WTI fell to around $74, approaching levels not seen since before the war. Gas prices fell below $4 nationally for the first time in two months, declining for 28 straight days. VP Vance confirmed tankers carrying over 12 million barrels have already moved through the Strait.

At the same time, the dollar hit its strongest level since May 2025. The yen crossed 160 per dollar, putting Japan on official intervention watch.

These two things point in opposite directions. Cheaper oil says inflation is cooling. A stronger dollar says the market believes the Fed's hawkish signal completely. Both can be right simultaneously. The oil story plays out over months. The dollar story plays out in days.

Hike odds jumping from 29% to 65% in one session doesn't reverse just because gas fell below $4. The bond market is pricing a fundamentally different Fed now. Rate-sensitive names stay under pressure until the 2-year yield backs off its post-decision highs. The pressure lands most specifically on IT services and long-duration tech. Those names have no catalyst to offset the rate headwind. Hardware names with specific product stories, Intel being the clearest example today, hold better because the catalyst is independent of the rate path. Homebuilders, utilities, and REITs stay frozen until the 2-year actually moves.

Forget terrorism. Forget oil prices. Forget everything the evening news told you.

After two private meetings with U.S. Congressmen on March 2nd — and weeks of digging into what those conversations uncovered — I'm convinced we launched those strikes for a completely different reason.

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Trump posted that Apple (AAPL) has agreed to work with Intel (INTC) to design and build chips in America. Intel surged 10%. The US government holds a 10% stake in Intel from last year's strategic investment.

This matters because the partnership has executive backing, federal funding context, and strategic urgency behind it all at once. Companies like Apple, Nvidia (NVDA), and Google had largely moved away from Intel architecturally over the past decade. An Apple chip deal reverses that narrative directly.

Apple ships hundreds of millions of devices annually. Designing and building chips for Apple in the US is a volume manufacturing commitment that gives Intel decade-long revenue visibility. Analyst Gene Munster said this amounts to Intel being officially promoted back to the top tier of US tech companies.

Intel has risen fourfold since the government took its stake. An Apple partnership adds a product bet on top of the policy bet that drove that gain.

Intel has a policy story and a product story now. The two together make the thesis more durable than either alone. The Apple manufacturing partnership gives the government's investment its first large-scale commercial proof point.

Accenture (ACN) fell 17%, its worst single-session drop on record, after cutting revenue guidance. The stock approached its lowest close since 2017.

The old consulting model is simple. Headcount times billing rate times utilization. If AI tools allow the same team to do twice the work, you need half the headcount to generate the same revenue. That is a direct compression of consulting firm revenue. Accenture's guidance cut is the first major data point showing this compression has arrived at real scale.

Accenture simultaneously announced over $4 billion in cybersecurity acquisitions including a majority stake in Dragos. The market ignored the deals entirely and sold the guide. Industrial cybersecurity is one area where AI creates more demand rather than replacing billable hours. Accenture is buying into that corner. The problem is the core business got there first.

Every IT services firm trading on AI-transformation consulting revenue now has a valuation question to answer. Cognizant (CTSH) fell in sympathy. Reduce IT services exposure. Own the infrastructure that powers AI rather than the labor that deploys it.

The CEO of this AI company (click here to get the name, 100% free) just issued a CODE RED in an internal memo…

Warning his employees that they’re dealing with a critical situation.

Another company executive even implied they might need a government bailout. 

And now Jim Rickards is predicting this company is about to go bust, in a full-blown AI meltdown that could be 10 times bigger than Lehman Brothers.

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Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook told the Journal that Apple will raise product prices due to surging memory and storage chip costs. 

Memory-linked names surged immediately. Sandisk (SNDK) jumped over 11% to near an all-time high. Corning (GLW) jumped over 5%. Western Digital (WDC) and Micron (MU) both moved higher.

When the world's largest device maker publicly confirms it is raising prices because memory costs too much, that is a direct demand signal for memory makers. The AI buildout has been consuming memory at a pace that has outrun supply for three straight quarters. HBM memory in particular goes directly into Nvidia (NVDA) GPUs for AI training and has been in shortage since 2024.

SK Hynix separately shipped samples of its next-generation HBM4E chip with 20% better power efficiency. The Kospi crossed 9,000 for the first time in its history, driven by Samsung and SK Hynix on the same session.

Apple raising prices because of memory costs adds a consumer device revenue stream on top of the AI data center stream driving memory pricing. Own memory names with exposure to both channels simultaneously. Micron (MU) is the clearest US expression of that trade.

SpaceX (SPCX) fell for a second straight session but remains up over 35% from its $135 IPO price. Retail bought as much SpaceX stock in its first three sessions as the entire rest of the market combined. A two-day pullback after that concentration is mechanical, not fundamental. The more interesting observation is what happens if SpaceX holds above $165 next week while Accenture keeps falling. Both are AI stories. One is infrastructure. One is labor. The market is deciding in real time which one AI creates value in and which one it destroys. That divergence is the clearest version of the spend-or-earn framework this letter has been tracking all month.

Kroger (KR) fell over 8%, its worst day since 2021, after the new CEO said operating costs are growing faster than sales. Consumers buying on sale rather than full grocery lists keeps volume stable while compressing margins. Dollar General (DG) and Dollar Tree (DLTR) face the same squeeze. The value consumer floor is intact. The value retailer margin is not.

Warsh hinted that post-meeting press conferences may not continue after every Fed meeting, reversing a practice Powell introduced. Fewer press conferences mean less forward guidance and more uncertainty between meetings. The 30-year Treasury is where that uncertainty reprices first when forward guidance shrinks.

America was already drowning in $38 trillion of debt, but the recent conflict in the Middle East just accelerated the timeline. 

As oil spikes, a 100-year-old stock market signal that accurately predicted the 2008 and 2020 crashes is flashing a massive "Sell" on dozens of popular U.S. equities. 

If you hold the wrong stocks when this debt crisis hits, it could wipe out years of gains.

Click here to see the 10 popular stocks to dump immediately

Two stories are running in parallel. The oil and peace story says inflation is falling and the hawkish case weakens over the next two CPI prints. The bond and dollar story says the hike is coming regardless. 

Tanker traffic through Hormuz this weekend is the one variable that can shift the balance before Monday's open. Ships moving keeps oil down. Oil down weakens the hike case. The chain starts in the Strait.