SEC MAY SCRAP QUARTERLY EARNINGS REPORTS
Alright, so the SEC might kill quarterly earnings reports. Meta is planning to cut 20% of its staff to make room for $135 billion in AI spending. Jensen Huang just doubled his chip demand forecast to $1 trillion. And private credit is starting to look like a slow-motion car wreck. Let's get into it.
So here's a big one that flew under the radar today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the SEC is preparing a proposal to eliminate the requirement for companies to report earnings every quarter. Instead, companies would get the option to report just twice a year. The proposal could drop as early as next month.
This has been in the works since SEC Chair Paul Atkins fast-tracked the idea after President Trump publicly called for the change last September, arguing it would cut compliance costs and reduce short-term thinking. Now, this isn't a done deal. It still has to go through the formal rulemaking process, a public comment period, and there's a real question about whether it even survives legal challenge. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 explicitly mentions quarterly reports, so Congress might actually need to weigh in.
Here's the tension. Supporters say it reduces regulatory burden and lets managers focus on running their businesses. Critics — including a lot of institutional investors and academics — say you're just widening the information gap between insiders and regular investors. Less transparency, more room for problems. And ironically, many companies might keep reporting quarterly anyway because analysts and shareholders will demand it. So this could end up being one of those things where you technically don't have to file a 10-Q anymore, but the market forces you to do it anyway. Worth watching closely.
META: 16,000 LAYOFFS TO FUND A $135 BILLION AI BET
Now, speaking of massive spending, Meta has two big pieces of news today that are really one story.
Reuters reported over the weekend that Meta is considering cutting 20% or more of its workforce, roughly 16,000 jobs, to help offset what it expects to spend on AI infrastructure this year, $135 billion. Meta called the report "speculative." Then, on Monday morning, Meta turned around and announced a deal to spend up to $27 billion over five years on AI cloud capacity from Nebius, a Dutch neocloud provider that Nvidia just invested $2 billion in. Nebius will provide $12 billion in dedicated capacity using Nvidia's next-gen Vera Rubin chips starting in early 2027, with Meta committed to buying up to another $15 billion in available compute over the deal's term. Nebius stock surged about 14% on the news.
So how does the layoff math work? JPMorgan estimates a 20% cut would save Meta $5 to $6 billion a year. Bank of America puts it closer to $7 to $8 billion. Either way, that's a fraction of the $135 billion capex budget. Meta guided $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 — roughly double what they spent last year — almost entirely earmarked for AI infrastructure, data centers, and talent. They plan to spend up to $600 billion on data centers alone by 2028. The math is pretty simple: fire people, hire GPUs. And Wall Street loves it. Shares rose about 3% on the layoff news, which tells you everything about how the market thinks about headcount versus GPU spend right now.
NVIDIA: JENSEN HUANG SEES $1 TRILLION IN CHIP ORDERS
Which brings us to Nvidia. Jensen Huang took the stage at GTC 2026 on Monday and dropped a number that made the room pause: he now sees at least $1 trillion in orders for Nvidia's Blackwell and Vera Rubin chip architectures through 2027. Last year at GTC, that number was $500 billion through 2026. So he doubled the forecast by extending it one more year.
Now, Bloomberg made an important point — this doesn't necessarily mean growth is accelerating beyond the prior trend. It's more like the natural extension of what was already baked in. Nvidia's stock initially spiked almost 5%, then settled back to close up about 1.6%. The market did the math and realized it was more continuation than inflection. But a trillion dollars in chip orders is still a staggering number. About 60% of that demand is coming from hyperscalers — your Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, and Metas — which is actually a higher concentration than some investors would like to see.
PRIVATE CREDIT: THE SLOW-MOTION UNRAVELING
Alright, shifting gears to something darker. Davidson Kempner — one of the most respected credit-focused hedge funds in the world — went on the record with the Financial Times, warning that the problems in private capital are far worse than Wall Street has acknowledged. Managing partner Tony Yoseloff said a "substantial portion" of the private equity industry is already "stressed or distressed." And the numbers back him up.
They estimate $768 billion in stressed debt across the U.S. leveraged loan and direct lending markets, with roughly $4 trillion in unsold portfolio companies stuck in private equity backlogs. Blue Owl Capital sold $1.4 billion in loans across 128 companies back in February just to raise liquidity, then permanently halted redemptions at one of its funds. BlackRock's HPS Corporate Lending Fund hit its 5% quarterly redemption cap after getting $1.2 billion in withdrawal requests. And Blackstone's BCRED saw its first-ever quarter of net outflows, letting clients pull $3.7 billion (net outflow 1.7B). This entire industry grew on the back of cheap money and loose underwriting, and now investors want out faster than the funds can liquidate. It's not a full-blown crisis yet, but we will keep you updated if this bleed becomes an all-out crash.
PUBLIC STORAGE GOES ON A $10.5 BILLION SHOPPING SPREE
In deal news, Public Storage announced it's buying National Storage Affiliates in an all-stock deal valued at $10.5 billion. The combined company will have an enterprise value of $77 billion, adding over 1,000 properties, 69 million rentable square feet, and 550,000 units across 37 states. National Storage shares jumped about 28%. Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are backing the deal with $4 billion in committed financing. This is the biggest self-storage deal in years and cements Public Storage as the undisputed king of the industry.
ALLIES SAY NO TO TRUMP'S HORMUZ COALITION — GAS HITS $3.72
On the geopolitical front, the U.S. is increasingly isolated in its push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump called on allies to send warships to escort tankers through the strait, and the response was essentially: no thanks. Japan, Australia, and Germany all flatly declined. Germany's defense minister said, "This is not our war; we did not start it." The UK said it's "intensively looking" into options but won't be "drawn into the wider war."
Meanwhile, the hit to your wallet is very real. The national average gas price hit $3.72 a gallon as of Monday, up 74 cents in just two weeks and the 17th straight daily increase, according to AAA. That's the highest price at the pump since October 2023.
FED MEETING PREVIEW: IT'S NOT THE DECISION — IT'S THE MESSAGE
And finally, looking ahead. The Fed kicks off its two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The decision drops Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern. CME FedWatch has a 99.2% probability the Fed holds rates at 3.50% to 3.75%, so no surprise there. But the real story is the updated dot plot and Summary of Economic Projections, where we'll get a read on how officials are processing the Iran war, rising oil prices, and what that means for the rate path the rest of the year. Goldman and Barclays have both pushed their first expected cut to September. Some hawks are even floating a hike. So Wednesday is less about what the Fed does and more about what the Fed says.
That's your Monday rundown. A lot of moving pieces this week between the Fed, earnings from Lululemon and Micron, and whatever happens next in the Strait of Hormuz.