Hello there.

It’s earnings week! Chins up, Copium prescriptions filled. We’re vibing.

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People are quick to forget the social soap opera side of the stock market. It ain’t all earnings. Speaking of, let’s check in on OPEC…

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Five of the Magnificent Seven are dropping earnings this week, and Wall Street is treating it like the Super Bowl of corporate reporting season. Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft all report between Wednesday and Thursday, which means your portfolio is about to feel feelings.

The good news is that earnings season has been strong so far. About 82% of S&P 500 companies have beaten expectations. The bad news? These five names carry so much weight that one ugly surprise could tank the entire market's vibe.

Apple is the one to watch closely. This is the first quarterly report since John Ternus replaced Tim Cook as CEO, and investors want proof that the company can navigate memory-cost headwinds while maintaining its supply chain dominance. Meta just dropped its Muse Spark AI model from the new Superintelligence Labs, so expect questions about exactly what they plan to do with it. Microsoft has been riding a 19% rally since late March on AI momentum, and any hint that the cloud growth slowdown is over could send it higher.

Amazon might be the wildcard. The stock fell 8% after last quarter's $200 billion spending forecast spooked investors, and another conservative guide could trigger a repeat. Alphabet's search revenue and cloud growth metrics will signal whether AI monetization is finally kicking in or still just a story executives tell on earnings calls. Buckle up, boys and girls.

After 60 years of membership, the United Arab Emirates just told OPEC to kick rocks. The third-largest producer in the cartel announced it's leaving both OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1, and the timing couldn't be messier for global energy markets.

Here's the deal: the UAE has been quietly furious about production quotas for years. OPEC had them capped at around 3.2 million barrels per day when they've got the capacity to pump nearly double that. With oil trading above $110 a barrel thanks to the Iran war chaos, leaving now means they can eventually monetize those reserves without asking Riyadh's permission.

The Trump administration basically rolled out the red carpet. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just finished negotiating a potential $20 billion swap line with the UAE, and the White House has been calling Abu Dhabi "an incredibly valuable ally" while deploying Israel's Iron Dome system to UAE soil for the first time ever during an active conflict. The UAE's energy minister insists this isn't political, just a "sovereign national decision." Sure.

Regardless, this shakes up the playbook. OPEC losing its second-most-important swing producer means the cartel's grip on global prices just got significantly weaker. Long term, that could mean lower oil prices and more volatility. In the short term, while the Strait of Hormuz stays choked, nothing changes. But once (if?) those tankers start flowing again, expect fireworks.

A lot can happen in a week!

Let’s take a quick look at who struck gold and who struck out since our last issue:

NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): +6.62%
Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL): +3.98%
Amazon.com, Inc (AMZN): +3.94%
Apple Inc. (AAPL): +1.72%
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): +1.21%

Tesla, Inc. (TSLA): -2.54%
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM): -1.68%
Walmart Inc. (WMT): -0.63%
Broadcom (AVGO): -0.59%
Meta Platforms, Inc. (META): -0.07%

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake of Invested Inc.