Trading Tips Blog

Oil is trading around $100 a barrel and everyone's watching the Strait of Hormuz. Fair enough. But while crude grabs the spotlight, another commodity is quietly setting up for a supply shock of its own: aluminum. Here's why it matters. Aluminum production is brutally energy-intensive—it takes huge amounts of electricity to smelt the metal. When oil prices spike, energy costs spike. And when energy costs spike, aluminum production becomes a lot more expensive. We've seen this movie before. In the 1970s, oil ...
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The U.S. added 178,000 jobs in March, beating expectations and reversing February's ugly 133,000 decline. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3%. On the surface, everything looks fine. Except it's not. Peel back the headline number and the picture is far less rosy. Nearly half of March's job gains came from health care—76,000 positions, with 35,000 of those simply Kaiser Permanente workers returning after a February strike. Strip that out and you're left with tepid growth at best. Worse, the unemployment rate only fell because ...
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The U.S. added 178,000 jobs in March, beating expectations and reversing February's ugly 133,000 decline. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3%. On the surface, everything looks fine. Except it's not. Peel back the headline number and the picture is far less rosy. Nearly half of March's job gains came from health care—76,000 positions, with 35,000 of those simply Kaiser Permanente workers returning after a February strike. Strip that out and you're left with tepid growth at best. Worse, the unemployment rate only fell because ...
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Oil gets the headlines, but aluminum is quietly becoming the Iran war's next supply shock — and one company is perfectly positioned to cash in. When oil spiked past $100 a barrel, most investors focused on energy stocks. Smart money looked one step further: aluminum. The metal requires massive amounts of electricity to produce, and skyrocketing energy costs hit smelters like a freight train. Toss in direct damage to Middle Eastern aluminum producers from recent Iranian attacks, and you've got a ...
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While Washington tries to choke off China's access to advanced chips, Beijing just posted record semiconductor revenue — and the irony is delicious. Chinese chipmakers raked in historic sales in 2025, powered by AI demand, memory shortages, and yes, U.S. export restrictions that turbocharged domestic buying. SMIC, China's largest foundry, hit $9.3 billion in revenue, up 16% year-over-year. Analysts expect $11 billion in 2026. Memory giant CXMT saw revenue explode 130% to over $8 billion. Here's the uncomfortable truth: U.S. sanctions didn't ...
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Google just proved that in the AI arms race, it's not about being the loudest — it's about owning the entire stack. Alphabet crushed Q4 2025 earnings and reminded Wall Street why betting against the company has always been a losing trade. Revenue topped $400 billion for the first time ever, and shares have nearly doubled over the past year. The secret? Google isn't just competing in AI — it's rewriting the playbook. While rivals scramble to license chips and rent cloud ...
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Here's the thing about Wall Street predictions: they're usually wrong, but that doesn't stop anyone from making them. This week, Morgan Stanley's chief U.S. equity strategist Michael Wilson decided to raise his S&P 500 target from 7,200 to 7,800 by the end of 2026—basically saying "yeah, we're going higher." If he's right, that's an 18% return from current levels. If he's wrong, well, at least he's committed. Wilson's thesis is that we're in a new bull market. Not the old one ...
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