Bah gawd… that’s big oil’s music.

There’s no elegant way to say this… the last 72 hours have felt like a Christopher Nolan movie.

Except instead of confusing time loops and a banger soundtrack from Hans Zimmer, we got fighter jets, oil rigs, prediction markets, and Nicolas Maduro doing a perp walk in Manhattan while claiming he’s totally innocent, your honor. (“I’m just a humble, decent guy who somehow ran a narco-state by accident.”).

Anyways, if you spent the weekend doom-scrolling thinking, “Great, this is how World War 3 starts,” today offered a gentle reminder: Wall Street does not trade fear. It trades money. And business was very much open.

Case in point: after the U.S. made its move in Venezuela and Maduro and his wife got upgraded from “head of state” to “Manhattan defendant,” investors didn’t seem scared one bit… in fact, they sprinted back in with YUGE bags of cash. 

The Dow (the Grandpa Index) became the star of the day, ripping 1.6% to a fresh all-time high (a sentence you may never read again). The S&P 500 and Nasdaq followed along politely, tacking on about 0.7% each.

But make no mistake about it, this was an oil rally to the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Because when a country sitting on the largest proven oil reserves on Earth suddenly looks like it might need “help” rebuilding its energy infrastructure, investors don’t argue philosophy. They map out cash flows. 

Chevron jumped nearly 5%, Exxon added around 2%, and oil-services companies entered their villain arc. Halliburton ripped more than 9%, SLB popped into double digits, and the energy sector ETF climbed about 3%.

Why you ask? Well, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is ancient, neglected, and borderline ceremonial at this point. Fixing it means drilling, servicing, upgrading, and writing very large checks to companies that already know how to operate there. Guess which companies those are.

And sure, for the short term, supply uncertainty will nudge crude higher. Over the long run, it turns into contracts, equipment orders, and years of billable work… the American kind.

Of course, anytime there’s scary headlines, a flock of grandpas and preppers jump to one asset. Hence why gold jumped nearly 3%. 

Oh, and if you were wondering why Michael Saylor fired off one extra meme than his usual daily quota… look no further than Bitcoin, which climbed about 3%, hovering just $7k shy of $100,000… and still roughly (checks notes) $1.5 million away from Cathie Wood’s most optimistic vision board.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Hyundai is taking on Tesla and others in race to mass-produce humanoid robots (Yahoo Finance): Am I the only one that’s legitimately concerned?

>Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz drops reelection bid (Axios): Name something more embarrassing than a Youtuber ending your political career.

>US Changes Child Vaccine Schedule to Call for Fewer Shots (Bloomberg): Read: Big Pharma begins clutching its pearls after getting dogged by RFK… again.

>Twitter and Pinterest founders launch app as antidote to social media (Financial Times): “Get off Zuck’s app and spend more time on our app.”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Exxon as mentioned in the article.