Live footage of me trying to find literally anything else to talk about in today’s Final Tally other than Iran and AI bubble comparisons to 2022…

Before we get into today’s breakdown (and why Jensen’s little maneuver alongside Apollo and BlackRock has everyone’s panties in a wad) can we all take a moment to appreciate the comedy that is Cassandra Unchained on Substack? (No, this is not an ad.)

I’m starting to think Alex Karp slept with Michael Burry’s wife… and potentially his high school girlfriend before that.

Because even after Palantir crushed earnings and sent shares up 21% over the last week, everyone’s favorite office drummer made a post letting the world know he bought March 2027 PLTR puts struck in the low $100s… and reiterated his belief that the shares are worth less than $1 over the long run.

Somewhere, an options seller is browsing vacation homes with the sexy premium Burry just handed him.

Never have I seen a trader double down this aggressively while reality repeatedly beats him over the head with a folding chair. But then again, this is the man who became famous for being early, miserable, and eventually right… so perhaps the emotional damage is simply part of the process.

Anyways, the market traded sideways on this beautiful National S’mores Day thanks to growing doubts that the author of The Art of the Deal and Iran would stop bombing the sh*t out of each other.

The S&P 500 lost 0.1%, while Nasdaqistan and the Dow each fell 0.3%.

That kind of price action happened despite Iran saying it’s closing in on a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But Donnie and Tehran apparently have very different definitions of “close.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent last week telling markets a deal was days away. Then the Trumpster strutted in, announced America was only “semi-negotiating,” and said Iran hadn’t finished its economic ass-whooping yet.

Iran, meanwhile, said it is working with Oman on a potential reopening but still refuses to negotiate directly with the United States until several conditions are met.

Oil jumped 4% to around $81 per barrel, while Brent hit $87. That’s especially convenient considering America’s emergency oil stockpile has fallen below 300 million barrels for the first time since January 1983 (as we talked about last week).

Lastly, Nvidia dropped more than 2% after Jensen reportedly assembled Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and friends for a $500 billion AI infrastructure bender.

The whole thing goes something like this: lend Nvidia’s customers a boatload of money, let them build YUGE data centers, then watch that money boomerang back through GPU orders.

Jensen calls it infrastructure financing. Ray Dalio would call it keeping the circle jerk properly lubricated.

So that’s how we kicked off the week. Iran is “close” to a deal it refuses to negotiate, Donnie’s running low on emergency oil (while acting like he has all the leverage), and Jensen is assembling a $500 billion financial human centipede to keep the AI boom fully erect (to every bear’s dismay).

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Private Equity Is Stuck With 33,575 Unsold Businesses (New York Times): Grok, how many of these are 2nd generation HVAC businesses? 

>Game Over? GameStop CEO May Pull $56 Billion eBay Bid (Zerohedge): Roaring Kitty, you have 12 missed calls.

>Jeff Bezos investor group closing in on Liverpool FC stake (Financial Times): Liverpool stadium workers may now pee once every 90 minutes.

>Shake Shack customer alleges restaurant raised prices on food after selecting ‘no tip’ on a self-pay kiosk (New York Post): The Shake Shack kiosk in question: Fine, I’ll do it myself.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Gamestop as mentioned in the article.