Oil Whipsaws, More Mega-Deals, and a Truth Social Post Moves Crude by $20 a Barrel.

Monday came in swinging. A single social media post sent oil prices off a cliff, two separate deals worth over $23 billion closed or were announced, a short seller and a CEO went to war, and Elon Musk casually revealed plans for the most ambitious chip factory in history. Oh, and the President invoked Jesus to get a voting bill passed. Let's break all of it down.

This was the story that moved everything. Early Monday morning, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held "very good and productive conversations" toward a "complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East." He ordered the Pentagon to pause all strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for 5 days while talks continue. This came just hours before his own 48-hour ultimatum was set to expire, the one where he threatened to obliterate Iran's power grid if the country didn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Markets loved it. The S&P 500 jumped 1.15%, the Dow surged 631 points (up 1.38%), and oil cratered. Brent crude plunged as much as 14% intraday, dropping to $96. For context, crude prices had been sitting near $120 just days earlier so this was roughly a $20 per barrel swing on a single Truth Social post.

Here's the problem though. Iran immediately came out and said none of it happened. Tehran's Foreign Ministry flatly denied any direct or indirect talks with Washington. Iran's parliamentary speaker called the whole thing "fake news" designed to manipulate oil and financial markets. So you've got the President of the United States saying talks are productive, and the other side saying there are literally no talks happening. Since Iran has seemingly nothing to gain by denying that the talks happened, many investors were immediately skeptical of President Trump.

Oil whipsawed hard on that contradiction. WTI recovered to settle around $88.13, still down over 10% on the day, and Brent closed just under $100, its lowest settle since March 11. Behind the scenes, regional intermediaries, including Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, have reportedly been passing messages between the two sides. Trump told Fox Business that special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were involved and that Iran wants a deal "badly," which again, Iran completely denied. As of now, this is a market running on vibes and contradictions, and the whipsaw reflects exactly that.

SoFi CEO Anthony Noto put his money where his mouth is. He bought 28,900 shares of SoFi stock at $17.32 per share, roughly $500,000 worth, right after short seller Muddy Waters Research published a report alleging at least $312 million in unrecorded debt and calling the company a "financial engineering treadmill,” whatever that means… Muddy Waters accused SoFi of using "Enron-esque off-balance-sheet structures that disguise borrowings as revenue" and claimed the company's actual personal loan charge-off rate is around 6.1%, more than double the 2.9% SoFi reports.

Then came the follow-up. Muddy Waters published a second note saying SoFi "answered zero" of the 11 questions they submitted to management ahead of the short report. They also claimed the company "regularly stonewalls on hard questions," especially when asked by institutional investors who are much harder to trick (but not impossible to fool).

SoFi fired back hard, calling the report "factually inaccurate and misleading" and saying it reflects "a fundamental lack of understanding" of their financial statements. The company even threatened legal action. Short interest in SoFi has climbed to 10.1%, the highest level since August 2025. After Noto's purchase, he owns approximately 11.7 million shares of the company. 

Elon Musk took the stage at the defunct Seaholm Power Plant in Austin on Saturday and announced what might be his most ambitious project yet. Terafab. A joint venture between his three companies,  Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, designed to build an end-to-end chip fabrication facility in Texas. The estimated price tag is north of $20 billion, potentially reaching $25 billion or more.

The facility is targeting 2-nanometer process technology, the most advanced node in current commercial production, and would produce two types of chips. The first is for Tesla's EVs, Cybercab robotaxis, and Optimus humanoid robots. The second is a high-power chip designed for SpaceX's orbital AI data centers. Musk said 80% of Terafab's compute output would be directed toward space-based AI satellites, with only 20% for ground applications.

The numbers are staggering. Terafab is designed for 100,000 wafer starts per month, scaling to 1 million, which would represent roughly 70% of TSMC's entire current global output. From just one facility operated by companies that have never fabricated a chip before. Musk called it "the most epic chip-building exercise in history by far." Bold doesn't begin to cover it. While the markets initially reacted positively to the news, it should be noted that Elon has a history of over-promising and under-delivering. 

Big Deals Are Closing in the Health Sector

Two major healthcare deals landed on Monday. Abbott officially completed its $21 billion acquisition of Exact Sciences, the company behind Cologuard (the leading noninvasive colorectal cancer screening test) and Oncotype DX (used for breast cancer treatment decisions). Abbott CEO Robert Ford said the deal strengthens their diagnostics leadership and taps into what they estimate is a $60 billion U.S. market for cancer screening and precision oncology. Abbott expects the deal to add roughly $3 billion in incremental sales in this year alone.

Separately, Gilead Sciences announced it's acquiring privately held biotech Ouro Medicines for up to $2.2 billion. That breaks down to $1.7 billion in cash upfront plus up to $500 million in milestone payments. The key asset is gamgertamig (don’t worry, we don’t know how to pronounce it either), a clinical-stage drug targeting severe autoimmune diseases like autoimmune hemolytic anemia and immune thrombocytopenia (at this point, we might as well of written this article in Chinese). It's already received Fast Track and Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA. Registrational studies are expected in 2027. Gilead is also in discussions with Galapagos for a potential R&D collaboration on the Ouro portfolio.

The lawyers are circling. Monteverde & Associates, a shareholder class action firm, opened an investigation into the $110 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Under the deal, WBD shareholders would receive $31 per share in cash. For context, WBD was trading around $12.54 before the bidding war started, and the company had previously agreed to sell to Netflix for $27.75 per share before Paramount outbid them.

This is a massive deal. The combined company would hold over 15,000 film titles, carry roughly $79 billion in combined debt, and faces scrutiny from everyone, including federal regulators, state attorneys general, and international competition authorities. Paramount has agreed to a $7 billion reverse termination fee if regulators block it, which tells you how real the antitrust risk is. The DOJ antitrust head has already said this won't get a fast track to approval, and California's attorney general promised a "vigorous" review. Monteverde is investigating whether WBD shareholders are getting a fair shake, which may feel obvious since the bidding war ended with them receiving a 200% premium for their shares, but it is standard procedure for deals of this size.

With gas prices surging thanks to the Iran conflict, DoorDash rolled out an emergency relief program for its delivery drivers. The program, running through April 26, offers two benefits. First, Dashers using the DoorDash Crimson debit card get 10% cash back on qualifying gas purchases at any U.S. station, a 5x bump from the standard 2% rate. Second, drivers who log at least 125 miles per week on deliveries receive a weekly fuel relief payment starting at $5 and going up to $15 depending on mileage. Combined, eligible Dashers could save up to $1.90 per gallon. Not a bad move when fuel costs are squeezing margins for everyone on the road.

FICO shares fell more than 5% on Monday after reports surfaced that Senator Josh Hawley is pushing the DOJ's Antitrust Division to investigate the company's pricing practices. FICO controls roughly 90% of the business-to-business credit scoring market, and late last year it hiked its mortgage credit score fee from $3.50 to $4.95, a 40% increase and plans to hike that up to $10 by the end of 2026. Hawley argues that the government pretty much requires FICO scores for FHA and VA loans, and raising prices is essentially exploiting a "government-granted monopoly." FICO did rightly point out that even at $10 it is barely noticeable when considering total mortgage closing costs though that's kind of a bullshit answer. In our opinion, as a private company, FICO is within its rights to raise prices for services, and if the government doesn’t like it, they need to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept credit scores from other credit bureau companies or speed up the rollout of VantageScores (a competing model owned by Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion).

While we are fighting Iran on the ground, China has begun a war with the U.S financial markets as the red giant continues reducing its U.S. Treasury holdings, a trend that has accelerated amid the Iran war. Chinese regulators earlier this year instructed banks to limit their holdings of U.S. government debt, citing volatility and concentration risk. Chinese and Hong Kong entities collectively held $938 billion in Treasuries as of last November, and that number has been trending down. The 10-year yield settled at 4.35% on Monday, a slight dip from Friday's 4.39% but still well above the 3.97% level from before the conflict started. That persistent upward pressure on rates is something borrowers across the economy are feeling as commercial and consumer loans are reliant on Treasury rates to dictate their Cost of Funds. For those who don’t know, all loans are based on COF plus a spread (to pay for staff, general expenses, and monitoring). As COF continues to increase, the average rate being charged to consumers and businesses will climb and banks can’t do anything to stop it.

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