🔹 Records on Wednesday, Reality on Thursday

Good afternoon,

There is a particular kind of week that financial markets specialise in, where the records and the warnings arrive in the same news cycle. This is one of them. The S&P and Nasdaq printed all-time highs on Wednesday on the back of strong earnings and an extended Iran ceasefire.

By Thursday morning, Iran had seized two more ships, oil was back above $100, and futures were down half a percent. Gold and silver gave a little back. None of it changes the long arc much. All of it is worth understanding before the next headline lands.

The Pulse

Markets

• S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at fresh records on the Iran ceasefire extension and a deep earnings beat slate.
• Semiconductors notched a 16th straight winning session, the longest streak on record.
• Brent rose more than 3% to $101.91 after Iran's Revolutionary Guard seized two container ships in the strait.
• US equity futures fell 0.5% Thursday as Asian stocks slipped on the persistent Hormuz closure.

The picture is a market caught between strong corporate fundamentals and a geopolitical risk that refuses to resolve. With more than 80% of reported S&P 500 names beating estimates, earnings are doing real work. But the 10-year yield holding above 4.30% tells you bond traders are not yet pricing rate cuts. Records on Wednesday, fade on Thursday. That pattern has defined April.

Earnings

This week's lineup:

• Today: Intel, Blackstone, American Airlines, American Express
• Friday: Procter & Gamble

• Tesla beat on adjusted EPS at $0.41 versus $0.37 expected on revenue of $22.39 billion, but shares reversed in after-hours trade after CFO Vaibhav Taneja guided 2026 capital expenditure to top $25 billion, up from $20 billion previously, with negative free cash flow expected for the rest of the year.
• Boeing delivered 143 jets in Q1, its best first quarter since 2019, posting revenue of $22.22 billion (+14% YoY) and an adjusted loss of just $0.20 per share against $0.67 expected, lifting the order backlog to a record $694.7 billion.
• The AI thread runs through every report. GE Vernova raised full-year guidance on a 71% organic jump in orders, much of it tied to data centre power demand. ServiceNow saw customers spending over $1 million on its Now Assist AI product grow 130% year on year. Tesla's $25 billion capex line is largely an AI compute and chip-fab number.

Every one of these companies is hitting the same wall. AI compute needs power that the grid was not designed to deliver, and the gap is now being filled by a new generation of storage and on-site energy systems.

Gold & Silver Moves

Gold is trading at $4,707.35 an ounce on Thursday morning, down roughly 0.6% on the day and about 10% below its March peak above $5,200. The metal has been pressured by two forces. The Iran ceasefire extension reduced the safe-haven premium, and Kevin Warsh's Senate confirmation hearing reminded traders that a coming Fed framework reset could keep real rates elevated for longer. Even with the pullback, gold is up more than 25% from where it started 2025, a reminder that the broader inflation-hedge story remains intact.

Silver is at roughly $75.50 an ounce, down nearly 2% in the past 24 hours. Silver fell harder than gold this week because its industrial side, particularly solar, electronics, and AI-related electrical infrastructure, is more sensitive to growth fears that come with $100 oil. Year on year, silver is still up 131%, an extraordinary move that has repriced the metal from cheap to fair.

The Gold / Silver ratio

With gold at $4,707 and silver at $75.50, the ratio sits at 62.3. It widened from roughly 60.9 yesterday as silver dropped faster than gold. For historical context, the modern average since 1970 is around 60, while the post-2000 average is closer to 70. So we are sitting almost exactly on the long-run mean. That is a meaningful shift from April 2025, when the ratio briefly touched 105 and silver was, by any reasonable measure, deeply undervalued. That obvious asymmetry is gone.

What the current ratio is telling us is that the market is balancing two stories. Gold is being held aloft by sticky inflation expectations and central bank buying. Silver is being held aloft by industrial demand from the energy transition and AI build-out. Neither is currently dominant. A move back toward 70 would suggest investors are turning more defensive. A move below 55 would suggest cyclical optimism is taking over. For now, 62 is a fair reflection of a market still trying to decide which regime it is in.

The takeaway: for portfolios with a mandate to preserve purchasing power, both metals continue to behave as the historical data would suggest, and the easy relative-value trade between them is largely closed.

The Deal Room

M&A / Investments

• SpaceX secured an option to buy AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year, or pay $10 billion for collaboration, pre-empting Cursor's planned $2 billion fundraise.
• Paladin’s limited-time raise is your chance to invest in America’s next great energy solution. Review the $0.80 Share Offering Here > _partner
• Blue Owl Capital affiliates will take Tampa-based healthcare REIT Sila Realty Trust private for $2.4 billion in cash, a 19% premium.

IPO / Listings

• Quantinuum, Honeywell's majority-owned quantum unit, confidentially filed Form S-1 with the SEC, formally advancing toward a public listing previously valued above $10 billion.
• Yesway, a convenience-store chain, raised $280 million in its US IPO.
• National Healthcare Properties priced a $462 million Nasdaq listing, but shares fell on debut.

Retirement Lens

This week makes a quiet point worth holding on to. Equities reached a record on the back of corporate strength, and within hours, the same headlines that lifted them were pulling them back. That kind of churn is normal in a year defined by a real war, a contested Fed transition, and a structural AI capex cycle.

For readers thinking in decades rather than days, the steadier signals are still the useful ones. Earnings continue to grow. Inflation hedges, gold and silver, are doing what the historical record suggests they should even after a pullback. Rates remain high enough to deliver meaningful income from short-duration bonds and money-market vehicles. Most retirement portfolios were built precisely for weeks like this one.

Headline Hunt

• The Trump administration is reportedly close to rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III, lifting cannabis equities.
• Tim Cook will step down as Apple CEO; longtime hardware chief John Ternus takes over September 1.
• Texas Instruments issued a stronger-than-expected Q2 forecast, supporting the chip-sector streak.
• Best Buy named 27-year veteran Jason Bonfig as next CEO, effective October 31.
• Citi outlined a worst-case scenario in which prolonged Hormuz disruption sends Brent to $130 per barrel.
• AT&T added 294,000 postpaid phone subscribers in Q1, beating expectations on $31.5 billion in revenue.
• IBM beat Q1 estimates on revenue of $15.92 billion but slipped 6% after-hours on unchanged guidance.
• Bitcoin traded near $77,800 Thursday morning, holding most of Wednesday's rally above $79,000.
• Spot platinum rose 2.1% to $2,079.80 and palladium gained 1.3% to $1,553.43 alongside the precious-metals bid.
• The US has now seen 102 IPOs in 2026 to date, running 5% ahead of last year's pace.

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