Brent at 7, Americans All In
Oil's spiking, stocks are wobbling, and retail just set a new record for equity exposure. What could possibly go wrong?
Americans are more exposed to equities now than they were at the peak of the dot-com bubble, which is definitely a normal thing to learn during a week when Brent's pricing in 7. The chart doesn't lie: retail has never been this committed to stocks. Not in 2000, not in 2021, not ever. Meanwhile, the Dow and S&P dropped while Nasdaq managed to limp higher after last week's tech bloodbath, and everyone's suddenly very interested in whether AI gains are sustainable. Spoiler: asking that question after the run-up is very on-brand.
Oil's the other headache. The Iran situation has Qatar cutting deals for U.S. natural gas and Brent climbing on escalation fears. When energy markets start repricing geopolitical risk, equity multiples tend to get uncooperative. Peter Schiff thinks we're headed for a crash before the 2026 midterms, which would be more interesting if he hadn't predicted 47 of the last two recessions.
The AI discourse has split into two camps: people worried about market froth and people worried about whether robots have feelings. MarketWatch is out here asking philosophers if machines are conscious while a startup in Redmond builds an AI weeder and ALS patients get their voices back through neural tech. The infrastructure spend continues, someone at Fast Company says they've seen this movie before, and Meta's Muse is apparently doing numbers that could somehow tank the market. Cool, cool.
If you're checking your portfolio daily, the Washington Post has bad news: you're doing it wrong. If you're not checking daily, you missed all of this. Pick your poison.