1US strikes on Iran were met with higher futures and lower gold
Over the weekend the United States hit Iranian drone command sites, and Netanyahu ordered a deeper incursion into Lebanon. Both are escalations, and the pre-open tape treated neither as one: S&P 500 futures were up 0.27%, Nasdaq 100 futures 0.30% and Dow futures 0.44%, while gold fell 1.3%. Escalation that sells the hedge is the part worth pausing on. The usual pattern — bid gold, bid crude, sell equities — did not happen.
What the overnight tape bought instead was AI. Reuters ran its morning wrap under the line that AI, not oil, is what matters now, and the names carrying it came from a study of the companies furthest along in adopting AI, reported by CNBC: and as you would expect, and — an oil-services company — as the surprise on the list. joined the trillion-dollar club on high-bandwidth memory demand, and PC makers including and firmed pre-market on autumn AI-PC announcements.
Two things sit awkwardly against that look-through. The conflict is showing up in earnings estimates even while it is absent from the index: energy is one of only two sectors with estimates revised up this year, and part of that is a Hormuz risk premium in the crude price. And China's factory activity stalled in May, which points the other way from an AI-led bid on global demand. The escalation, in other words, is being expressed in energy earnings rather than in the index level or in gold — which means the equity market has already committed to a view it has not yet had to defend.
2This year's sector leadership lines up with earnings revisions, not with multiples
Adam Butler, interviewed on Excess Returns' weekly wrap, made the arithmetic case that the year is internally consistent rather than untethered. The S&P 500 is up about 9% year to date; bottom-up earnings estimates for the index are up about 8% over the same stretch. The leadership map follows the same rule. The two sectors whose estimates have been revised up most this year — technology and energy — are the year's two best performers. The three revised down most — consumer discretionary , financials and healthcare — are among the worst.
His broader point is aimed at a familiar objection: that the market has stopped trading on fundamentals. Butler's answer is that the objection assumes you know which fundamentals the marginal buyer is pricing. If that buyer is discounting 2030 or 2031 earnings rather than the trailing twelve months, a high price-to-earnings ratio on last year's profits is not evidence of anything by itself. He extends the same scepticism to risk, arguing that defining risk as the variance of returns is not the definition Graham or Buffett worked from, and that a hedging programme costing 2–3% a year can lower a company's cost of capital by more than it costs.
This is one long-form interview with no counter-case put to it, so it is a coherent framework rather than a tested one. But it has a testable consequence: if revisions are what moved the sector map, then the next revision moves it next, and a week this heavy with prints is where that gets settled.
3A SpaceX listing weeks away is being read as a threat to its listed rivals, not a lift for the sector
Brian, on Business with Brian, frames an imminent SpaceX listing — "a couple of weeks" out, in his telling — as a rotation event rather than a sector lift. Money moving into the listing has to come from somewhere, and on his reading it comes out of the crowded public space names. That splits his list in two, and the split is the interesting part.
On one side are the suppliers he says get paid regardless of who launches. has a buy zone in the "low 500s": electro-optical satellite sensors and laser terminals through its Arca acquisition, profitable for more than twenty years, with a three-year revenue backlog behind it. (Kaman Holdings) has one in the "upper 50s": the internals for Patriot, Stinger and Javelin munitions, revenue doubled in three years, and a swing from losses to profit that has since quadrupled.
On the other side are three names he wants materially lower before touching. at the low 90s — roughly a third of where it trades now — because it competes with SpaceX head-on and has a $3bn at-the-market share issuance approved. in the low 80s, because it both depends on SpaceX launches and fights Starlink for the same customers. at $13–14, on widening losses funded by dilutive issuance. Entry levels that far below the market are less a plan than a statement about how much air he expects the listing to let out of the incumbents.
Two caveats travel with it. This is one retail channel's own analysis, with no second source in the day's material to check it against. And the same video carried a disclosed paid promotion for (Kootenay Silver) — a sponsored segment, not an opinion, and not to be read as one. None of this resolves until SpaceX actually prices: the discount he is waiting for is a forecast of a rotation, not an observed one.
4The quantum pitch has moved from physics milestones to contracts and customers
Felix, on Felix & Friends, presented six names he thinks could rise tenfold inside twelve months, screened on three filters: a market value between $1bn and $10bn, so the arithmetic is at least possible; a named catalyst within twelve months; and institutional money already moving in, on his reading, ahead of retail. His setup for why selection pays now is a dispersion argument — 77% of the S&P 500's 2026 gains have come from the top twelve names, while dispersion inside the Russell 2000 is twice its level two years ago.
Three of the six are quantum-computing companies, and what the case rests on has changed. grew revenue 428% year on year to $62m last quarter, guides above $200m for the full year, is buying SkyWater for $1.8bn to bring fabrication in-house, and holds a DMEA Category 1 military approval. (D-Wave) claims 135 customers including LG, Sharp and Anduril, a 65% gross margin, eight years of cash and an investor day this month. (Rigetti) owns its own fab, has a "Lyra" chip due in the second half, and cites a $100m UK government contract, an $8m India contract, a $250m contract and integration with NVIDIA's platform. Those are order books and customer lists, not laboratory milestones — which is a different kind of argument than the sector used to make.
The size of them is the counterweight. D-Wave's roughly $25m of full-year revenue is a rounding error against a $1–10bn market value, so the case rests on the direction of these numbers, not their level. And the other three names in the same basket have nothing to do with quantum or with each other: , pre-revenue, with COMP360 psilocybin in Phase 2 for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD; , a salt and sulphate-of-potash fertiliser producer riding a Middle East supply shock; and , a defence-AI company with profit growth of 98% quarter on quarter. What holds the six together is the screen — size, catalyst date, institutional flow — not a shared business, which is worth knowing before reading the list as a theme. The segment also ran alongside sustained promotion of the presenter's own paid stock-screening product, which is a reason to discount the conviction rather than the facts. And the three quantum names are one bet on the same thesis, not three independent ones. The first thing that marks any of it to market is D-Wave's investor day this month.
What the sources recommended
Eight buy calls came out of three videos, six of them from a single twelve-month speculation basket, and two of the three videos carried paid-promotion disclosures.
The two with entry levels and profitable businesses behind them are Brian's: in the "low 500s" and in the "upper 50s", both framed as suppliers that get paid whether or not SpaceX lists. Three further names came from him with prices attached but as things to wait for rather than buy — at the low 90s, in the low 80s, at $13–14.
The six speculative names are Felix's: , and in quantum; on a Phase 2 psilocybin readout with no revenue behind it; on fertiliser and salt pricing; and on defence-AI contract flow. He labels the whole basket a twelve-month tenfold attempt, and that label belongs to each name individually — as does the paid-product promotion running through the segment.
One name was neither: (Kootenay Silver) was a disclosed paid sponsorship, and reads as advertising rather than a call.
The revision story gets its biggest test on Wednesday night
reports after Wednesday's close against a $22.7bn revenue estimate and $2.45 of EPS — the largest AI-semiconductor print of the week, and the single biggest input to the estimate-revision map in the second section. Two smaller reads come first: tonight, against roughly $9.9bn of revenue and $0.54 of EPS, is the AI-server demand read-through, and reports alongside it as a connectivity read. reports before the open this morning on about $1.9bn — government IT and defence, which is the demand side of the space-supplier case in the third section.
The weak half of the revision map gets tested too. reports before tomorrow's open against an $11.1bn estimate and on Wednesday night — the consumer-discretionary tells for the sector whose estimates have been cut hardest this year. If the leaders beat and the laggards miss, the revision explanation survives the week intact; if they cross over, the cleanest story about this year's tape is the one that breaks first.
