Bitcoin continues to flash warning signs, according to Quinn Thompson, CIO at Lekker Capital, as his fund remains firmly bearish on crypto heading into the summer.
Thompson argues that the market faces a combination of structural challenges, including ongoing digital asset treasury (DAT) concerns, unresolved questions about Strategy’s preferred stock STRC, and lingering fears about quantum computing risks to Bitcoin’s security model.
Combined with weakening liquidity conditions and heavy selling pressure, these factors have contributed to one of the largest divergences between bitcoin and technology stocks in recent history, with crypto significantly underperforming despite continued strength across much of the tech sector.
BTC vs Nasdaq (Lekker Capital)
Thompson’s broader concern extends beyond crypto and believes a wave of blockbuster IPOs (SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI) could absorb trillions of dollars in investor capital, creating a liquidity drain.
One of the clearest signs for Thompson is the Magnificent Seven’s underperformance relative to the broader Nasdaq. Historically, healthy bull markets are characterized by leaders leading. Today, however, many of the index’s gains are being driven by semiconductor and AI supply chain names rather than the hyperscalers that sparked the initial rally.
Mag 7 vs QQQ (TradingView)
The challenge for those hyperscalers is growing, Thompson says. Massive AI-related capital expenditure commitments pressure free cash flow, increasing debt levels, and reducing share buybacks.
Yet cutting spending could undermine the semiconductor and AI infrastructure trade that has supported the broader technology complex.
Thompson concludes that rising IPO supply is set to compete for capital and investor attention, while He sees a difficult path forward for both AI leaders and the wider market.
If you think inflation means stores are dropping prices to win consumers back, think again. One of America’s historic footwear giant is actually betting on higher-priced products, and closing stores at your local malls.
The way we buy shoes has radically transformed. Stiff dress shoes have been replaced by versatile comfort, according to the US Men’s and Women’s Footwear Market Report. But keeping up with changing fashion trends is no longer the hardest part of the game.
Today, legacy retailers face intense pressure from tariffs, inflation, and shifting consumer preferences. As McKinsey and Company’s The State of Fashion 2026 report notes, new US tariffs have completely “redrawn trade maps,” forcing brands to rapidly reconstruct supply chains on the fly.
Americans spent $121 billion on footwear last year, importing six pairs of shoes per person, according to the FDRA. Yet one of the country’s biggest shoe retailers, Caleres, the powerhouse behind Famous Footwear, Sam Edelman, and Stuart Weitzman, says its affordable business is slowing while demand for premium brands surges.
Inflation-pressured consumers are dropping mall impulse buys to prioritize personal well-being, health, and longevity, according to McKinsey. This shift is prompting many footwear retailers to rethink both store fleets and product strategies.
I recently reported about Genesco (the powerhouse behind Journeys) quietly shuttering 202 stores between 2023 and mid-2026. Then, there’s Freebird’s pull back, Foot Locker, which closed hundreds of Champs locations, and JD Sports that announced the structural winding down of 175 Hibbett stores.
Now, Caleres has joined the list, aggressively adapting to shifting consumer behavior.
Caleres closed 82 stores over the last four years, as it bets on premium shoes. Bloomberg / Getty Images
Caleres closed 82 stores over the last four years
A global footwear powerhouse with a diverse portfolio of popular brands, Caleres, recently reported its first quarter earnings results, revealing a net sales increase of 8.5% year-over-year reaching $666.6 million.
Importantly, while the premium brand portfolio saw net sales increase 20.6% year-over-year, the company’s more affordable segment Famous Footwear experienced a net sales decline of 2.5%.
During the quarter, the company closed 10 Famous Footwear store locations and opened one, ending the quarter with 812 stores.
At the end of 2021, Famous Footwear segment operated 894 stores, according to the company’s Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This means that Caleres has closed 82 stores over the period of four years and three months, averaging around 19 store closures per year.
Why has Caleres been closing stores?
Looking at the company’s raw earnings numbers, it can be observed that while the company’s brand sales have grown significantly, its Famous Footwear net sales have been declining, including Famous Footwear comparable sales.
Caleres explicitly noted that its luxury and premium brands segments, such as Stuart Weitzman and Sam Edelman are seeing strong growth, while a more affordable chain is struggling due to accelerated inflation squeezing everyday consumers.
“While we saw improving trends leading into Easter, we believe accelerated inflation put pressure on consumer traffic and sales, especially as we moved into April,” said President and Chief Executive Officer of Caleres, John Schmidt, during the earnings call.
However, it is important to note that while Caleres plans another five store closures this fiscal year, it also plans to open another 12 stores, which would then result in a net decline of only 3 stores for the year. So, what’s behind this closing and opening strategy?
Caleres bets on premium products
To offset the decline in the affordable segment, Caleres is now doubling down on its “elevate-and-edit strategy,” which has seen powerful growth.
The so-called elevate-and-edit strategy is Famous Footwear’s initiative to increase the assortment and sales of premium, trend-forward brands and products, shifting away from lower-margin value categories — a strategy that appears to be working out.
“Our Elevate-and-Edit strategy continues to resonate with our Famous consumers. Sales of Elevated products increased nearly 50% in the quarter and penetration reached almost 20% year-over-year. We saw growth in the quarter from Jordan, Skechers, Birkenstock, New Balance, Reef and Brooks, while several brands in the Caleres portfolio finished among Famous’ top 15 best-selling brands,” added Schmidt.
The brands most consumers don’t know Caleres owns
Caleres, founded 148 years ago, is the powerhouse behind several popular brands. In fact, “brands are a major strategic lever for Caleres,” writes Umbrex. Why? Because the company’s greatest power is not only in selling shoes, but in offering consumer-facing footwear brands across various prices and uses.
Caleres’ key brands:
Famous Footwear: A top casual and athletic brand for the whole family, built around convenience, value, and repeat shopping.
Sam Edelman: One of Caleres’s most important fashion brands, providing accessible luxury women’s footwear with trendy appeal.
Allen Edmonds: A heritage premium men’s brand known for high quality, handcrafted American shoes for men.
Stuart Weitzman: The global luxury brand featuring artisanal craftsmanship with precise engineering.
Naturalizer: A women’s footwear brand with a long heritage and a positioning that blends comfort and style.
Vionic: A comfort and wellness-oriented brand with appeal to consumers who prioritize support and everyday wear.
Blowfish Malibu: A more casual and value-oriented brand, especially relevant in everyday women’s footwear.
Dr. Scholl’s Shoes and LifeStride. Brands associated with comfort, casual wear, and practical everyday footwear. Sources: Caleres, Umbrex
What Caleres’ new strategy means for the company and consumers
Retail analysts increasingly view store closures as a way to improve profitability rather than a sign of imminent trouble. Research from Placer.ai notes that chains often reduce locations when they can reach the same customers more efficiently through a smaller footprint and digital channels.
Neil Saunders, Managing Director and Retail Analyst at GlobalData Retail, has repeatedly argued that store closures are often optimization rather than collapse.
“Store closures are not all that unusual” and are not necessarily evidence of a “retail apocalypse,” Saunders said.
For consumers, the more significant shift may not be the store closures themselves, but Caleres’ growing focus on premium footwear.
The company is increasingly emphasizing premium brands and higher-priced products, including Jordan, Birkenstock, Brooks, New Balance, and Skechers. At the same time, management expects Famous Footwear sales and comparable sales to decline this year even as its premium brand portfolio continues to grow.
As a result, consumers could see:
More shelf space devoted to premium footwear.
Continued closure of underperforming locations as the company refines its store fleet.
Greater investment in online and direct-to-consumer shopping.
Less emphasis on lower-priced categories as management pursues higher-margin products.
Ethena continues to deepen its ties with traditional finance, announcing a deal with asset manager Janus Henderson that includes a strategic investment in the protocol’s governance token.
Under the agreement, Ethena will allocate and help distribute Janus Henderson’s tokenized funds of collateralized loan obligations (CLO), the protocol said in a Tuesday X post.
Meanwhile, Janus Henderson, with $480 billion in assets under management, made a strategic investment in Ethena’s ENA token and plans to use USDe, Ethena’s yield-bearing synthetic dollar, as part of its treasury cash management strategy, according to a Thursday announcement.
The firms are also exploring ways to offer USDe to Janus Henderson clients through exchange-traded investment products.
ENA jumped 5% following the announcement before paring gains. It was down 8% over the past 24 hours as braoder crypto markets slipd
“We are really excited about the possibility here,” Nick Cherney, head of innovation at Janus Henderson Investors, told Coindesk in a message. “We believe very deeply that innovation in blockchain is being led by the defi community, and that we need to continue to forge partnerships with leading founders and protocols.”
The deal fits into the trend of traditional finance firms increasingly embracing and backing decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure. Earlier this year, BlackRock (BLK) expanded its tokenized money market fund through a partnership with Uniswap and also invested an undisclosed amount in the decentralized exchange’s UNI token, while Apollo Global Management (APO) stroke a deal with lending protocol Morpho to bring tokenized private credit assets onchain and investing in the protocol’s governance token.
Last week, Coinbase Ventures disclosed its first investment in Ethena and announced a partnership that will bring Ethena products to Coinbase’s more than 100 million users. Separately, Ethena expanded its relationship with crypto bank Anchorage Digital to support institutional lending activity through Anchorage’s Atlas collateral management platform.
Ethena has grown into one of the largest decentralized finance protocols by offering yield through its USDe token, which combines stablecoin demand with derivatives-based hedging strategies. After reaching roughly $15 billion in assets during last year’s market rally, the protocol currently manages about $5 billion as crypto markets continue to recover from a prolonged downturn.
“Ethena has proven that even now it is possible to innovate in the stablecoin arena, and we continue to see huge opportunity in their business,” Janus Henderson’s Cherney added.
Bell Global Equities Fund, managed by Bell Asset Management, released its latest investor update, available for download. March saw heightened volatility due to the Middle East conflict, with the MSCI World ex Australia Index falling 2.5% and the Bell Global Equities Fund (Wholesale class) declining 3.1%. The portfolio’s underweight in Energy was the primary headwind to relative performance, compounded by poor stock selection in Communication Services, Health, and Energy. A tentative ceasefire in early April has helped stabilize sentiment and reverse some March declines. Future market trends depend on the ceasefire’s durability and how ongoing energy supply disruptions affect inflation and growth through 2026. In addition, the ongoing AI disruption narrative is significantly influencing market behavior, causing indiscriminate selling across various sectors. The recent weakness appears to be sentiment-driven rather than fundamental deterioration, thus creating opportunities. In addition, please check the Strategy’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2026.
In its first-quarter 2026 investor letter, Bell Global Equities Fund highlighted stocks such as TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL). TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL) is a technology company that focuses on designing and manufacturing connectivity and sensor solutions. The one-month return of TE Connectivity plc (NYSE:TEL) was 0.63%, and its shares gained 23.73% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On June 5, 2026, TE Connectivity plc (NYSE:TEL) stock closed at $212.65 per share, with a market capitalization of $62.07 billion.
Bell Global Equities Fund stated the following regarding TE Connectivity plc (NYSE:TEL) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“Heightened portfolio activity persisted through the end of the first quarter, reflecting our efforts to actively take advantage of the elevated market volatility and many dispersions in the market between quality and intrinsic value. Among the new additions was TE Connectivity plc (NYSE:TEL), a global leader in electrical connectors. One of the primary tailwinds for the company has recently been its increased market share in the critical components that distribute power, signal, and data across electric vehicles, factory robots and hyperscale AI server racks. This positioning is expected to support a sustained period of double-digit revenue growth, alongside margin expansion over the medium-term. The company also consistently generates significant free cash flow and boasts a shareholder-friendly management team, illustrated earlier this year when the board approved a 10 quarterly dividend hike alongside a substantial $3 billion expansion to its share repurchase program. We currently model meaningful upside looking forward, driven by a combination of earnings upgrades and potential for valuation multiple expansion.”
Over the weekend, Bitcoin [BTC] managed to bounce by 8.6% from $59.1k to $64.2k. After setting this local high on Sunday, the 7th of June, Bitcoin tested the same resistance zone around $64.2k the very next day.
The bulls didn’t have any luck pushing the price higher since then. There is a chance of a Bitcoin bounce, but traders and investors must remember that the higher timeframe bias remained firmly bearish.
Short-term BTC demand not enough to override loss-selling
Source: Axel Adler Jr
After the sell-off up to Friday, the 5th of June, the initiative appeared to return to the buyers. Crypto analyst Axel Adler noted that the net taker volume saw an uptick over the weekend that helped push prices up toward $64k.
Yet, like the brief period of buying after the sell-off on the 24th of May, the current price bounce need not extend significantly higher.
Source: Axel Adler Jr
The analyst also demonstrated that the Bitcoin realized profit/loss 7DMA has been negative for 22 consecutive days. Moreover, the metric did not reach levels close to historical bottoms of realized losses.
Together, these findings underlined the stress in the market and the capitulation phase underway, as sellers panicked and sold at losses.
Bitcoin price prediction based on price action
Source: BTC/USDT on TradingView
The 4-hour chart showed a firmly bearish structure in place. The current bounce has not reached any of the key Fibonacci retracement levels, such as $66.8k or $71.2k.
Sellers were moving their holdings at a loss, and sentiment remained extremely bearish. A Bitcoin bounce beyond $70k does not appear likely right now, but it is a possibility traders have to be prepared for.
The more likely scenario is a bearish continuation from the overhead supply zone at $65k-$66k.
Final Summary
The Bitcoin net taker flow jumped into positive territory over the weekend, but it might not be enough to reverse the pessimistic Bitcoin mood.
The 4-hour chart indicated a possible price bounce as high as $71.2k, but the overarching trend remained firmly bearish, and a bounce would not signal a trend reversal.
Trad.Fi, which lends money to companies buying heavy equipment, said it is working with W3, a developer of AI agents for enterprises, to deploy $650 million in private credit onchain over the next 48 months.
The program targets the heavily paper-based U.S. equipment distribution sector, focusing on manufacturing systems, industrial electrical infrastructure and residential solar installations. By using AI to evaluate risk, conduct due diligence and price loans, Trad.Fi aims to compress the typically monthslong financing timelines for small and mid-sized businesses into a single day.
“Small businesses lose deals waiting for financing, and the only way to fix that is to move the capital, the records and the workflow onto programmable rails,” Trad.Fi CEO Alexander Szul said in a statement. “This is what private credit looks like when it finally meets the speed of the real economy.”
Institutional capital is undergoing a structural shift as it interacts with digital asset infrastructure. The tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), spanning commodities, equities, and private credit, is now a $25 billion market, having quadrupled from roughly $6.4 billion a year ago. It could become a $30 trillion industry by 2030, according to Security Token Market.
The $650 million figure represents Trad.Fi’s targeted equipment-financing origination pipeline over the next four years, the firm said.
In an initial phase, institutional capital from established, traditional private credit lenders will fund the bulk of the underlying equipment loans directly offchain. At the same time, the companies will work on the initial bridge technology, the ability to predict corporate stability and effect blockchain capital placement.
The long-term goal of the project is a fully programmable treasury in which 100% of senior and equity capital flows natively through the Avalanche blockchain.
A tokenized liquidity pool managed by an unidentified third-party operator will start up in the coming weeks. The pool provides eligible investors with direct onchain access to the equity portions of the private credit generated by the program.
You no longer have to haul French sunscreens home from your vacation — or pay exorbitant shipping fees — to get your hands on the good stuff.
The FDA just approved bemotrizinol (BEMT), an ingredient used in European and Asian sunscreens for over 20 years. It’s the first upgrade to US sunscreen this century.
BEMT is a chemical UV filter that absorbs both UVA and UVB rays, and doesn’t break down easily when exposed to sunlight, making it more effective at protecting against skin cancer and preventing wrinkles.
Due to regulatory differences, the US’s sunscreen formulas have remained notoriously old-fashioned, lagging behind other countries like the UK, South Korea, Japan, and Australia, which have been proactive in approving new, advanced UV-blocking ingredients.
As a result, sunscreens sold in these countries offer better protection against both UVA and UVB rays while also providing smoother application.
That’s about to change — but consumers will have to wait over a year to get their hands on these new and improved American products.
The biggest FDA filter update since 1999
It’s taken decades to approve new sunscreen ingredients in the US.
Drazen Zigic/Getty Images
The FDA treats sunscreens as non-prescription drugs — meaning each ingredient has to go through a lengthy regulatory approval process. While this sounds good in theory, it’s led to slow-moving sunscreen advancement; the FDA hasn’t approved a new UV-blocking filter in decades.
It’s not to say that US sunscreens are completely ineffective. According to Dr. Ellen Gendler, a dermatologist practicing in New York City, US sunscreens are “very good” at blocking UVB rays — the ones that cause sunburn.
However, she said we only have only one ingredient approved for UVA blockage: Avobenzone, which she described as “not very stable” and in need of other ingredients to make it effective. UVA rays are deeper-penetrating, which is why you can still get a tan while wearing US sunscreen — something Gendler noted might be “even more harmful to the skin” than the damage done by UVB rays, because UVA rays are known to cause skin cancer.
SPF also isn’t an indicator of protection against UVA. “I have patients use Neutrogena all the time, and they say, ‘I’m using an SPF 70’, and they’re still tan,” she said. “That’s because they’re not well protected against ultraviolet A.”
The search for a sleeker formula
A common complaint of US sunscreens is that they leave a white cast.
Meeko Media/Getty Images
Unlike in the US, sunscreens in other countries are classified as cosmetics and not non-prescription drugs, making them subject to more lax regulations and faster innovation.
Beyond being more effective at protecting the skin, they also cause less of a white cast and feel less greasy.
Gendler advises her patients to layer chemical and mineral sunscreens with zinc oxide for better protection — but even that “doesn’t afford them the same broad spectrum as the European products do.”
For example, her favorite international sunscreen is La Roche Posay’s SPF 50 Anthelios UVMune 400 sunscreen, which comes in multiple formulas such as “invisible” and “tinted.” It uses Mexoryl 400, an advanced version of Mexoryl, which has been considered one of the best UVA-blocking ingredients since 2005.
However, the FDA has only approved some forms of Mexoryl in limited formulas. That means La Roche Posay’s US versions of the same sunscreen don’t include Mexoryl. In the US, the only La Roche Posay product with Mexoryl is an SPF-15 moisturizer.
Bemotrizinol can make for stronger, smoother sunscreens
US sunscreens may start to resemble those in Europe and Asia.
mihailomilovanovic/Getty Images
Besides offering more UV protection than some other sunscreen ingredients, bemotrizinol is also supposed to allow for a more seamless, streak-free application.
Still, it’ll take a while for new sunscreen formulas to include the ingredient. DSM Nutritional Products, which filed for FDA approval of bemotrizinol as a sunscreen ingredient in 2024, will have exclusive rights to sell their proprietary BEMT formulation in the US for 18 months, according to Vox. After that, other cosmetic companies will likely follow suit.
In the meantime, if you have a vacation abroad coming up, you can always leave some extra room in your luggage on your way back home. Or, you can always call in a favor.
“If your friends are going to Europe, instead of bringing you back a scarf, tell them to bring you back sunscreen,” Gendler said.
