Final Tally: Wall Street Swaps Pinstripes for Camouflage as Trump Rings the Pentagon Dinner Bell

“Call an ambulance, but not for me…” -the Dow to the Nasdaq today 

One would think that the same day Tucker Carlson drops a video titled World War Is Coming Soon… we’d all be screwed right? Well, if all your money is tied up in tech… maybe so. But aside from you degenerates folks who’ve never heard the word “diversification,” not so fast.

Because while the Nasdaq was busy getting dumped like a contestant on The Bachelor (-0.7%), ole Grandpa Dow danced higher by about 277 points (+0.6%) thanks to a POTUS announcement that may or may not be scary (depends on who you ask). All while the S&P 500 hovered around flat, doing its best “I don’t want to take sides” impression. 

But make no bones about it, this wasn’t a selloff. To put it in dating terms… money ghosted tech and slid into defense DMs (and may or may not have done the deed).

And no I’m not being dramatic, tech got dumped dumped.

Information technology was the only S&P sector with real losses, down roughly 2%, as if investors said “we’ve heard enough about AI for one week… take a seat.” 

Nvidia slid more than 2%, Oracle pulled back over 1%, and Apple logged its seventh straight red day (live look at Tim Cook trying to put on a brave face). Even Meta caught a slight stray (-.29%).

Meanwhile, defense stocks were celebrating 47 like he just declared war on the entire world.

So WTF happened? Less than 24 hours after Sergeant Donnie publicly dragged defense contractors for dragging their feet (apparently not cranking out ships fast enough or engraving his name on them), and even floated the idea of blocking dividends and buybacks… 

He hopped on Truth Social and lobbed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027 into the timeline. Just a light 50% bump from the $901 billion already approved. Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

And just like that the same stocks that traders didn’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole last night, were all the sudden the hot girl at the bar.

Case in point: look no further than the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF, which cruised to another record high and is now up nearly 6% on the week. Fifth straight weekly gain. Defense has officially become Wall Street’s emotional support sector.

And because the market now cares more about oil than AI now (thank you, Venezuela) crude had another big day. Brent and WTI both bounced about 3%, briefly ignoring Trump’s dream of $50 oil… a number that only works if U.S. drillers enjoy lighting shareholder money on fire. In the real world, breakevens still exist (tragic, honestly).

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

Lastly, labor data came out and it wasn’t exactly comforting. Jobless claims ticked up (but stayed below expectations), layoff announcements hit their lowest level of 2025, yet consumers are more pessimistic than ever about finding new jobs.

Also waiting in the wings is the Supreme Court.

Friday’s opinion day gives the Court a chance to weigh in on Trump’s tariffs, reminding markets that trade policy can still be overturned by nine people who don’t own a Robinhood account.

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

>Cathie Wood trims $2.29 million in popular tech stock (TheStreet): I can almost guarantee this has Jim Cramer’s “buy the dip” senses tingling.

>JPMorgan says the crypto selloff may be nearing a bottom as ETF outflows ease (CoinDesk): Translation: Jamie Dimon just loaded up the truck.

>Elon Musk moves goalpost again: admits Tesla needs 10 billion miles for ‘safe unsupervised’ FSD (Electrek): Tesla owners bagholders realizing their grandkids may be the only ones to inherit this feature.

>Woman arrested at Meta headquarters after demanding to speak with Zuckerberg (The Almanac): Please tell me she was shouting “Mark, give me the Zucc.” (MUST WATCH)

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple, Meta, and Robinhood as mentioned in the article.