, but even that won’t happen because Senate Majority Leader John Thune won’t pick a fight.

Thune’s position on the issue is rather passive. “The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster,” Thune said, presenting the math as immovable fact rather than a leadership challenge.  “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.” Even if true, he hasn’t mounted any visible pressure campaign on fence-sitters. No arm-twisting. No caucus discipline. No public strategy to persuade reluctant senators. 

Democrats, by contrast, are marching in lockstep against the SAVE America Act. Even John Fetterman-who’s broken with his party on Israel, immigration, and the war in Iran-has fallen in line here. That kind of discipline doesn’t happen by accident. Democratic leadership knows how to hold its caucus together, and when it decides to oppose something, it makes sure everyone sticks to the script. 

Thune, by contrast, seems content to wave the flight of surrender on the SAVE America Act. For a majority leader with a mandate from both the White House and the voters, that posture is increasingly difficult to defend.

The frustration on the right is real and growing. Unified Republican control of Washington was supposed to break the logjam on issues exactly like this one - legislation that is popular, straightforward, and central to election integrity. Instead, grassroots conservatives are watching their agenda strangled by Democrat obstruction and Republican spinelessness. 

That raises a serious question: Should Thune be replaced with a more effective Republican as Majority Leader? Replacing leaders isn’t unheard of. In fact, former Rep. Matt Gaetz pulled off exactly this in the House in 2023 - filing a motion to vacate and forcing a floor vote that ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership in a matter of days. 

One member, one motion, and the speaker was gone. 

But the Senate doesn’t work that way. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has been among Thune’s more pointed critics, explained to a user on X that the Senate doesn’t have the same mechanism for removing leadership as the House does. “In the House of Representatives, a tiny number of lawmakers can oust the speaker - at any time. That feature is unique to the House. In the Senate GOP, we don’t even have a rule or procedure for replacing a leader in the middle of a two-year term.”

Lee acknowledged that any five senators can technically force a conference meeting, but quickly threw cold water on the idea that this amounts to any meaningful action. “It is true that under our rules, any five senators can call for a meeting of the entire conference at any time. But in practice, that kind of meeting tends not to materialize unless a solid majority of the conference wants it to happen,” he explained. And even if such a meeting were called and actually held, the obstacles would multiply from there. “To pursue the outcome you’re suggesting, one would have to use that meeting to propose a new procedure for a mid-term leadership swap, and that - at a minimum - would require a majority of the conference to support it. For a whole host of reasons - including the fact that Senator Thune is beloved by colleagues and very popular within the conference - the odds of that happening are literally 0 in 100,000,” Lee concluded.

Thune isn’t going anywhere, and the SAVE America Act remains stuck in limbo. All the while, the clock on the 119th Congress keeps ticking.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 09:15

"The Devil Wears Prada 2" actress Simone Ashley stars in the campaign.

"The Devil Wears Prada 2" actress Simone Ashley stars in the campaign.

The VIP-filled evening included Nicholas Hoult, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Gabrielle Union and more.

The VIP-filled evening included Nicholas Hoult, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Gabrielle Union and more.

The Golden Knights and Ducks are polar opposites.

Congress Sets MKUltra Hearing As CIA Mind-Control Experiments Face Renewed Scrutiny

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The CIA’s MKUltra program, one of the most disturbing chapters in American intelligence history, refuses to fade into obscurity. 

A congressional hearing scheduled for May 13 is thrusting the agency’s decades-old experiments back into the spotlight, raising fresh questions about government secrecy, ethical boundaries, and the protection of individual liberties against unchecked power.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced that the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets will examine the Cold War-era program. The move comes amid recently surfaced documents and persistent claims surrounding the death of a key scientist involved in the work. 

Hearing on May 13. MK Ultra. House Oversight Taskforce. pic.twitter.com/0Sz4filfXi

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) April 29, 2026

What began as a quest for mind-control tools during tense global rivalry has left a legacy of distrust that continues to challenge public faith in intelligence agencies.

Project MKUltra ran primarily from 1953 to 1964 under the CIA’s Office of Technical Services. It encompassed 144 subprojects exploring drugs, hypnosis, isolation, sensory deprivation, and psychological techniques designed to manipulate human behavior for interrogation and other purposes. 

The agency tested these methods on unwitting subjects—including criminals, mental patients, drug addicts, Army soldiers, and ordinary citizens—often without consent or knowledge.

A 1956 internal document even weighed testing substances on foreign nationals but ultimately determined that “unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued.” Most records were destroyed in 1973 on orders from senior CIA officials. 

The program’s existence only became public in 1975 through investigations by the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission, sparking widespread outrage and leading to new congressional oversight of intelligence activities.

The National Security Archive later summarized the scope of the abuses against “subjects, often US citizens, who frequently had no idea what was being done to them.”

One case that continues to fuel skepticism involves Dr. Frank Olson, a biological warfare scientist. On November 19, 1953, Olson was one of at least eight men covertly dosed with LSD during a CIA meeting. Nine days later, he fell from the 13th floor of a New York City hotel room. The death was officially ruled a suicide, but family members and others have long alleged foul play.

Olson reportedly became paranoid in the days after the dosing, stopped eating, and discarded personal items. His nephew, Paul Vidich, has been outspoken about the family’s suspicions. Vidich stated: “Getting thrown out the window was a very convenient way of disposing of a national security risk. To summarize my view, he was murdered.”

Olson had reportedly developed moral qualms about the nature of the work, raising concerns he may have been viewed as a liability.

Gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, who was subjected to MKUltra experiments while imprisoned in Atlanta in 1957, later described the harrowing effects in his own words: “Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent.”

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett recently voiced broader doubts about official accounts of the program. He said: “I just go back to the whole concept of MKUltra. They kidnapped people and loaded them up with acid or other mind-altering drugs. They tried to erase their memories. They were sued in court. Then they claimed it didn’t exist. In 1975, they ordered records destroyed, and later admitted it had existed but no longer did. Which lies are we supposed to believe?”

A CIA spokesperson previously addressed the program’s history, stating: “The MKULTRA program ran from 1953 until the lack of productive results and ethical concerns about unwitting testing led to its cessation in 1963. CIA is committed to transparency regarding this chapter of its history, including by declassifying information on the programs and making it publicly available on CIA.gov.”

More than 1,200 pages of related documents were published by the National Security Archive in 2025, adding to the public record and prompting renewed congressional interest.

Do Echoes of MKUltra Persist Today?

Officially, the program ended over six decades ago. Yet the widespread destruction of records in 1973—before full public disclosure—has left gaps that continue to invite skepticism. 

Some researchers and observers argue that the pattern of initial denial followed by partial admissions raises legitimate questions about whether similar behavioral research or influence operations might have evolved under different names or classifications.

While no concrete evidence confirms ongoing programs identical to MKUltra, the historical precedent of secrecy, combined with rapid advances in surveillance technology, neuroscience, and data-driven behavioral manipulation, has led some to speculate that the underlying goals of understanding and influencing human minds have not been entirely abandoned. 

Full declassification, they contend, remains the only path to definitively closing the book—or exposing any unfinished chapters.

The upcoming hearing represents a rare moment of accountability. In an age when intelligence capabilities grow more sophisticated by the day, ensuring that past abuses are thoroughly examined serves as a vital safeguard. 

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 08:55