Daily PA Wrap

Oil did the day’s heavy lifting: WTI fell 6.32% to $95.47 and Brent 5.77% to $98.77, both back under $100 for the first time since Iran’s pipeline strike triggered the fuel crisis, as Saudi Arabia’s ship-to-ship workaround near Oman’s Sohar port kept crude moving around the damaged East-West line. That cleared the runway for the rest of the tape — the S&P 500 added 0.17% to 7,650.50 (+11.55% ytd), the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.67% to 29,644.17 (+17.61% ytd), breadth flipped to 292 advancers against 205 decliners, and the VIX fell 4.08% to 14.81 — while FedEx beat estimates and lifted its full-year guidance after Thursday’s close, directly undercutting J.B. Hunt’s Wednesday diesel-cost warning. The bid showed up broadly across hardware and semis (Generac +18.34% on a reported Amazon warrant deal, Supermicro +9.50%, Intel +7.67%, AMD +6.36%) rather than in a handful of megacaps, and Bitcoin jumped 6.35% to $81,252.64.

Friday’s rally coincided with the Bank of Japan raising its own rate to a 31-year high of 1.25% in a split 7-2 vote — a second major central bank hiking this week — and with roughly $7 trillion of options expiring in the year’s second-largest triple witching, per Bloomberg and Citadel Securities data, a mechanical volume surge that can flatter a falling VIX. Stanley Druckenmiller told a Piper Sandler conference this week that U.S. rates are “at best too low” and that calling policy restrictive is “absurd,” warning that Duquesne has cut its AI-related holdings to a fifth of their level six months ago on fears of an AI earnings bubble — a pointed counterweight to Friday’s chip-led advance.

Our take: Friday’s relief looks real: FedEx’s guidance raise says the freight scare was J.B. Hunt-specific, not systemic, and oil back under $100 removes the sharpest near-term inflation risk. But a triple-witching-inflated tape and a Fed, now joined by the BOJ, still hiking into resilient growth haven’t answered Druckenmiller’s question: is this strength durable, or priced-in relief that snaps back the moment Iran stops tolerating Saudi’s workaround?

Paramount Skydance fell 4.67% after California and eleven other states sued to block its Warner Bros. Discovery merger, with California’s AG accusing the company of bad-faith settlement talks. Even on a broad-advance day, new lows (17) still edged out new highs (15) — the tape hasn’t fully healed.