Get Out The Bubbly -- The War Is Over!! US Futures -- The Dow Is Up Over 1,000 Points -- WTI Is Down $16 / BBL -- Below $100 — April 7, 2026

Locator: 50458EPICFURY.

Updates

Later, 9:38 p.m. CT: Dow futures up over 1,000 points. Look at that, WTI is down $16; down 14%; gasoline tomorrow should be well below $2.00 / gallon in California.

Original Post

For the record, this would be the ninth war that Trump has successfully ended. I don't believe any president has ended more wars than President Trump.

Iran's Tehran Ted: "The Iranian people declare victory." 

An aside: I actually have "access" to the name of the two crewmen rescued. I don't think I was sent their names, but I received a text message when the search and rescue was underway that one of the crew members was the husband of one our neighbors in the Midwest. It's a very, very small world.

After posting the above, the Dow was up over 900 points.

The first B-52s (and perhaps the only B-52s) flying over Iran were from Minot AFB, ND. [The British pronounce this base as "minute air force base."]

By the way, B-52s wouldn't be flying over Iran if the US didn't have absolute air supremacy over the WZ ("war zone). That doesn't mean planes can't be shot down but the air dominance is such that B-52s can be flown over the WZ.  From wiki:

Air superiority is the degree of control where a force can conduct operations without prohibitive interference from the enemy, whereas air dominance/supremacy is the highest level, where the opposing air force is completely incapable of effective interference

. Air superiority allows freedom of action, while dominance allows total control. 

BREAKING: Iran accepting the ceasefire was reportedly driven by a "last-minute intervention by China." 

It looks like China is doing more to end this war than Great Britain.  

See video below.

Link here. 

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Get Out The Bubbly, The War Is Over

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And More Good News

And, of course, no credit given to President Trump. It gets tedious. 

"They" Said AI Was A Bubble -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50457AI.

Related: the current issue of The New Yorker, link here -- "Moment of Truth: Sam Altman may control our future. Can he be trusted?" Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, April 13, 2026, p. 32. Twenty pages including a full page photo. Ronan Farrow is the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen.

And, more name-dropping: Antonia Hitches also has an article in the current edition of The New Yorker, immediately following the article on Sam Altman (see above), p. 53: "No Enemies to the Right: How the internet fringe infiltrated Republican politics." Antonia is the daughter of Christopher Hitchens, the famous author and essayist, and his second wife, Carol Blue.

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The Bubble -- Not! At Least Not Yet 

Maybe the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is a "bubble" but so far no indications of such. And folks sitting on the sidelines are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

Now, this headline: 

Eightfold jump in quarterly profit. Eightfold.

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Anthropic

Fascinating if true. 

Anthropic says it won't be releasing Claude 4.6 because it's too powerful. It appears Claude escaped "containment."  

Link here.  

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Disclaimer
Briefly

Briefly: 

I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.

I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.

If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 

Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 

And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution. 

I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon.

Longer version here.   

Four New Permits -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50456B.

US markets: posted 6:07 p.m. CT after Trump announces two-week ceasefire with Iran.

Operation EPIC FURY: President Trump accepts two-week ceasefire with Iran. 

President Trump has said he has also accepted a 10-point peace plan proposed by Iran "for consideration." -- 5:39 p.m. CT today April 7, during, story breaking during evening national news. It is not clear if Iran has accepted the ceasefire. So, here we go again, which is fine with me. WTI: drops $5 / bbl; now trading at $107/bbl. But Trump says the agreement comes with the stipulation that the strait will be opened without conditions. There is no indication --  yet -- that Iran has agreed to the "Trump stimulation."

The Onion soon to announce the renaming of the Iran operation to "Operation Never-Ending Story." 

Ticker LNG (Cheniere): plunges after hours. LOL. As if LNG (liquefied natural gas) is going to flow through the strait immediately. Yeah, right. No more missiles flying overnight. Okay.  

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Back to the Bakken 

WTI: $113. On the dot -- $113.00. (At 5:00 p.m. CT during the evening news before "cease-fire deal" announced.

Active rigs: 24.

Four new permits, #42815 - #42818, inclusive:

• Operators: Whiting (3); and, EOG;
• Fields: Foreman Butte (McKenzie County); and, Parshall (Mountrail County);
• Comments: 
• Whiting has permits for three State Wolf Federal wells, SWSE 33-151-102, 
• to be sited 1028 / 1035 FSL and 1917 FEL; all three are spaced at 2580 acres (four sections; 4 / 9 / 16 / 21-151-102); bottom hole location; and,
• EOG has a permit for a Parshall 442-027H well, lot 3, section 2-152-90 (look at that chronologic number [442]); 
• to be sited 857 FNL and 1383 FWL; section 1 and E/2 of section 2-152-90 and sections 6 / 7-152-89 (640 x 3 + 320 acres = 2240 acres (3.5 sections).

One producing well (a DUC) was reported as completed: 

• 41511, 167, EOG, Wayzetta 411-0932H, NWSW 09-153-90, Mountrail County, again, look at that chronologic number, 411.

Have We Come Down To Just Three Fabs For All Practical Purposes? April 7, 2026

Locator: 50455INTC.

I was confused why Elon Musk would partner with Intel. For me, this was completely counterintuitive, but Elon Musk has a habit of being counterintuitive. No details of the partnership between Intel and TeraFab were publicly revealed in the sources I could find. My hunch: Elon Musk's 30-year strategy is not to buy processors (GPUs, CPUS, or TPUs) from another source but rather to make its own fabs.   

One can conjecture until the cows come home and one can do their own sleuthing. 

For example -- connect these three dots (it's not difficult): Elon Musk -- Donald Trump -- Intel. We'll do that later. 

For now, I have enough details now to pay close attention to what happens next but the Musk-Trump-Intel connection is huge. In the meantime, for an investor, this information is invaluable. But ... but .... but .... there is one last question I needed to ask. See below the fold below (the asterisks).

This conversation applies only to GPUs, CPUs, and TPUs, the primary (only) blades that are the operating units for AI. This can be confusing; content and typographical errors likely. 

It does not apply to storage so the mention of Micron below can be disregarded. Similarly, TI and Samsung can be disregarded within the "confines" of my three queries.

I'll post the three AI prompts in the opposite order in which they were asked. The first AI, therefore, is the most important for this discussion.

Third AI prompt and reply:

Among US companies or companies with major fabs in the US, have we come down to only three: TSMC, Intel, and Global Foundries?  

Second AI prompt and reply:

Of the companies mentioned (Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Google, Meta, Broadcom, and startups like Cerebras and Groq), which of those companies have their own FABs? 

I'm not sure whether that statement with regard to Broadcom is accurate. Other sources suggest that Broadcom has no fabs and relies on TSMC.

First AI prompt and reply:

With the just announced partnership of Intel and Elon Musk's TeraFab in Austin, Texas, it appears the three top competitors for GPUs / CPUs / TPUs are Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. Amazon and Apple remain dependent on in-house CPUs and TPUs. Others that I might be forgetting? 

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The Usual Suspect
One Last Query

AI query: Which Fab is primarily responsible for providing chips for all of Elon Musk's activities? 

Reply: 

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Packaging

A separate but related issue with regard to fabrication. 

Once chips are made, they are then "packaged" but that requires a second step, a second process. Most "packaging" is done where the chips are manufactured, e.g., TSMC.

Nvidia has pretty much monopolized the "packaging" capacity of TSMC in the United States so to finish the process, Nvidia chips are sent to TSMC in Taiwan to complete the process. TSMC will be building "packaging facilities in Phoenix alongside the fabrication facilities going forward.

Link here. 

AI query: Does Intel only do fabricating of the chips they make, or do they also any "packaging" that might be required? 

 
More and more it appears that Intel will rise (and surpass) its former glory.

Elon Musk partnering with Intel speaks volumes. It will take awhile, but the future looks incredibly bright for Intel.

Just Some Of The Major Tech Announcements In The Past Three Months -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50454TECH.

I track tech elsewhere. 

Look at just some of the headlines in the three months, the first quarter of 2026:

April 7, 2026: Intel has partnered with Elon Musk's TeraFab in Austin, Texas. No further details provided. Competes directly with Nvidia and AMD. One link here. 

April 6, 2026: the way this story is being reported, it sounds like it could be the biggest tech of the year. So far. Link here. Broadcom, TPUs, Google, Anthropic.

April 2, 2026: Amazon is trying to buy Globalstar to compete with SpaceX's Starlink. Link here.

February 18, 2026: jargon -- AI factories; LDCs; supercomputers -- boundaries blurring.

February 17, 2026: META / Nvidia major partnership; millions of Nvidia's chips (GPUs, CPUs, TPUs); META to spend $600 billion through 2028 to build 30 large data centers. 

February 11, 2026: Broadcom's TPUs vs Nvidia's GPUs. Link here.

 

For The Extended Family -- For The Next Generation -- Generation 3 -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50453READING.

Like my notes on investing which are meant for my extended family, not readers in general, this particular blog/post is 1000% posted for my extended family members, generation three and eventually generation four which will be college-age much sooner than expected.

My parents and my wife's parents: generation zero (0).

My wife and I and our sibs: generation one (1).

Our children and their cousins: generation two (2).

Our grandchildren and their cousins: generation three (3). 

• one a college graduate ("Ivy League") and now Teaching For America while getting her masters at prestigious Texas university
• one a sophomore/junior -- a STEM major (top engineering school in the US) through ROTC, on her way to being the Air Force detachment commander at that school
• the three others: middle school and home-schooled, age six. 

Our great-grandchildren and their cousins, none yet (4).

AI prompt:  

This is something completely different. Sort of testing your limits (if you have any). I'm reading Walter Isaacson's book on CRISPR, Doudna and Charpentier. 

To take a break I'm also reading Ananthaswamy's excellent book on "Why Machines Learn."  In chapter 8 of that book we meet John Hopfield who was bored with physics and turned his attention to biology, specifically cellular biochemical reactions, and even more specifically, the RNA world, and even more specifically, tRNA.  

I did not expect this -- reading about Doudna and CRISPR and then a book on machine learning and all of a sudden, Hopfield and tRNA. I have not read further, but I have to know: did the work of Hopfield and the work of Doudna ever intersect?

I posed that query first to ChatGPT and then Gemini. Out of curiosity I tried Grok. Grok said "A high demand question. I need to try later or create an account with Grok. 

My notes on these two books here:

• Why Machines Learn; and,
• CRISPR. 

I couldn't say which chatbot was better. I did them in this order:

• ChatGPT;
• Gemini; and then,
• Grok (I signed into my account and Grok immediately answered -- 32 seconds of "thinking").

I cannot recommend any one chatbot over the others. Each is useful in its own way. They all complement each other. 

Without chatbots, this would have taken hours, weeks to answer to my satisfaction. With chatbots, I had answers from all three within a minute or so. 

I could be wrong on this but I believe ChatGPT stores our conversations which is a big help, and over time, ChatGPT will know more about me than what Amazon knows about me. I do not know to what extent Gemini tracks me. I assume Grok tracks me very, very closely but again, I have no idea. 

Another digression: this next year, I plan to provide the chatbots with my financial information in a very general way and see which chatbot comes closest to the tax I owe the IRS. In the big scheme of things, there is not a whole lot of information / data points the average American needs to calculate taxes. The problem lies elsewhere. 

A personal aside: I had an incredibly good friend in college. I can't recall exactly when we met, but I like to think I was a second semester sophomore, and he was a second semester junior when we met. 

I was a double major in chemistry and biology (pre-med) and had successfully navigate calculus  in my first year of college. He was majoring in math and realized (now that he was married) there were not any good choices for work/income in math while raising a family. He decided to go into medicine. He sought me out and told me that would be taking pre-med course in his junior and senior years to meet the prerequisits for applying to medical school. But he had way too much to do. He made me an offer. I would help him (actually "do") his biology labwork for him and he would help me with my math. That leads me to think I was a freshman taking calculus and he was a junior. I'm sure that's correct but it's hard to believe he sought me out and found me that quickly.

Bottom line: I got an A both semesters in freshman calculus -- in reality I was probably a "C" student in math, and he got all his work done ... much (most?) of his biology labwork was my work. LOL. 

He was accepted to a prestigious medical school and we lost track of each other. I'll have to check my journals to see if I ever mentioned his name. He was a major, major influence on my years in college and it's very possible I would not have survived without his help.  

Wow, what a digression. 

Very Few Updates For Awhile -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50452BLOGGING.

The usual blogging may be delayed. Can't decide.

When the bombing started on February 28, 2026, I quit following the market and quit watching all live news (except the daily local weather report) including CNBC. I occasionally checked a few tickers and there were some other exceptions. But for the most part it's been x, Perry Mason, blog links.

Now, with the deadline looming and news coming from Tesla, Broadcom, Apple, Google, Anthropic, etc., it is simply becoming overwhelming and simply too much news to post on the blog for archival purposes. 

So, at least for now, biking and reading.

This morning's bike ride was awesome. The weather was perfect, and absolutely no problem with pollen which suggests the next low pressure / cold front / precipitation is at least a few days away.

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The Book Page

Yesterday I spent a few minutes with Capitalism and Its Critics, A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, John Cassidy, c. 2025, but at the moment the subject seems quite irrelevant. Having said that, it's an incredible book but probably better for the beach.

Link here for notes. 

So, today, we're back to Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, Anil Ananthaswamy, c. 2024 / 2025. Link here for notes. 

Tuesday -- Art Of The Deal -- April 7, 2026

Locator: 50451B.

Anticipation.  

UK festival canceled: what where they thinking. Link here. Please put this in the context with which Trump is doing.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $116.50. Up $4.06; up 3.61%.

New wells reporting:

• Wednesday, April 8, 2026: 20 for the month, 20 for the quarter, 177 for the year,
• 42311, conf, Phoenix Operating, Terry Nelson 34-27-22 4HR, 
• 42176, conf, BR, Omlid 2-8-7 MBH,
• 42071, conf, Phoenix Operating, Terry Nelson 34-27-22 5H-LL, 
• 42069, conf, Phoenix Operating, Terry Nelson 34-27-22 3H, 
• 42068, conf, Phoenix Operating, Terry Nelson 34-27-22 2H, 
• 42067, conf, Phoenix Operating, Terry Nelson 34-27-22 1H, 
• 41931, conf, Formentera Operations, Wildcat Hollow 16-33-PGN S618HF,
• Tuesday, April 7, 2026: 13 for the month, 13 for the quarter, 170 for the year,
• 41985, conf, Formentera Operations, Wildcat Hollow 16-16-PGN N115DW, 

RBN Energy: More Permian gas takeaway is coming. What about strong Waha prices? Link here. Archived.

Permian wells are churning out 22 Bcf/d of residue natural gas — one-fifth of total U.S. production — but for many producers that gas abundance is a hindrance. A persistent shortfall in pipeline takeaway capacity has made negative (sometimes very negative) prompt-month and cash prices at the all-important Waha Hub an all-too-regular thing. But there’s good reason to believe the situation will soon be changing for the much-better. A massive tranche of new takeaway capacity will be coming online over the next few months, ending the shortfall for at least a few years, and gas demand from LNG exporters and power generators will be ramping up fast. In today’s RBN blog, we begin an in-depth examination of Permian takeaway capacity, Waha prices, and the potentially far-reaching impact of solidly positive gas prices on producers’ development strategies.

The Permian’s expansion into the world’s largest, most productive crude oil play over the past 15 years came with a market-changing side effect: an equally impressive expansion in the production of associated gas (natural gas + NGLs). Producers’ primary focus was (and still is) on crude — to quote bank robber Willie Sutton, “That’s where the money is” — and their #1 priority has been supporting the development of the pipelines, storage and other infrastructure needed to produce it and get it to market. At the same time, however, they and their midstream partners had no choice but to deal with the vast and fast-increasing volumes of associated gas emerging from Permian wells with high-value oil.

Massive sums have been invested in building out gas gathering systems, processing plants and takeaway pipelines, not just for natural gas but for NGLs. But it’s almost always been a game of catch-up. Producers didn’t want to make long-term pipeline-capacity commitments, and that reluctance ultimately crushed the spread that justified the pipeline to begin with. That led to a game of chicken, where ultimately the biggest producers had no choice but to pony up to get the pipelines built and smaller producers suffered when their interruptible gas was sold at negative prices. (We coined it “the midstream conundrum.”)

Constraints in Permian gas takeaway, often exacerbated by pipeline maintenance that temporarily took some capacity offline, had consequences, primarily in the prompt-month and cash prices that shippers without sufficient pipeline space were offered for their gas at the Waha Hub in West Texas’s Pecos County. The left graph in Figure 1 below shows natural gas production in the Permian (black line), gas consumption within the basin (“Demand”; dark-brown layer), flows to Mexico (beige layer), pipeline capacity out of the region (green layer), and periods when takeaway constraints frequently caused Waha prices to turn negative (dashed circles). [Note that most producers are not selling their gas at Waha prices. A lot of them have capacity on pipelines that can get their gas to downstream markets.]

Figure 1. Permian Gas Production, Takeaway Capacity and Waha Cash Prices. Sources: RBN, NGI