Oil Just Had Its Worst Month Since 2020 — And That's Exactly Why Stocks Hit Records.

The logic is cleaner than it looks once you treat oil as a tax on everyone else. Cheaper crude means lower gas prices, lower shipping costs, and fatter margins for almost every company that isn't an oil driller. It also cools inflation fears, which is good for bonds — the 10-year settled at 4.452%. Strategists described the tape as a "sweet spot": easing geopolitical tension, strong corporate earnings, and AI optimism arriving at the same time. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon was the lone skeptic, warning "there's a lot of exuberance out there, and I've seen this before."

For the book, we're leaning into the rotation rather than fighting it. We're trimming the energy sleeve — ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) — into the Brent slide, and putting that capital to work where cheap oil and a full IPO calendar help: financials and the AI-power complex. Full positioning and the Iran-timeline read-through are on the specialty page here.

"It's Gung Ho": The Big Banks Are Minting Money Again.

Dealmaking is back, trading desks are humming, and IPOs are up roughly 80% year over year. After two slow years, the biggest U.S. banks are having a genuine moment — advisory backlogs are the fullest since 2021, and the SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic listings on deck only deepen the pipeline. Cheap oil and record equity prices feed straight into capital-markets revenue.

We added Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan (JPM) at 2% each into the Tier-250k and Tier-500k models this weekend. GS is the cleaner IPO-cycle play (+17.3% YTD); JPM is the diversified-franchise anchor even after a soft start to the year (−6.2% YTD). Full write-up here →

BYD's $14 Billion Bet: A Self-Driving Chip That Undercuts Nvidia By Two-Thirds.

China's BYD unveiled the Xuanji A3 — a 4-nanometer autonomous-driving chip it says delivers comparable capability at roughly one-third the hardware cost of Nvidia's Thor platform. Even if the performance claims are generous, the price point is the story: it pressures the margin structure of the highest-margin part of the AI-and-auto trade.

We're not selling Nvidia (NVDA) — the training-silicon moat is intact — but we've moved it to WATCH and flagged the same risk for the legacy automakers (F, GM) that have to choose between paying up for Thor or betting on a Chinese supplier they can't easily buy. Full read-through here →

Deal Frenzy: CVC Grabs IFF's Flavor Unit, Ingredion Chases Tate & Lyle, Unilever Bets $270M On New Haven.

The M&A machine is fully back on. CVC is buying International Flavors & Fragrances' food-ingredients business for about $4.3 billion; Ingredion is circling Tate & Lyle; and Unilever is planting a $270 million research center in New Haven. The through-line is the same one driving the bank story — cheap financing, record equity, and boards that finally feel safe transacting.

We hold Ingredion (INGR) in the Fundamentals sleeve (−6.6% YTD — cheap, and now in play) and added it as the cleanest direct way to own the food-ingredients consolidation. Full deal map here →

Ackman Swung $65 Billion At Universal Music. The Family Said Non.

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square offered roughly $65 billion for Universal Music Group. The board — and the controlling Bolloré family — rejected it outright. It's a clean lesson in why control premiums exist: a founding family that holds the votes can simply decline, no matter how rich the bid, and there is nothing a financial buyer can do about it.

No position change — we don't own UMG — but it's a useful reminder for clients about why we favor businesses where minority shareholders are treated as owners, not bystanders. Full write-up here →

A Paperwork Slip Cost Two Donors $665,000. Here's How Not To Be Them.

Two cousins donated land worth $665,000 to charity and lost the entire deduction — not over valuation, but over a single missing piece of substantiation paperwork. The Tax Court showed no mercy. With new 2026 charitable rules arriving that will surprise a lot of filers, this is the kind of unforced error that wipes out a year of careful giving.

This is squarely a planning-desk item for our CalSTRS/CalPERS households who give appreciated assets — QCDs, donor-advised funds, and qualified appraisals all have to line up before December. Read the full checklist here →