Cement is pumped into the space around the outside of the well casing in finishing a well

Oil rig (Jon G. Fuller/Getty Images)

Oil prices hit multiyear low as supply surge and demand fears slam energy stocks

It’s shaping up to be the worst week for oil in over two years.

4/4/25 2:22PM

Oil prices tumbled nearly 8% on Friday, touching their lowest level since 2021, as escalating trade war tensions stoked recession fears and sent investors scrambling.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, touched below $65 a barrel — on track for its weakest finish since August 2021. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US equivalent, dropped below $61, its lowest since April 2021.

The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, which tracks a basket of oil and gas giants like Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, sank nearly 9% Friday as investors reacted to the slump. Adding to the pressure, OPEC and its allies (OPEC+) are boosting production and plan to add even more barrels to the market going forward. The group now aims to bring an additional 411,000 barrels per day to the market in May — nearly triple the original planned boost of 135,000 bpd.

Even though oil imports were spared from President Trump’s latest tariffs, the broader economic fallout is already taking a toll. HSBC trimmed its 2025 global oil demand forecast, citing the trade tensions and OPEC’s decision, while Goldman Sachs slashed its Brent crude price target to $69 a barrel from $73, with WTI now seen averaging $66 a barrel instead of $69.

Old electronic items tossed on ground for disposal, Hudson

Technology giants don’t look like they used to, as the asset-light era fades

Oracle and Meta are now some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the S&P 500, spending more than energy giants. I guess data really is the new oil?

David Crowther28m

Matt Phillips57m

Space stocks rip amid speculation on Altman joining race

Space stocks AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab all soared Thursday amid a recovery in the high-beta momentum class of shares coveted by some retail traders.

(High-beta momo stocks are basically shares that have been on a winning streak for a while, and tend to go up a lot more than the overall market on positive days. Goldman Sachs includes all three of the aforementioned space stocks in its themed basket of such shares.)

There’s little other fundamental news out there on the companies themselves.

But a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI impresario Sam Altman has been toying with the idea of entering the space industry, potentially standing up a rival to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, may also be contributing.

As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, sometimes these stocks seem to trade on a what’s-bad-for-the-Musk-empire-is-good-for-us-and-vice-versa vibe.

Matt Phillips2h

Intel sinks on news it will hang on to networking unit

Intel dropped in early trading Thursday after it disclosed plans to retain ownership of its networking unit following a strategic review of operations.

The unit, known as NEX, makes products like infrastructure processors, which do needed “housekeeping” tasks like running security checks, thereby freeing core Intel CPUs to do the higher-value operations. It also produces switches and controllers that manage and direct the flow of data to CPUs.

Intel Shelves Plans to Sell Networking Division After Review

Luke Kawa3h

Quantum computing stocks soar on return of bullish options bets

The calendar says December, but the price action is starting to look a lot more like September to me:

Quantum computing companies IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are all up at least 7% as of 11:04 a.m. ET, buoyed by a wave of bullish options activity.

Nearly 50,000 calls in IonQ have already changed hands, well above the 20-day average for a full session, with activity concentrated in strikes from $50 to $55 in contracts that expire between Friday and mid-January. Its put/call ratio is near 0.2, versus an average of over 1 for the past 20 sessions.
More than 65,000 calls have traded in Rigetti, a hair shy of its full 20-day average. Like IonQ, options activity has a bullish tilt, with a put/call ratio of about 0.7 versus a 20-day average of roughly 1.2.
D-Wave, which received positive commentary from Evercore ISI on Wednesday, isn’t seeing call activity as elevated as its peers, but the options action is also very skewed toward the bull side, with a put/call ratio of less than 0.3 versus a 20-session average of 0.7.

Pure-play quantum computing stocks nearly doubled from late August to late September amid heavy options market activity thanks to reports on government support for the sector, M&A activity, tech breakthroughs, and a flurry of price target hikes by Wall Street.

Luke Kawa

Retail traders are killing it this year because of both what they’re buying and when they bought it

Buy the dip. Buy AI. Buy gold.