Oil Crashes on “Strait” Delusion… Crypto Soars Because Two Senators Whispered the Magic Word

If anyone ever tries to convince you that stocks move purely off of rationality and fundamentals alone… point them back to this day.

A couple months ago, we had stocks plunging 10–20% in a single day just because Trump threatened a 5% tariff on Chinese fridges, electronics, and anything else that remotely resembled an import. Analysts were crying on TV, traders were panic-selling like the Mayan calendar just restarted, and Robert Kiyosaki (who doesn’t even know what a stock is) was on Twitter shouting “I told you so!” for the 9,000th time. (Cool man, you’ve predicted 37 of the last 2 recessions. Now go polish your emergency silver and prepper beans.)

That takes us to today, Israel and Iran (two countries with a long-standing mutual desire to erase each other from history) agree to a ceasefire. It gets broken within hours. Missiles flying, accusations tossed.

And holding it all together? A Trump Truth Social post written somewhere over the Atlantic, mid spray tan (“watch the eyes”), claiming the ceasefire is “in effect” and that “planes are waving” at each other.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.2%, the Dow surged 500+ points, and the Nasdaq climbed 1.6%, I guess because traders heard “ceasefire” and just stopped listening after that. Never mind that the so-called peace deal lasted longer than a can of Bud Light at Kid Rock’s house.

Oil on the other hand didn’t do so hot. WTI fell over 6% to around $65 a barrel, and Brent slid below $68… bringing the two-day oil dump to 13%. Probably because everyone’s betting that Iran won’t shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage that carries 20% of global oil. (Let’s hope they’re right. One missile and we’re all biking to work.)

The Fed didn’t want to be left out, so Jerome Powell told Congress that rate cuts could come “sooner rather than later”... but also “not yet.” (Classic Jerome move: say everything, commit to nothing.) At this point, anytime I see JPowell’s name I assume nothing has changed.

But the real winner of the day was tech and crypto, baby. Nvidia jumped 2% to $147.40… creeping up on its all-time high of $149.41 from January. AMD and Intel both spiked over 6%. Clearly, semiconductor investors don’t care about international conflict if chips are still moving. TSMC (Nvidia’s Taiwan-based chipmaker) also gained 4.3%, which is wild considering Taiwan’s proximity to another country that doesn’t love American tech dominance (cough China). 

Meanwhile, Uber jumped 8% after tagging in Waymo to handle the robotaxi duties in Atlanta… basically admitting, “Yeah, we’re not trusting our software to drive your drunk uncle home from a Braves game.” (Smart.) On the other hand, Tesla slipped, probably because regulators don’t love “self-driving” cars that still need a guy ready to press a kill switch like he’s defusing a bomb (kind of defeats the whole purpose of a robotaxi).

Crypto stocks were trending on every traders watchlist today after two GOP senators teased a new regulatory framework. Coinbase soared 11.9%, Robinhood jumped 6.9%, Riot and Marathon climbed over 4%. Bitcoin inched up to $105,900… because nothing gets retail traders more excited than the idea of regulation. (Actual regulation? Not so much.)

That said, Circle, the issuer of USDC, had a correction for the first time since it’s 700%+ IPO run. After more than doubling last week on the back of the stablecoin-friendly GENIUS Act, the stock dropped 7% as analysts reminded everyone: regulation invites competition. Whoops.

Oh, and Microsoft hit a new all time high. Bill Gates’ first love is now up 16% this year with a market cap of $3.6 trillion. Fun fact: I ran the numbers… that’s almost enough to buy the entire NFL, build a stadium on the moon, and still pay Roger Goodell to not show up.

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.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Intel, Uber, Tesla, Robinhood, and Microsoft as mentioned in the article.