Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Crude oil is taking a serious hit today, with West Texas Intermediate sliding more than three percent to a five-week low. The driver is optimism around a potential US-Iran diplomatic agreement, which is cooling the geopolitical risk premium that had been supporting prices. Gasoline futures are also off, touching their lowest level in six weeks.
Shifting to equities, Snowflake is the standout name of the session, surging toward what could be a record single-day gain after the cloud data company posted a strong earnings beat and raised its full-year outlook. The catalyst extending the move is a six billion dollar commitment to deepen its partnership with Amazon Web Services, signaling that enterprise AI spending is accelerating in a very real and contractual way.
And in a story that sits at the intersection of technology, markets, and federal law, a Google employee has been charged in the Southern District of New York with insider trading on the prediction platform Polymarket, allegedly placing a one million dollar bet using non-public information about search trends. This is the second such Polymarket insider trading case in roughly five weeks, raising pointed questions about how these platforms handle material non-public information.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
