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Hot Tips
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Alphabet to Invest $40 Billion in Anthropic,
popping (GOOGL) shares. Amazon is also investing a further $25 billion. As part of the deal, (GOOGL) is selling 5 gigawatts of compute capacity to Anthropic in another circular chips for equity deal. Buy (GOOGL) and (AMZN) on dips and avoid the Anthropic IPO.
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Physical Oil still Trading at Huge Premiums to the Futures Market.
Roughly 20 million barrels a day of oil supply are bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz, equivalent to 20% of global demand. The current disruption has drawn roughly 500 million barrels from global stockpiles, which could hit a billion barrels by June. Brent crude oil futures are back above $100 a barrel, but the market seems strangely sanguine, especially in longer-dated futures, with prices for 2027 up 17% compared with 43% for front-month contracts. Hedge Funds are making fortunes buying far months futures contracts at $60 a barrel and selling front month at $100.
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The Avis Short Squeeze Ends.
The car-rental company Avis Budget Group Inc.'s (CAR) stock cratered, wiping out all but a sliver of its 600% meme gains over the previous month, in just two days with no clear cause. The sharp rise was a classic short squeeze, in which investors who'd sold borrowed Avis shares started racing to close out those positions by buying them back, but the sudden reversal is much less clear. Avis announced that it would report its first-quarter earnings on April 29, ahead of an expected early-to-mid May date, which ignited speculation that Avis was planning to raise money by selling stock, turbocharging the selloff.
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Intel Rockets 22%, on a spectacular earnings report, and is up 120% so far this year. Given up for dead as recently as a year ago, the company revived on the unlimited demand for AI chips. $1 billion in revenue was lost because the company could not deliver on all its orders, and demand is so great. A big part of the beat came from inventories once thought obsolete, which customers bought anyway, they were so desperate for compute. PC capacity is being shifted over to AI production. At 100X earnings (INTC) is now a strong avoid. The stock is already priced for a comeback that hasn’t finished yet.
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Consumer Sentiment Drops to New Record Low,
down to 48.9, no doubt due to soaring gasoline and food prices. Twelve-month inflation expectations increase sharply. The Iran War has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, boosting the price of oil and ultimately the cost of gasoline and diesel. Prices for other commodities, including fertilizers, petrochemicals, and aluminum, which will soon impact consumers, have also surged.
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Trump Orders the Navy to Shoot Mine-Laying Boats,
and that tells you exactly where this war stands. Iran seized two commercial ships in the Strait overnight — the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas — while Trump posted on Truth Social that the Navy has shoot-to-kill orders on any boat laying mines, "no hesitation." Mine sweepers are now running at triple capacity. Eight ships transited the Strait on Wednesday. Before the war, more than 100 did it daily. Iran's parliament speaker was equally blunt: reopening the Hormuz is impossible as long as the US blockade holds. Peace talks in Pakistan have collapsed. This ceasefire is a war at a slow pace. Brent stays above $100. Oil stocks stay in play. Buy (XOM) on dips.
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Gas Hits $4.03 at the Pump, the Highest Since 2022,
and Americans have now been above $4 a gallon for more than three weeks straight. Diesel is at $5.51. I have been watching oil shocks since 1973, and this one is the most structurally constrained I have ever seen — you cannot route 20 million barrels a day of Persian Gulf oil around an indefinitely closed strait. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is draining. The EPA has waived summer-blend rules. A Jones Act waiver helps the coasts but does nothing for the heartland. Stanford economists project the average household will pay $740 more in gas this year because of the war. Moody's chief economist says don't expect below $3 again in 2026. The consumer is being squeezed from every direction.
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Tesla Beats Earnings and Drops 3% on a $25 Billion Spending Bomb,
and this is exactly the kind of quarter that separates Musk believers from Musk skeptics. Q1 EPS came in at $0.41 against a $0.36 estimate. Revenue hit $22.39 billion. Gross margin expanded to 21.7%. All fine. Then the call started. $25 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 — triple last year's $8.5 billion — covering six simultaneous factory ramps, an Optimus robot production facility in Austin opening in August, a chip design fab, and a doubling of AI compute. The CFO confirmed the company will run negative free cash flow for the rest of the year. I've put 50,000 miles on Teslas. The product is brilliant. The balance sheet just became a different animal. Avoid (TSLA) until this capex story clears.
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ServiceNow Collapses 14% Despite Beating Revenue Estimates,
and this is what happens when the market stops trusting the story. $3.77 billion in Q1 revenue, up 22% year over year — a beat. Raised full-year guidance. And the stock got destroyed anyway. Three reasons: The Armis acquisition is going to crush subscription gross margins for the rest of 2026. The Iran war directly killed several large Middle East enterprise deals, a 75-basis-point headwind to subscription revenue growth. And the deeper fear hasn't gone away — AI may eventually erode the seat-based model that built this company. The stock is down 34% year to date and now trades at the same earnings multiple as Microsoft despite growing twice as fast. I know hedge funds that are massively short. Whether that's a screaming buy or a value trap depends on whether you believe McDermott can pivot the business model in time. Proceed at your peril.
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Texas Instruments Posts 19% Revenue Growth in a Quarter Nobody Expected,
with $4.83 billion in sales, earnings per share of $1.68 — a 23% beat against consensus — and Q2 guidance set at $5.2 billion at the midpoint, 7% above what Wall Street was modeling. Industrial and data center demand drove every line. Operating margin hit 37.5%. The stock is up 8% on the day. This is what a real semiconductor recovery looks like — not GPU speculation, but the deep industrial analog base that sits inside every factory floor, every piece of manufacturing equipment, every data center rack. I have been following TI since they invented the integrated circuit in 1958. The industrial cycle has turned. Buy (TXN) on dips.
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Tim Cook is out at Apple,
and the era of the professional manager is over. John Ternus, the hardware engineering chief who has spent more than two decades inside Cupertino, takes the CEO chair on September 1st. Cook did his job — he turned a great product company into a $4 trillion money machine, a 24-fold increase on his watch. But Apple hasn't had a true visionary at the top since Steve Jobs died, and the stock has gone nowhere this year while the Nasdaq ripped 5%. Ternus is an engineer, not a salesman. That is exactly what Apple needs right now. Buy (AAPL) on dips.
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The Fed's New Boss Goes Before the Senate Today,
and Kevin Warsh has the most important job interview in the history of central banking. Trump wants lower rates. The bond market wants a hawk. Inflation is running at 3.58% and climbing. I have been watching Fed chairmen come and go since the days of Arthur Burns, and I have never seen one walk into a more impossible situation. Warsh is a smart man — I've met him — but smart doesn't matter when you're caught between a president who tweets and a bond market that doesn't care. Higher rates are coming whether Warsh likes it or not. Avoid (TLT) at all costs.
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The Ceasefire Expires Tomorrow, and Trump is Playing With Fire,
telling CNBC this morning, he expects a "great deal" with Iran while simultaneously promising to bomb their power plants and bridges if nothing is signed by Wednesday. I have covered wars since Vietnam. This is not how deals get done. Bank of America's own economists warned clients this morning that the market is dangerously extrapolating the trade war playbook onto a shooting war — and that de-escalation is no longer a unilateral move. They are right. Oil at $95 is not the problem. Oil at $130 is the problem. Stay long (USO) and (XLE) until there is ink on paper.
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Dell is the AI Server Trade Nobody is Talking About,
and Melius Research just raised its two-year target to $245. While everyone is obsessed with Nvidia, Dell is quietly stealing market share from Supermicro, whose co-founder was just indicted by the DOJ for allegedly smuggling AI servers into China. I have seen this movie before — the number two player in a hot market with a legal scandal clearing out the number one. Agentic AI is driving a whole new wave of enterprise server demand, and Dell is positioned to capture it. This is a ten-bagger in the making. Buy (DELL) on dips.
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Tesla Reports Tomorrow, and Elon Has One Job,
say the word "robotaxi." Deliveries were missed by 12,000 units in Q1, and the stock is down 11% year to date. None of that matters. Tesla has never been a car company — it is an options contract on the future of autonomous transport, AI, and energy. The Terafab chip project alone — a joint venture with SpaceX targeting a terawatt of annual computing capacity — could be worth more than the entire current market cap if it delivers. The robotaxi announcement will come. It always does.
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The Good News is that the Straits of Hormuz are Open,
triggering a 1,200-point rally in the Dow. The bad news is that the postwar rally has already happened. Add new longs here at your peril. There are now more questions than answers. When will the US blockade end? Will the US turn away ships from Iran's allies? Is Iran still charging $2 million fees? Market volatility is anything but over. It’s still a black swan a day. But it’s clear that big tech will lead any recovery. Good thing I took profits on my oil longs yesterday.
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Copper Could be the Next Oil.
Production is up 7% YOY thanks to exploding AI and defense spending. The government is talking about creating a strategic copper reserve. Production from Chile, the largest copper miner in the world, is at a nine-year low. China has banned the export of sulfuric acid, essential for copper refining, the source of 20% of world supplies. Chile remains the top producer (23% share), followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo (14%) and Peru (11%). Buy (COPX) and (FCX) on dips.
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Nvidia is Coming for Your Electricity,
as GPU rental rates are rocketing in the face of unlimited demand. NVIDIA’s flagship Blackwell processor rents have soared from $3.00 to $4.12 in two months, an increase of 40%. Soaring electricity costs are to blame. Some 3,000 data processing factories are under construction, joining the 4,000 already built. Data centers consume massive amounts of electricity, accounting for roughly 4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 (~176 TWh), with projections for this figure to grow by 133% by 2030. Power is mainly consumed by IT equipment (60%) and cooling systems (up to 30%+), with large AI-dedicated facilities using 8–10 times more power than traditional data centers. Buy (NVDA) on dips.
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Weekly Jobless Claims Fall 11,000,
to 207,000. Continuing claims increased 31,000 to 1.818 million. Manufacturing production dips in March but grows at a 3.0% rate in the first quarter. A surge in oil prices and the accompanying rise in inflation pressures because of the conflict have pushed Consumer Sentiment to record lows, and economists warned households could scale back spending, with ripple effects on the labor market. Some anticipated labor market weakness due to the oil price shock.
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Big Banks Shaking Off Private Credit Fears.
The biggest US banks have more than $185 billion worth of combined exposure to private credit, an asset class under pressure in recent months. Executives see potential in the market, with Citizens Financial Group Inc.'s private-credit portfolio likely to climb about 5% in 2026, and are trying to calm investors' jitters. Banks are spotting opportunities to step in as some private-credit firms pull back, with some nonbank lenders grappling with redemptions and pulling back on lending, opening up potential for depository institutions. Buy banks on dips.
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US Crude Exports Hit New High,
at 5.2 million barrels, up 50% in three months. Asian and European buyers are rushing to replace Middle Eastern crude lost because of the disruption caused by the Iran war. Exports are causing US gasoline prices to soar to decade highs, with diesel fetching $8.00 a gallon in California.
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Cattle Prices are Soaring.
Cattle Futures closed at $2.51 per pound on Tuesday, the highest price on record going back to the 1960s. Each contract is for 40,000 pounds of live cattle, typically about 30 to 35 head of finished, slaughter-ready cattle. The contract has jumped more than 25% over the past 12 months as ranchers faced rising costs and slashed the size of their herds. Cattle slaughter is expected to have tumbled to 2.2 million head in March, down from 2.5 million in the year-earlier period.
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Netflix Tanks 11%,
on great earnings at a 13% annual rate, but weak forward guidance. It didn’t help that founder Reed Hastings is retiring. If I were worth $7 billion, I would retire too. I see a company that is raising prices, moving big-time into highly profitable sports, and has won the streaming wars. Use this dip to buy (NFLX).
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Wells Fargo Sees Gold at $8,000 an Ounce.
Gold was among the hottest momentum plays of the year, before its tumble last month following the start of the U.S.-Iran war. In March, gold futures dropped nearly 11% — their worst month since June 2013. But the Wall Street investment bank expects the “debasement” trade — referring to a rise in central banks around the world selling fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar in favor of a more neutral safe haven — could send the precious metal to new heights.
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Maine Becomes the First State to Ban Server Farms,
blaming the drain on local power supplies and noise. States including Georgia, Oklahoma and Virginia have also put forward proposals for temporary data center bans amid growing concerns over the energy costs of such projects and their environmental impact. Nearly 3,000 new data centers are under construction or planned across the U.S. as of late 2025, complementing over 4,000 already in operation.
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