WHY OIL IS SPIKING WHILE MARKETS STUMBLE

American equities took a severe beating on Friday as investors digested a brutal combination of spiking crude prices and a soft jobs report.

The Dow Jones dropped 2.6 percent to cap off its ugliest week since last April.

Emerging markets took a historic hit.

The MSCI EM index plunged 7 percent for its worst showing since the early days of the pandemic.

In contrast, the Israeli TA-35 index climbed 7 percent over the past week.

Bond markets suffered a massive global selloff, logging their worst week since October 2024.

German two-year yields recorded their sharpest weekly jump since 2023.

Energy was the real story of the week.

Oil skyrocketed 35 percent, marking its largest weekly gain in history.

WTI crude broke above $110 per barrel for the first time since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This week's lineup:

See the full calendar here.

Geopolitics doing most of the work here (Polymarket).

Iran has officially appointed Mojtaba, the son of Khamenei, to be the next supreme leader. (CNBC)

American officials are weighing a targeted military operation to confiscate Iranian uranium stockpiles. (BBG)

Sovereign wealth funds across the Gulf are dealing with an unprecedented challenge as the regional crisis deepens. (RT)

Capital is quietly flowing into Venezuela as investors look for early opportunities on the ground. (RT)

Investment bankers expect the ongoing war in Iran to put a serious freeze on mergers and acquisitions. (BBG)

Default rates in the American private credit sector reached an all-time high of 9.2 percent last year. (RT)

The team at PIMCO is warning that the private credit space is heading straight into a massive wave of defaults. (BBG)

Millennium just hired away four portfolio managers from competing mega-fund Citadel. (BBG)

Oracle and OpenAI have officially canceled their joint project to expand the massive Stargate data facility. (BBG)

Google just bumped the compensation package for CEO Sundar Pichai up to a staggering $692 million. (FT)

The Department of Defense hired a former DOGE staffer to take the reins on its artificial intelligence initiatives. (RT)

Private equity firm New Mountain Capital just walked away from a massive $32 billion transaction. They canceled plans to sell five businesses, including Datavant, Swoop, Machinify, Smarter Technologies, and Office Ally, to a technology platform named Thoreau run by former president Matt Holt.

The dealmakers over at KKR are currently testing the waters for a potential sale of data center operator CoolIT Systems, floating a price tag of roughly $3 billion.

The French pharmaceutical player Servier has agreed to buy out Day One Biopharmaceuticals. It is an all-cash transaction valued at $2.5 billion, which hands shareholders a steep 68 percent premium.

The heavyweights of the prediction market, Polymarket and Kalshi, are both currently taking meetings to raise fresh capital. They are hunting for valuations in the neighborhood of $20 billion.

The Indian investment and trading app Groww just pulled in a heavy $200 million equity injection. The round was spearheaded by GIC and values the startup at an impressive $7 billion.

Palmer Luckey is out pitching for his retro gaming hardware company ModRetro. He is aiming to raise new funds at a clean $1 billion valuation.

The diabetes technology unit MiniMed, backed by medical device powerhouse Medtronic, managed to raise $560 million in its public offering. The deal priced below the expected range and valued the business at $5.2 billion.

The investment team at SoftBank is currently hunting for a colossal $40 billion bridge loan. They plan to use the cash to fund their massive stake in OpenAI.

The buyout artists at KKR are in the market for a $500 million loan. They need the funds to execute their $1.3 billion acquisition of the school management company XCL Education from incumbent owner TPG.

High-end department store operator Saks Global is moving forward with its operational overhaul. The retailer plans to permanently close down 15 more physical locations.

A federal judge just tossed out the terrorism lawsuit targeting Binance, but left the door open for plaintiffs to refile the case.

The crypto exchange OKX rolled out a new social platform that directly links user posts to their actual trades.

The crypto Fear and Greed Index has plunged straight back into 'extreme fear' as Bitcoin trades in lockstep with the volatile stock market.

User growth across Latin American crypto markets is now outpacing the United States by a massive factor of three.