🗞️ THE DAILY INDEX - 2nd June 2026

The S&P 500 — which tracks America's 500 largest public companies — closed at a fresh record on Monday, and you'd be forgiven for thinking the business world was humming along nicely. It isn't. The DBI edged up just a tenth of a point, landing at 47.5. That's still below 50, the line that separates expansion from neutral territory. Equity markets did their bit, lifted by Nvidia's new PC chip announcement and a genuinely strong ISM manufacturing reading — the Institute for Supply Management's monthly survey of purchasing managers across American factories, which hit 54.0 in May, its highest level since May 2022. But beneath that, inflation is running at its hottest pace in three years, consumer sentiment just hit an all-time low, and oil prices are back above $90 a barrel as US-Iran ceasefire talks remain stuck. The index moved, but barely, because the world is pulling in two directions at once.