YouTube's Finance Brain Trust Is Obsessed With One Thing Right Now — And It's Not AI
Oil shock fears, the biggest AI capex cycle in history, and a Fed that can't agree on anything — here's what the creators are actually saying
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GOOGL Alphabet Inc. | buy | $385.19 | — | — | — |
| META Meta Platforms, Inc. | hold | $613.31 | — | — | — |
| AMZN AMAZON COM INC | buy | $264.50 | — | — | — |
| MSFT MICROSOFT CORP | hold | $409.75 | — | — | — |
| LLY ELI LILLY & Co | buy | $933.93 | — | — | — |
| PGR PROGRESSIVE CORP/OH/ | buy | $201.10 | — | — | — |
| RCL ROYAL CARIBBEAN CRUISES LTD | buy | $263.18 | — | — | — |
| CMG CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL INC | hold | $33.80 | — | — | — |
| HSY HERSHEY CO | hold | $185.94 | — | — | — |
If you only watched one asset class on YouTube this week, it was crude oil — and for good reason. Brent briefly touched $126/barrel before pulling back to ~$113, Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz is pulling an estimated 5–7 million barrels per day off global markets, and Goldman Sachs revised its Q2 Brent forecast to $104/barrel average. Bloomberg's analysts are drawing hard lines: sustained Brent at $126 could deliver a 10% hit to US earnings growth, per Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson. Kyle Bass on CNBC argues the US is insulated — energy independent, tech-dominant — while Europe and Australia are about to feel serious pain from abandoning domestic refining. The macro vibes are not great, but the US-specific story is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
On the AI front, YouTube is basically split into two camps right now. Camp One: $GOOGL is printing — cloud up 63% to $20B, shares up ~10%, and the AI spending is clearly working. Camp Two: $META raised capex to $145B and Zuckerberg couldn't explain what the return on that is, sending shares down ~9%. John Mowrey on Bloomberg called this the largest CapEx cycle in modern history — railroad-era territory — and says you must have semiconductor exposure. Meanwhile, Anthropic is reportedly in talks for a $900B valuation, revenue run rate growing from $10B to $35B in a year, driven largely by Claude Code. That's not a typo.
The Fed held at 3.75% with four dissenting members — the most since 1992 — Powell called inflation 'misbehaving' with core PCE at 3.5% year-over-year, and then casually announced he's staying on as a governor after his chair term ends, breaking with decades of tradition. Kevin Warsh is waiting in the wings, promising a 'regime change' with less Fed-speak and new models. Whether that's reassuring or terrifying probably depends on your bond portfolio.
The prediction markets subplot is genuinely fascinating: US senators just unanimously banned themselves from trading on prediction markets after reports of near-daily insider trading incidents surfaced — blockchain data shows ~70% of Polymarket traders lose money, with a small elite group capturing most gains. Regulators are coming, and they are not happy.
Greg Abel's first Berkshire meeting as CEO is almost here, Warren Buffett won't be on stage, and somehow that's the calmest story of the week.