Oil just broke $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, and the ripple effects are tearing through every corner of the market. Brent crude futures surged as much as 29% on Monday alone, briefly spiking above $120 before settling near $105-110. The catalyst: the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have threatened to “set ablaze” any vessel attempting to pass, and only about 10% of normal tanker traffic is getting through. Goldman Sachs ...

Remember when getting decent market research meant dropping serious cash on a Bloomberg terminal and working for a hedge fund? Yeah, those days are basically dead. Now, some of the sharpest minds in finance are publishing their hottest takes on Substack, and retail traders are treating it like they just got handed the keys to the kingdom. Last month, a research firm called Citrini Research dropped a dystopian sci-fi piece on Substack about AI's future impact on the economy. Sounds niche, right? Wrong. The thing went viral, got screenshot-shared across Twitter and trading chats, and tanked the...

Jack Dorsey dropped a bomb last week. Block announced it was cutting 4,000 employees—40% of its workforce—and the stock jumped 24% after hours. Investors cheered. In any other era, that would've been grotesque. Today? It's basically a preview of coming attractions. Here's what actually happened: Dorsey didn't apologize his way through a financial crisis or blame the economy. He said, plainly, that AI had made thousands of his employees unnecessary. And he's probably right that other CEOs will follow. The question is whether they'll do it as honestly as he did. **The Domino Effect Is Already ...

Remember when the only trade that mattered was buying mega-cap AI stocks and watching them rip? Yeah, 2026 has other plans. The numbers are brutal for the AI faithful. Microsoft is down 18.6% year-to-date. Amazon has dropped 9%. Tesla's off 10.5%. Even Nvidia — the undisputed king of the AI trade — is down nearly 5%. Meanwhile, the "boring" stuff your uncle keeps recommending at Thanksgiving is quietly cleaning up. Value stocks are staging a genuine comeback. Energy stocks are up 24% YTD. Gold miners have surged 26%. Small-cap equities — left for dead for years — began reviving last November...

While American investors obsess over AI mega-caps and geopolitical chaos, something remarkable is unfolding 8,000 miles away. India's economy is modernizing at breakneck speed, its GDP growth targets exceed 7%, and it's signed seven free trade agreements in the past 18 months alone. For investors willing to look beyond the S&P 500, the opportunity is massive. The India Capital Growth Fund — which focuses on small and mid-cap Indian equities — has identified three companies riding this wave. And none of them are the usual suspects. First up: Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), India's dominan...

Something strange has been happening in the market — and if you've felt like the old rules don't apply anymore, you're not imagining it. Algorithms now account for roughly 70% to 90% of daily U.S. equity volume. Add a surge in retail participation — with stock cash flows running more than 50% higher last year — and you get a market wired for speed and sharp reversals. The human beings you picture on a trading floor are mostly the last visible layer of an increasingly automated system. The numbers tell the story. The average holding period for stocks has collapsed from about eight years in th...

Remember when investment research was locked behind a $24,000-a-year Bloomberg Terminal paywall? Those days are dying faster than a meme stock in a bear market. Substack has quietly become the Bloomberg Terminal for people who can't afford Bloomberg—or who just think the whole gatekeeping thing is ridiculous. And honestly? It's working. Last month, a research outfit called Citrini Research dropped a dystopian thought exercise about AI's future on Substack, and it tanked the Dow by 800 points. Not because it was peer-reviewed by the Federal Reserve. Because it went viral on X and everyone deci...

Something interesting is happening beneath the surface of this market: investors are dumping "asset-light" darlings and buying things that exist in the physical world. Railroads, oil rigs, copper mines, defense contractors. The stuff you can kick. The rotation has been building for weeks, but the data is now undeniable. Hard-asset sectors — energy, materials, industrials, utilities — are crushing the S&P 500 in 2026. Energy alone is up 24% year-to-date. The VanEck Gold Miners ETF has surged over 26%. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy names that dominated for two straight years are going sideways ...

West Texas Intermediate crude broke above $90 a barrel on Friday and posted a 35% weekly gain — the largest since oil futures trading began in 1983. Brent crude briefly touched $94. And the shockwave is just getting started. The catalyst is the U.S.-Iran conflict, which has escalated from saber-rattling to active military engagement. When you take shots at the world's fourth-largest oil producer, the commodity market doesn't wait for diplomatic channels. It prices in disruption immediately. And with global spare capacity already thin, even a partial disruption to Iranian supply would tighten ...

Thousands of people lost their jobs last week. And the stock market threw a party. Block — the fintech company formerly known as Square — announced it would eliminate 4,000 employees, roughly 40% of its entire workforce. The stock surged 24% after hours. Billions of dollars in market cap appeared out of thin air. All it took was erasing 4,000 paychecks. But here's the part that should keep every knowledge worker awake at night: CEO Jack Dorsey didn't blame a downturn. He didn't point to slowing revenue or a failed product bet. He said, with apparent conviction, that AI had made thousands of ...