Oil at $126, Fed at War With Itself, and Big Tech Just Split the Room: Your Weekly Chaos Digest

Let's set the scene: Brent crude hit $126/barrel — a four-year high — as the US-Iran war entered its third month with Trump reportedly prepping for an extended Hormuz blockade. Goldman Sachs estimates the world loses roughly 2 billion barrels of Persian Gulf output by year-end, and the UAE just rage-quit OPEC after six decades. $BP more than doubled net income. Supply destruction this dramatic has a way of making energy bulls look very, very smart.

Meanwhile, Big Tech earnings played out like a dinner party where two guests crushed it and two others handed everyone a $145 billion bill. $GOOGL surged ~6% on Google Cloud's 63% YoY growth and a revenue beat of $94.7B vs $91.6B expected. $AMZN rose ~2% on AWS hitting its best growth in ~15 quarters at 28%. Then there's $META, down ~8% after raising 2026 capex guidance to a jaw-dropping $125–145 billion — a number so large it has its own gravitational pull. Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson called the earnings picture broadly bullish and said investors are too distracted by geopolitics to notice a quiet sector recovery happening underneath.

On the Fed front, Powell held rates in an 8-4 vote — the most dissents since 1992 — then announced he's staying on as Governor after his chairmanship ends, which is either a principled stand for institutional independence or the most dramatic office chair spin in central banking history. Kevin Warsh is reportedly next in line for the top job, and markets are already pricing in exactly zero rate cuts this year. $SOFI's CEO said as much directly, which somehow didn't stop the company from posting 41% revenue growth and a Rule-of-40 score of 72. OpenAI reportedly missed its own internal targets, nuking $ORCL and friends mid-week before big tech earnings reminded everyone that the infrastructure trade is very much alive — even if the hype needs occasional rain, as Cramer would say.