Six Things That Actually Drove Markets This Week

This was the week markets stopped pricing resolution and started pricing duration.

Monday opened with the weekend's ship attacks erasing the prior week's relief trade. By Wednesday, stocks were at records. By Thursday, oil had taken control again. The week ended with Intel surging 20% after hours while Brent pushed above $106.

The Strait was still closed.

Six forces explain what actually drove things.

When a small group of private companies — not the Fed — will perform a major mint of a new kind of money. 

And those who act before this new system fully kicks in could see gains as high as 40X by 2032.

But those who fail to prepare will be blindsided by this sea change to the U.S. dollar.

Go here now for the details — before the June 11th mint hits the market.

The first week of the war was about escalation. The second was about resolution. This week was about neither.

Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely with no timeline. The blockade stayed active. Iran seized ships, refused talks, and declared the Strait closed to hostile shipping. The U.S. intercepted Iranian tankers in Asian waters for the first time, expanding the conflict's geographic footprint beyond the Strait itself.

Markets did not break. They recalibrated. The S&P 500 hit records on Wednesday and fell 0.4% on Thursday. The Nasdaq gained 1.6% on Wednesday and lost 0.9% on Thursday.

By Friday, the question was not when the war ends. It was how much damage accumulates while it continues.

Investor Signal 

The market has shifted from pricing a timeline to pricing a condition. Watch for the moment earnings start reflecting the physical system rather than absorbing it.

The most important analytical observation of the week came from outside financial markets.

The IEA chief told CNBC on Thursday that the world faces the biggest energy security threat in history. Europe gets 75% of its jet fuel from Middle East refineries. That supply is now near zero. Europe has four to six weeks of jet fuel remaining. The Pentagon told lawmakers it could take six months to clear mines from the Strait after the war ends. That is not a scenario. It is a structural condition.

Lufthansa canceled 20,000 flights through October. Delta (DAL) cut capacity by 3.5 percentage points. American Airlines (AAL) cut its 2026 earnings forecast on higher fuel costs. None of this appears in Brent futures trading near $106. Physical European cargoes were trading near $150. The gap between what futures price and what physical markets pay is the trade that defines the cycle.

Investor Signal 

Four to six weeks of European jet fuel. Six months to clear mines. These are not projections. They are calendar entries. The futures market has not priced either one.

Warren Buffett famously said, “If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

What if your phone could do it for you? 📲

That’s exactly what Mode Mobile has created — technology that turns idle phone time into passive income. With 490M+ users in their ecosystem and $1B in earnings and savings, their EarnPhone is being called the Uber of smartphones.

With 32,481% revenue growth and a newly secured Nasdaq ticker $MODE, investors can access their pre-IPO offering at $0.50/share. 

Invest now at $0.50/share and earn up to 20% bonus shares.

Disclaimer:  Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering. Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur. The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.

This week produced the clearest sectoral divide of the earnings cycle.

Infrastructure won. Software lost. The distinction was AI exposure.

Texas Instruments (TXN) raised guidance on 90% year-on-year data center growth and surged 12%. Intel (INTC) beat revenue estimates by 11%, raised Q2 guidance, and jumped 20% after hours. GE Vernova (GEV) surged 13.8% on data center power demand. Boeing (BA) gained 5.5% on defense order strength. These companies are building the physical layer of AI infrastructure.

The software sector had the opposite experience. ServiceNow (NOW) beat estimates and fell 18% after cutting margin guidance and citing Middle East deal delays. IBM (IBM) beat estimates and fell 8% after holding guidance flat. The software ETF fell 6% in a single session and is down 19% year to date. The market is asking a simple question: does AI help these companies, or does it replace them?

Investor Signal

The AI trade is not one trade. It is two. Infrastructure is being rewarded. Enterprise software is being repriced. Which side of that divide each company sits on is now the most important investment question of the cycle.

Traders placed another large bearish Brent bet shortly before Trump extended the ceasefire, the fourth such trade this month ahead of major geopolitical announcements. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is reviewing potential information leakage. The issue is not whether the physical constraint is real. It is whether oil prices are still a clean signal. When price discovery is in question, physical cargo prices matter more than futures.

Investor Signal 

The physical-futures spread is now doing two jobs. It measures scarcity and it measures trust. Watch both.

This is urgent, so I’ll be direct…

For the first time ever, James Altucher – one of America’s top venture capitalists – is sharing how ANYONE can get a pre-IPO stake in SpaceX… with as little as $100!

In other words, this is your first-ever chance to skip the line, and get in BEFORE Elon Musk’s next IPO takes place.

Best of all, it couldn’t be any easier…

When you act today, you can get a pre-IPO stake right inside your regular brokerage account, all with just $100 and a few minutes of time.

All you need is the name and ticker symbol that James reveals for FREE, right inside this short video.

[Click here now to view.]

Kevin Warsh's confirmation hearing on Tuesday produced one observation that has not been fully priced.

Warsh signaled a preference for trimmed mean inflation as his policy guide rather than core PCE. The Dallas Fed's trimmed mean currently reads near 2.3%, well below core PCE at roughly 3%. The risk is that trimmed measures look dovish now but become restrictive if inflation broadens.

The more structural signal was Warsh's suggestion to remove forward guidance entirely, shifting the Fed from managing market expectations toward letting markets set them on their own. That is a larger change than any rate decision. Markets that have priced Fed support as a constant backstop have not priced what it means to remove that communication channel during an energy shock.

Separately, Trump signaled openness to an alternative investigation of Powell outside the DOJ, which could offer an off-ramp for Senator Tillis who has blocked Warsh's confirmation. The probability of a May 15 leadership vacuum fell modestly on that signal.

Investor Signal 

The trimmed mean preference and the removal of forward guidance are the two most consequential policy signals from Tuesday's hearing. Neither is fully priced. Both change the Fed's relationship with markets in ways that take months to understand.

For months, private credit stress has been described as a risk that has been discussed but not priced. This week it was priced.

The SEC opened enforcement investigations of large private credit managers, examining loan valuations and whether firms are sticking to disclosed investor policies. The Treasury sent written requests to fund managers about leverage and business models. The Federal Reserve is querying banks about their lending exposure to the sector. All three agencies discussed the turbulence at a recent Financial Stability Oversight Council meeting.

The scale of the stress is visible in the redemption data. Investors sought to pull more than $20 billion from certain private credit funds in Q1 but were only able to withdraw $11 billion. Blue Owl (OWL) alone saw $5.4 billion in redemption requests from two funds. Publicly traded BDCs are trading at 0.74x forward NAV, a 26% discount and the widest since 2020.

The arbitrage trade making things worse: some investors are pulling money from nontraded BDCs and buying publicly traded equivalents at a 20% discount to stated NAV, creating a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone stays, the funds are fine. If enough leave, the most liquid assets get sold to meet redemptions and remaining investors are worse off.

Investor Signal 

Private credit enforcement has moved from monitoring to investigation. The BDC discount to NAV is the market's real-time verdict on whether stated valuations are accurate. Watch Q1 earnings and buyback activity from publicly traded BDCs in the coming weeks.

It just signed a deal to get its tech in Apple's iPhone until 2040! Online commenters are debating if this brand-new company will be the 7th trillion dollar stock. 

Details on the controversy here.

Markets hit records while the physical system kept deteriorating. Oil closed above $106. The IEA put a calendar on the energy shock. Earnings split between AI infrastructure winners and software losers. Private credit moved into federal investigations. The Fed framework shifted in ways markets have not fully processed.

The Strait stayed closed. European jet fuel is measured in weeks. Mine clearing is measured in months.

The gap between a closed Strait and an all-time high is still the question.

This week added a timeline to it.