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President Biden Meets With Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
President Joe Biden smiles during a meeting (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Here’s The Deal

One of the world’s greatest oil traders wants to buy more oil

Joe Biden is looking for more money to refill the US’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Luke Kawa

As digital ink is spilled by the barrel discussing President Joe Biden’s legacy, let’s highlight one part that sticks out for market-watchers: He’s one of the greatest oil traders of all time.

Biden’s decision to begin releasing oil from the US’s stockpile (known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) in November 2021 was, at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight, unnecessary.

But the future massive reserve release announced in March 2022 to respond to the price surge brought about by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a resounding economic, financial, and geopolitical success.

Crude oil (and importantly for consumers, gasoline) prices are invariably higher under the counterfactual in which Biden lets the free market sort it all out. US oil exports surged during this time, helping Europe navigate its more acute energy price spike and shortage.

And then there’s the PnL consideration: When the Biden administration was emptying out the tanks of the SPR in 2022, front-month West Texas Intermediate futures averaged nearly $95 per barrel. Over the past year, during which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been growing once again, prices averaged around $80 per barrel.

To put it simply: under Biden, the US has sold oil when it’s high, and bought it back when it’s low.

Of course, Biden’s de facto short position in oil is still open, and very large: the US has released way more oil than it’s bought back.

But in a world where shale is A Thing, private firms’ time-to-market for oil can be a lot quicker than a pre-2012 environment. Conceptually, you can think of the reserves associated with drilled-but-uncompleted wells (DUCs) as a relatively flexible form of crude oil supply that can be tapped via price signals that helps augment the SPR. (Granted, DUCs are now at their lowest level in at least a decade, as private energy producers sought to be able to control capital expenditures while increasing production and being as shareholder-friendly as possible). With both the SPR and DUCs, a largely known quantity of oil is sitting underground. The difference is all in the ease of access and timeliness.

Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk told Bloomberg the administration wants to purchase more oil than the ~15 million barrels it has the budget for. And you know what, in any semi-meritocratic fund, if a portfolio manager were running this hot, they’d be given a ton more risk capital to work with.

Not to mention that commodity prices just hit their lowest levels of 2024.

Give the man more money!

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GameStop briefly spikes as tweets from @TheRoaringKitty, aka Keith Gill, appear then disappear on X

Shares of GameStop briefly mooned after hours before erasing the entire advance after posts from @TheRoaringKitty appeared, then disappeared from the social media platform X.

@TheRoaringKitty is the account associated with Keith Gill, the messiah of GameStop’s meme-stock moment in 2021 who returned in 2024 to kick off another parabolic rally in the shares.

The tweets came and went before I could lay eyes on them, but Bloomberg tells me there was “one depicting a cat, and another with a picture of the online character Pepe the Frog wearing Roaring Kitty’s trademark red bandanna” around 5:40 p.m. ET. A screenshot posted of one tweet showed that it included a string of text (ending in “pump”) that appears to be the wallet address for a meme coin called “Red Kitten Crew.”

The market cap of the coin briefly jumped to about $12 million around the time of that tweet before cratering to about $2.6 million thereafter.

The emergent consensus on the r/Superstonk subreddit, which is dedicated to discussions of GameStop, is that the account was hacked. The more tinfoil-hatted members, meanwhile, are suggesting that not only is this a hack, but a hack intended to somehow thwart GameStop’s attempt to purchase eBay.

And on that note, GameStop also released a filing after the close of its letter to shareholders regarding their upcoming annual meeting, asking them to approve CEO Ryan Cohen’s proposed pay package as well as an increase in the authorized share count, which is one of the hurdles that would be need to be cleared in order to complete the deal with eBay.

Anyways, all these hacked account scams on X are really interfering with my ability to get people to vote for me to be a major podcast host.

markets

Power Solutions International mysteriously craters ahead of earnings, then tumbles more after earnings too

Shares of Power Solutions International are extending losses in postmarket trading after the engine- and power-system provider released its Q1 results.

Revenues of $128.6 million came in shy of the consensus call for $161 million, and operating income of $11.4 million was less than half of the anticipated $23.7 million.

(Granted, there were only two estimates available here.)

But the curious thing is... traders didn’t wait until these underwhelming results were released to dump the stock.

Up until about 12:10 p.m. ET, volumes were tracking above their 5-day average, but nothing too abnormal. In the 20-minute span after that — with no reported news on any wires — shares tumbled on 40 times their average volume for that time of day.

The stock finished down 17.7% in regular trading, and extended that loss to down 50% as of 5:05 p.m. ET.

Suffice it to say, this isn’t normal.

Companies operating in a similar segment of the market, like Cummins or Generac Holdings, didn’t suffer a similar intraday swoon.

While other power providers are visibly cashing in on the AI boom and offering robust outlooks tied to data center demand, Power Solutions’ management was reluctant to pencil in anything forward-looking on that front.

“The Company continues to see strong demand for data center power solutions, and expects sales to increase in the second half of 2026,” per the press release. “However, the timing and ultimate volume of related shipments remain subject to customer scheduling, manufacturing throughput, supply-chain factors, and other variables, and the Company is not predicting any specific level of data center revenue in any future period.”

markets

AST Spacemobile drops after 1Q top and bottom lines miss estimates

After soaring during Monday's session, AST SpaceMobile shares are coming back to earth.

The retail-trading favorite is down double digits in postmarket trading Monday after the company fell short of Wall Street’s expectations with its Q1 earnings report. 

Here are the details:

  • Revenue of $14.7 million (compared to analyst estimates of $39 million). 

  • Net income of -$191 million (estimate: -$76.3 million)

Shares, which rose 10% during the regular session on Monday, fell 11% after the report.

The company — which is building the first space-based cellular broadband network, connecting standard cell phones to satellites — has experienced high stock volatility over the past year. Despite the dips, however, it had still landed up nearly 200% since last May. 

Despite missing Street estimates, the company's revenue is a significant increase over the Q1 2025's $7.18 million, when the company focused primarily on government contract work. The company has a devoted retail following, who call themselves the SpaceMob, who’ve cheered on the SpaceX rival’s rapid growth. 

Today, AST Spacemobile has agreements with Verizon, AT&T, and others to provide space-based internet directly to phones. Earlier this year, it also won a key contract with the US Department of Defense for the “Golden Dome.” 

So far the company has successfully launched seven functioning satellites and on Monday recommitted to plans to have 45 total satellites by 2026. The company currently trails behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX, who says they now have 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit and launched. AST Spacemobile also is one short on their goal after their BlueBird 7 satellite had to be taken out of orbit in April.

markets

CleanSpark drops after Q2 results trail estimates, with much deeper-than-expected quarterly loss

Shares of CleanSpark are down in postmarket trading after the bitcoin miner and data center developer reported its second-quarter earnings on Monday, missing Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom lines.

CleanSpark reported:

  • $136.4 million in revenue (compared to analysts consensus estimate of $139.4 million). 

  • An adjusted loss per share of $1.52 (estimate: a $0.66 loss).

Those numbers show revenue down 24.9% year over year.

Like TeraWulf, which reported earnings on Friday, and many, many others, CleanSpark is transitioning from a solely bitcoin mining company to a broader AI infrastructure provider. The company is up 53% over the past year. 

In its press release Monday, the company said it roughly doubled its megawatts under contract year over year. Per Matt Schultz, CEO and chairman of CleanSpark:

Our objectives are clear: commercialize our AI/HPC-applicable assets, grow the portfolio, and continue mining efficiently to power CleanSpark’s transformation.

According to exchange data, CleanSpark is among the Russell 3000 companies that traders love to hate, with roughly 35% of its float sold short as of mid-April. That’s one reason, besides the bitcoin/AI crossover, that the name is on the dashboard of many retail traders.

markets

MARA dips after missing earnings expectations

Bitcoin miner and data center operator MARA Holdings released its Q1 earnings report Monday afternoon, missing analysts expectations on revenue and earnings per share. Shares dropped in after-hours trading, giving back gains built on Mondays session.

The company reported:

  • Revenue of $174.6 million, below the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of $181.9 million and an 18% decline from $213.9 million in the same period last year.

  • A net loss of $1.3 billion, or a $3.31 loss per diluted share, compared to the $1.55 loss per share in Q1 2025.

The jump in the companys net loss was primarily driven by a $520.4 million increase in operating loss, largely due to unfavorable bitcoin mark-to-market adjustments of ($1.0 billion) and restructuring costs of $45.9 million during the quarter, MARA CFO Salman Khan said in the firms Q1 2026 shareholder letter.

MARA Holdings has the fourth-largest bitcoin treasury and, similar to other mining companies, has made a push to develop infrastructure to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month, the company announced acquiring Long Ridge Energy & Power LLC for $1.5 billion to add over 1 gigawatt of total potential power capacity.

We expect Long Ridge will continue to supply power to the grid and generate cash flow and positive EBITDA upon closing, MARA Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement. Our intention is to develop incremental capacity at the site and build a higher value digital infrastructure asset.”

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