The Iran War Weekly: Oil Swings $32, PLTR Soars 17%, and Warsh Fumbles

If you slept through this week, congratulations on your blood pressure. The rest of us watched oil swing through a $32 range, $PLTR rocket 17% on a quarter so good its CEO called demand "otherworldly," and new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh deliver a press conference so vague that bond markets threw what analysts are calling a "twisted tantrum." Buckle up for the recap.

The biggest sentiment mover: Palantir. $PLTR reported U.S. commercial sales up 149% year-over-year and raised full-year adjusted income guidance to $4.89-4.91 billion. CNBC caught CEO Alex Karp on camera practically vibrating, citing sovereign demand as a structural growth driver. Bloomberg flagged that despite the pop, PLTR is still down roughly 30% year-to-date and about 40% from its November 2025 all-time high, which tells you something about how brutal the AI delevering event was. The bull case is real: $25 billion AI revenue run rate at AWS, broad enterprise adoption, and Palantir sitting at the center of it. The bear case is equally real: a stock trading on vibes at a historically stretched multiple.

Oil was the macro story, full stop. The Strait of Hormuz remains a geopolitical yo-yo, with zero ships transiting it at the nadir, per Apollo's Torsten Slok. $SHEL reported profits more than doubled to $9.8 billion, the second-highest on record. Aramco posted a 44% rise in net profit. Exxon and Chevron printed their highest earnings in years, driven not just by crude prices but by surging refining margins. Then Trump floated Iran talks, Brent dropped nearly 5% in a single session, and every oil bull had a minor heart attack. Trump also publicly told Exxon and Chevron they're making "too much money" and should cut prices, which landed with the energy sector about as well as you'd expect.

The Fed managed to make things worse without doing anything. The FOMC held rates for the fifth straight meeting, voting 9-3. Chair Warsh failed to clarify whether the Fed's next move is a hike or a cut, floated the idea of fewer FOMC meetings per year (a proposal that went over like a screen door on a submarine), and left markets with more questions than answers. Long-end yields moved against him. The dollar recovered, briefly, before everyone remembered they still don't know what the Fed is doing.

Other notable movers this week: $CAT beat Q2 estimates with shares up roughly 8% in pre-market on data center and AI infrastructure demand. $BA led the Dow higher with an 8% single-session gain. $SNAP jumped 9% after hours on a revenue beat and 493 million daily active users. $HSBC beat estimates and announced a $1 billion buyback, then watched its shares fall anyway because the buyback wasn't big enough relative to expectations. Classic HSBC. The AstraZeneca-Bristol Myers merger chatter sent $AZN down over 7%, with Jefferies calling it "perplexing" and Citi calling it a "surprise." Two different words, same raised eyebrow.

The Dow closed at a record high on Monday, the S&P 500 is within spitting distance of its own, and 86% of companies are beating earnings estimates, the highest rate in five years. And yet 63% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 59% in March. The market and the economy are playing two completely different sports right now, and both teams think they're winning.