Chips Led. Oil Stayed. Talks Returned.

The S&P 500 rose about 0.8%. The Nasdaq gained 1.6% and hit another record. The Dow slipped slightly. The weekly picture stayed mixed. The S&P finished slightly higher, the Nasdaq gained about 1%, and the Dow fell about 0.6%.

The driver was diplomacy and chips.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Islamabad as efforts to restart U.S.-Iran talks gained momentum. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are also traveling to Pakistan. JD Vance is on standby if progress is made.

That gave markets a reason to keep buying.

Intel gave them the leadership.

Intel(INTC) surged more than 20% after revenue rose 7% and data center sales climbed 22%. Strong guidance confirmed AI demand is moving into CPUs, not just GPUs. AMD(AMD) jumped more than 12% as analysts extended the same thesis to other CPU makers.

The market liked the rotation.

But oil did not confirm the relief.

Brent stayed above $105. The Strait remains constrained. Sanctions and blockades are expanding even as talks restart.

The Signal

The market is trading talks and chips. Oil is trading the unresolved system underneath them.

Brent is still above $105. That is the important number. The market got new talks, but not new supply.

Persian Gulf flows remain near a standstill. Iraq’s output has fallen from 4.9 million barrels per day to 1.6 million. Iraq normally supplies about 5% of global oil. That loss is not easy to reverse.

Restarting production takes time.

Wells can clog. Equipment must return. Workers must return. Some regions may need up to 9 months to recover 85% of pre-war output. Some barrels may not come back fully.

That changes the frame.

Even if the Strait reopens, the supply shock does not end that day.

The U.S. is also increasing pressure. It sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical, a major buyer of Iranian oil, and added 40 ships and entities to the sanctions list. Officials said the refinery imported billions of dollars of Iranian crude.

The pressure is moving beyond ships.

The U.S. is now targeting Iran’s financial channels, banks, and crypto assets. Tether helped freeze $344 million tied to Iranian-linked funds.

Energy Signal

Diplomacy is restarting. Supply is not. The damage is now measured in months, not headlines.

The DOJ dropped its investigation into Jerome Powell. That removes the main barrier Senator Thom Tillis used to block Kevin Warsh’s nomination.

Warsh is now closer to confirmation.

That matters because the policy regime could change.

Warsh has signaled a more crypto-friendly stance and a different way of thinking about inflation. He has argued digital assets are already part of the U.S. financial system. His confirmation could also free the Senate Banking Committee to move forward on crypto market legislation, including the Clarity Act.

The timing is important.

Energy inflation is still high. Oil remains above $105. Gasoline and transport costs are already moving through the economy.

The market wants rate relief.

The Fed still has an inflation problem.

That is the tension.

Macro Signal

The Powell probe is gone. Warsh’s path is clearer. Policy risk has shifted from confirmation to execution.

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The CPU is back in the story.

Intel(INTC) showed data center demand is rising as AI agents need more general compute. AMD(AMD) followed. Analysts are now treating CPUs as a growth category again.

Meta Platforms(META) confirmed the same shift from another angle.

Meta signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Amazon(AMZN) to use AWS Graviton chips for AI workloads. The deal runs 3 to 5 years and involves tens of millions of CPU cores, mostly in the U.S.

That is not a small deployment.

It shows AI demand is no longer just about Nvidia(NVDA) GPUs.

Agents need CPUs for coordination, post-training, and system tasks. Meta is also working with Nvidia, AMD, and Arm Holdings(ARM), showing the AI stack is becoming mixed, not single-chip.

The China signal moved in the same direction.

DeepSeek launched V4 using Huawei Ascend chips. The model beat most open-source rivals and trails only top closed systems like Alphabet(GOOGL)’s Gemini-Pro. It shows China is building a domestic AI stack across chips and models.

Capital Signal

AI demand is still expanding. The stack is splitting by geography and by chip type.

That is not weakness.

It is consolidation after the move above $76,000.

The structure underneath is changing.

The U.S. froze $344 million in USDT tied to Iranian-linked wallets, including $213 million and $131 million on Tron. Iran’s total crypto economy reached about $7.8 billion in 2025, with roughly 50% linked to the IRGC.

Crypto is now part of sanctions policy.

That is a major shift.

At the same time, Ethereum’s treasury story keeps building. Bitmine will buy 10,000 ETH from the Ethereum Foundation for about $23.8 million. The deal adds to Bitmine’s already large ETH position and reinforces the idea of ETH as a reserve and yield asset.

This is not open-market speculation.

It is balance sheet accumulation.

The Ethereum Foundation gets funding for development. Bitmine gets more ETH without pushing the market.

Crypto Signal

Bitcoin is consolidating. Ethereum accumulation is growing. Stablecoins are now part of the sanctions battlefield.

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The market ended the week with a split signal.

Stocks rallied.

Oil stayed high.

Intel(INTC) and AMD(AMD) showed the AI trade is moving deeper into hardware. Meta(META) and Amazon(AMZN) confirmed CPU demand is becoming real. DeepSeek showed China can build a competitive model on domestic chips.

That is the growth side.

The constraint side did not move.

Brent is still above $105. Iraq’s output is down to 1.6 million barrels per day. Some fields may take 9 months to recover 85% of production. The U.S. is expanding sanctions while diplomacy resumes.

Crypto sits between both.

Bitcoin is holding. ETH accumulation is rising. Stablecoins are now directly tied to sanctions enforcement.