News and analysis

Litecoin (LTC) is up 5.1% this week, trading at $91.46 as it recovers from a recent decline to $82.46. The earlier drop was largely attributed to political tensions within the United States. With the broader crypto market stabilising and Bitcoin (BTC) gaining 2.5% to $109,980, just below the key $110,000 resistance, market sentiment is improving. A breakout in BTC above this level could drive the next leg of the rally, with targets at $118,000–$120,000.

In such a scenario, Litecoin is likely to follow, with a potential return to the $100.00 level. Investor optimism is also building around the possibility of a Litecoin ETF approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Bloomberg analysts currently assign a 94% probability to this outcome. A confirmed ETF approval and a clean break above $100.00 could set LTC on course toward the $120.00 mark.

Wall Street continues to rally above 6,235 points in terms of the S&P 500 broad market barometer. Our team of analysts is expecting the index to hit 6,500 or even 6,850 points within the rest of the year, and here is the time when drivers of optimistic sentiment are coming one after another to build up bullish momentum further. Markets are badly apolitical by nature, it's all about money and more money. But when political tensions are going to give birth to clearly economic reasons, even hardened cynics sometimes knee under this kind of pressure.

The spring of 2025 brought a perfect storm of tariff wars, nearly closing doors for cross-border trade and global recession prophecies, all accompanied by the Federal Reserve's stark rebellion against cutting interest rates. This caused many equity prices to fall by 20-25%, but yet provided excellent buying opportunities for those, who quickly realised all those worries were just yanking out mental chains. Congrats to all now that we are 30% above April's 4,800+ dips, and this summer grants us what we would call the opposite side of a perfect storm: a set of external reasons that together create an exceptionally favourable economic environment. Let's briefly name these advantages.

U.S. president Donald Trump eventually strikes a trade deal with Vietnam, imposing only a 20% tariff on all goods sent to the U.S., instead of threatening three times higher trade barriers since April, with a 40% tariff on any transhipping. In exchange, Vietnam granted the U.S. "total access" to its markets with zero tariffs on most American products. The deal was announced on Wednesday, July 2, to become the third big one after cherished agreements with the U.K. and China ahead of a July 9 likely “movable” deadline. We don't think anyone needs detailed explanations on how important this is for international supply chains, helping to maintain business profits and cooling inflation fears. It's especially good news for retailers and chipmakers, of course, but it will have a positive impact on everyone, including investors and non-investors, i.e. billions of ordinary consumers.

U.S. fiscal bill torture which previously created moderate market sweeping is over as well. The "Big Beautiful Bill", or simply BBB, passed the Senate successfully on July 1. Markets don't care that the BBB passed by a mere 51-50 vote, with the intervention of a decisive voice by vice president J.D. Vance, that a few of the less stable opposition senators insisted on reading the entire 940-page document aloud first, which took 16 hours, and then succeeded in getting it banned from being presented as a "Big, Beautiful Bill", considering this to be pressure on the reasons for the vote. Politics is the art of the possible, and the way the bill was pushed through is how it turned out. What's important to investors is that the bill supports dramatic taxes cuts for companies, some of them from 35% to 21%, which benefits not just the rich, but the entire economy, including the profits of large and small businesses, and the cash wallets of workers and consumers. Tax breaks for interest payments on auto loans up to $10,000 annually will support the auto industry, and tax credits for tips and especially overtime pays (up to $25 thousand and $12.5 thousand, respectively) will support many manufacturing and service segments.

As to increasing the U.S. debt ceiling by $5 trillion over 10 years, this can be considered a very moderate compromise that could hardly have been avoided, although many would like to freeze the national debt or start gradually paying it down, of course. But these are mostly dreams, which could be considered by the next Congress in 2027 or even some next U.S. president after 2030. No politician nowadays is ready to take such a decision. This decision from the summer of 2025 will also bring much more clarity to investors who did not understand what they could expect for U.S. Treasuries, and now demand for the U.S. debt would be stabilizing. More stability in the inflows of capital is more likely to allow the Federal Reserve to resume its previously stopped rate cut cycle.

Reducing inflation fears through the above-mentioned trade deals will help much. Reducing some excessive social benefits, according to the BBB - for those who are not trying to get a job - will be another additional factor to lower inflation expectations. The prospect of defeating highly inflated inflation expectations could break the back of the Federal Reserve hawks, and so Goldman Sachs already pulled forward its fresh forecast for the next Fed rate cut move from December to September. We will still have plenty of time and reasons during this summer to talk about the Fed's plans, and we will definitely do this, but now the only important thing is that the vector of expectations for borrowing costs is pointing downwards. And this is not the major driver, but yet another important factor contributing to what we could be characterised as "the opposite side of a perfect storm" to help the bulls in the U.S. stock market.

VeChain (VET) is down 3.0% this week, trading at $0.02060, underperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) remains largely flat around $107,500. In June, BTC declined by 12.5%, but VET fared worse, plunging 25.5% to a low of $0.01812.

The drop below the key $0.02000 support level was a concerning technical signal. However, a swift geopolitical de-escalation helped spark a rebound. VET initially recovered by 35.5% to $0.02680, with the maximum bounce reaching an impressive 307.0% to $0.08000 in previous cycles.

This historical recovery pattern suggests that the current rebound may still have room to run. Based on the average pace of past recoveries, a return to the $0.03000 level appears achievable in the near term, with the potential to climb further if broader market conditions improve.

Oracle's recent high of $228.22 during the last trading session of June, quickly followed by a nearly $10 pullback to $218.63 closing, offers a good chance to add the company to one's stock portfolio if it hasn't been included yet for some reason. The stock initially soared by as much as 7% soon after the opening bell on June 30 after Oracle's CEO Safra Catz said the company is experiencing a very solid start with continued "robust growth to the fiscal year of 2026. According to Oracle's SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) filing, the company’s MultiCloud database sales is growing at over 100% YoY. Safra Catz also cited multiple large cloud services agreements, including one especially big deal to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue since 2028.

If so, then this cloud-computing business has created a more than favourable fundamentals behind a new take-off after the weekend, so that retesting already achieved higher levels looks inevitable, which means almost 4.5% of free running to the upside in the coming days. To build the profit handicap is always useful when seeking a proper entry point to popular assets like Oracle. I personally will try to capitalize the situation. This is still attractive, even though Oracle jumped more than 22% on June 12-13 on the heels of its regular quarterly report, from $175 to $215+, but even $250 does not look like the end point of its current round of a climb. This is just another straightening arrow to the top, looks very similar to Microsoft several years ago.

Where did I get the $250 figure now, other than it being round and very nice? This was Stifel analyst group, which freshly upgraded Oracle stock from previously Hold to currently Buy just over the weekend and raised its price target to $250 from $180. Stifel analyst Brad Reback noted a "dramatic increase" in Oracle's capex (capital expenditure) and RPO (remaining performance obligation) to help growth prospects both in the cloud infrastructure and SaaS (software as a service) applications. Oracle's revenue is growing at 8.4% over the last annual period, by the way. Stifel remarked that Oracle’s management has shown skill as its headcount grew only 2% while total operating expenses expanded by 5% and total revenue increased more than 8% in 2025. Stifel guys are projecting a 16% growth in fiscal year 2026 and 20% in fiscal year 2027... much better than now! For some reason I believe them, and my own expectations too. Maybe because Oracle is the heart of a $0.5 trillion Stargate project for building US data centres, together with OpenAI and SoftBank and under the patronage of the Trump-led Republicans for 3.5 years more at least. Baby, don't you know you can't lose under such conditions?

Did you know that according to Forbes data for the middle of June, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, of which he owns roughly 40%, was the second-richest person in the world, after his business soared to new peaks. And yes, this man stands just behind Elon Musk, outpacing the wealth of the Venice groom, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Meta's godfather Mark Zuckerberg. How do you like these apples? IMHO, if you're a small investor but trying to build a solid portfolio that includes Tesla, Amazon, and Meta, of course, then how can Oracle not be there? Again, Ellison sat on Tesla's board in 2019-2022, with his 45 million split-adjusted shares before stepping down as a director. Then probably your portfolio balance and success are relative terms. And in 2020, Ellison reportedly moved to his Hawaiian island Lanai, which he bought nearly all for $300 million. Woody, I'm slipping!.. if you know this line from Toy Story. Living like this, I mean. "When people start telling you that you're crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life," Larry Ellison once said. Damn, maybe a dozen Oracle shares will make me a little richer than I am now. I've nothing more to tell you. So far, they cost less than $220, not $250 and not $300.