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.

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.

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.

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.

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.