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Stocks continue slide as US oil settles above $100

Stocks fell, weighed down by tech, as the US-Iran war entered its fifth week.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 fell as US oil prices rose, settling above $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022. Comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell that inflation expectations seem to be well anchored drove Treasury yields lower as traders’ fear of a rate hike this year eased.

Financials was the best-performing sector, while industrials and information technology fared the worst.

Stocks that moved higher:

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae soared after Bill Ackman and Michael Burry posted on X that the stocks are undervalued.
Aluminium stocks Alcoa and Century Aluminum climbed as an Iranian strike on major smelting operations in the Gulf region tightened supply.
Meta rallied after being named a “top pick” by Morgan Stanley.
BYD jumped on a report that the electric vehicle maker expects to beat its 2026 overseas sales target by 15%.
United Therapeutics surged after announcing that a trial for its pulmonary fibrosis drug met its primary end point.
Embattled software-as-a-service stocks Zscaler, Atlassian, ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, and Salesforce rebounded.
Palo Alto Networks rose on news that its CEO bought $10 million in company stock on Friday.

Stocks that moved lower:

Avis sank after revealing plans to sell up to 5 million shares of common stock.
Fermi fell after releasing its 2025 financial results, which showed that the cost for its power site is mounting while it still doesn’t have any customers secured.
Alaska Air dove after lowering its Q1 profit forecast due to surging fuel costs.
Sysco sank on news that the food distributor is buying Restaurant Depot for roughly $29 billion (including debt).
Memory stocks Western Digital, Micron, Seagate Technology Holdings, and retail favorite Sandisk continued a sell-off that began last week over a potentially more memory-efficient AI algorithm from Google Research.
Optical stocks Applied Optoelectronics, Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Ciena Corp. got slammed, perhaps in part due to reports that Samsung is entering the silicon photonics market.
AI construction trades Emcor, Vertiv Holdings, and Sterling Infrastructure sank.
Palantir dropped as the British government weighed removing it from NHS data systems.
Robinhood and SoFi Technologies dipped on news that Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade is in talks to lead the SpaceX IPO for retail investors. (Robinhood Markets, Inc., is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)

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Matt Phillips & Luke Kawa6h

Memory, optical, and AI-construction stocks dive as embattled SaaS stocks rebound

Memory stocks sank on Monday, continuing a sell-off that began last week with new details about a potentially more memory-efficient AI algorithm from Google Research.

Western Digital, Micron, Seagate Technology Holdings, and retail favorite Sandisk all tumbled.

Industry publication Wccftech flagged that some memory chip prices have seen a “significant drop” recently across multiple US retailers.

A new, upbeat initiation for Seagate by JPMorgan analysts — they rated it “overweight,” basically a buy, on “opportunity for significant upside” — couldn’t help Seagate shake off the slump in the broader data center trade.

Optical stocks — recent high-flyers — also got slammed, taking down Applied Optoelectronics, Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Ciena Corp. . The group may also under particular pressure in light of reports that Samsung is entering the silicon photonics market.

AI construction trades like Emcor, Vertiv Holdings, and Sterling Infrastructure also sank.

Meanwhile, traders seemed to be scurrying back to securely profitable software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cybersecurity stocks as a place to wait out the market mayhem.

ServiceNow, Zscaler, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, and Atlassian were all solidly in the green in midday training.

Luke Kawa7h

Meta rallies after being named a “top pick” by Morgan Stanley

Meta is off to a strong start to the week after being named a new “top pick” of Morgan Stanley’s internet analysts.

Their case: the social media giant is cheap and commands an ever-increasing amount of eyeballs, which it’ll leverage to make money from its massive AI capex through nascent opportunities like agentic shopping and assistants.

“META sentiment has troughed due to GenAI ROIC and long-term positioning fears, and more recently macro ad market and regulatory question marks,” wrote analyst Brian Nowak. “In all, META now trades at ~15X our ’27 $36 EPS, 1 standard deviation below the long-term average, which creates a strong buying opportunity, in our view.”

Reported job cuts would also be “a bullish development” that boosts earnings, he added.

Even so, Nowak trimmed his price target on the stock to $775 from $825, which still represents upside of about 50%.

The hyperscalers have come under persistent pressure as investors remain reticent to bet that this capex binge will have a happy ending. Per The New York Times, Meta recently delayed the launch of its new model because of performance issues.

(That being said, the company’s latest earnings report did show that its ability to use AI tools to grow its top line remains impressive, even if its models aren’t best in class.)

Matt Phillips7h

American aluminum stocks rip following strikes against Gulf’s giant smelters

Aluminum stocks soared Monday after Iran attacked major smelting operations in the Gulf region over the weekend.

Alcoa and Century Aluminum both surged Monday, after strikes Saturday hit aluminum plants in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. New York aluminum futures were up about 4% shortly after 11 a.m. ET.

Bloomberg reports that the Gulf is the source of roughly 9% of the world’s aluminum supply, which was already imperiled by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the combined drone and missile attacks on the plants were justified by the aluminum producers’ links to the US military and aerospace industries in the region.

Producing aluminum is highly energy-intensive, and the Gulf has emerged as a center of the industry in recent years due to its energy assets. Emirates Global Aluminum, for example, is one of the world’s largest producers of the lightweight metal.

The attacks on the plants only add to the upward pressure on prices, as it can take months to restart closed smelters.

Emirates Global Aluminium Says Smelter Site Damaged in Attack

Bloomberg reports that the Gulf is the source of roughly 9% of the world’s aluminum supply, which was already imperiled by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The attacks on the plants only add to the upward pressure on prices, as it can take months to restart closed smelters.

Matt Phillips7h

British government weighs removing Palantir from NHS data systems

Officials in the British government are exploring ways to eject defense, intelligence, and AI software company Palantir Technologies from data systems used by the National Health Service, the government-funded health system.

The Financial Times reports:

“The US company was awarded a seven-year £330mn contract in 2023 to create a data platform that collates health waiting lists, patient information and other sensitive data.

Its role has become an increasing source of controversy, given its ties to the US defence sector and its co-founder and CEO Alex Karp’s vocal support for Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. MPs, NHS staff and medical trade unions have voiced concerns about Palantir’s suitability for managing data in national health systems.”

While Palantir’s AI software services business — aimed at corporate customers — is a fast-growing business line, the US government remains Palantir’s single largest source of revenue, accounting for $1.9 billion in sales in 2025. That’s almost as much as Palantir’s entire commercial division, which logged $2.1 billion in revenue in 2025.

But the company’s close ties to the US government — including providing services to US agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation program, as well as US intelligence and military services — have created resistance to growth in some other areas.

For instance, Switzerland repeatedly rejected Palantir systems, according to recent reporting from Swiss magazine Republik, after officials there raised concerns about data sovereignty and risks data could be accessed by the US government and intelligence services.

Ministers explore triggering break clause in Palantir’s NHS contract

“The US company was awarded a seven-year £330mn contract in 2023 to create a data platform that collates health waiting lists, patient information and other sensitive data.

Its role has become an increasing source of controversy, given its ties to the US defence sector and its co-founder and CEO Alex Karp’s vocal support for Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. MPs, NHS staff and medical trade unions have voiced concerns about Palantir’s suitability for managing data in national health systems.”

Luke Kawa, David Crowther

War and AI doubts have fueled an unprecedented divergence between stock prices and earnings estimates

The S&P 500 has never been down this much when earnings estimates have risen by this much, based on data going back to Q2 1990.

A protester waves the upside down U.S. flag during the

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