Good evening and welcome to Markets Desk.
Big Tech's earnings picture just got considerably murkier. Analysts are flagging that major technology companies have booked roughly one hundred sixty billion dollars in paper gains from stakes in firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Those windfalls are inflating headline profit figures and making it harder to assess the underlying health of the sector's core businesses.
Shifting to geopolitics and commodities, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's high-profile threat of sweeping sanctions against Iran and its trading partners landed with a thud by week's end. China, which purchases roughly ninety percent of Iranian oil, responded with defiance rather than compliance, and analysts broadly characterized the actual measures taken as underwhelming. Oil markets and Iran's trading relationships appeared largely undisturbed.
And on the media and regulatory front, President Trump escalated his attacks on NBC's Kristen Welker this weekend, calling on the FCC to investigate polling used by news outlets and to sanction the Meet the Press moderator directly. The move raises immediate questions about the boundaries of regulatory authority over broadcast journalism and comes as Trump's approval numbers face increasing scrutiny across multiple surveys.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
