Chevron CEO On The Bakken -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50727B.

Tag: Bakken Chevron Permian DJ 

Link here. At the link, the transcripts.

It's Not A Bubble -- The Market Could Crash But It Won't Be Because AI Was "Fake" -- This Is Not Dot-Com Redux -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50726MICRON. 

Profits

May 5, 2026:

Micron

May 9, 2026: link here. 

News

The usual suspects:

• AMD: soars 15%; earnings exceed estimates
• Samsung: hits $1 trillion evaluation
• Micron: zooms past $700 billion market cap
• AAPL: valuation -- $4.17 trillion

Other news:

• Trump pauses Project Freedom (after two days): could set up huge rally
• Super Micro: shares surge 18%; guidance beat; revenue more than doubles
• Lucid: suspends production guidance; new CEO; Saudi major contributor; hit hard by blockade of Strait of Hormuz
• Spirit: biggest corporate collapse in a decade
• NYC: Citadel founder Ken Griffin will double down on Miami; moving away from NYC

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Chart

Profits

TSMC: $81 billion.
SK Hynix: $115 billion.
Samsung: $151 billion, almost double TSMC's.

AMD's income pales in comparison.

Intel (INTC)? For 1Q26, Intel reported a loss of $4 billion for the quarter. Intel is valued at one-half trillion dollars (market cap).  BRK has almost one-half trillion dollars in cash. 

Nancy Pelosi? Somewhat less.

Ilhan Omar? Whatever number she says it is. 

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Charts At the Close

AMD:

MU: 

Trump's "Berlin Airlift" -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50725IRAN. 

Tag: Project Freedom.

Updates

Later, 6:45 p.m. CT: after just two days, Project Freedom was so successful, Trump says he will pause Project Freedom (but not the blockade) to see if Iran and US can sign some kind of agreement to keep the strait open. My hunch: Saudi was in dire straights. If the strait opens, the market will surge. The price of oil will drop like a rock.

Original Post  

Iranian blockade: day 2 -- Giovanni seems amazed --

The Berlin Airlift: 15 months -- putting things into perspective --

Four New Permits; Eleven Permits Renewed; Two DUCs Reported As Completed -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50724B. 

WTI: $102.50.

Active rigs: 23.

Four new permits, #42899 - #42902, inclusive --

• Operators: Hess (3); Oasis
• Fields: Stanley (Mountrail); Lake Trenton (Williams)
• Comments:
• Oasis has a new permit for a Tunnock well, lot 2, section 2-153-103; 
• to be sited 749 FL and 2500 FEL;
• Hess has permits for three more RS-Piepkorn wells, SENE 11-155-92, 
• to be sited 2254 / 2320 FNL and 436 FEL.

Eleven permits renewed:

• CLR (8): eight McClintock permits, Pleasant Valley, Williams County;
• BR (3): three Clemens permits, Dimmick Lake, McKenzie County;

Two producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 40921, npd, XTO, HBU Baptiste Federal 34X-11A, Williams County; 
• 41551, npd, XTO, HBU Baptiste Federal 34X-11B, Williams County; 

Apple, China, India, Vietnam, And Mexico -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50723APPLE. 

Query: Does Apple have a large manufacturing presence in Vietnam?

Reply: 

Query: 

Apple has a large manufacturing presence in Vietnam. Which might be more important as a manufacting sector for Apple, India or Vietnam?

Reply: the very short answer -- 

India and Vietnam serve different, vital roles in Apple's manufacturing, but India is arguably more important for long-term growth and volume, while Vietnam is currently critical for product diversification. India focuses on massive iPhone assembly and high-value components, while Vietnam specializes in iPads, AirPods, and MacBooks, benefiting from proximity to China.

Query: why China, then increasingly Vietnam and not Mexico? Long reply; not particularly enlightening, sort of what one expected. Reading between the lines, it amounts to this:

• Asia (China and Vietnam) can react much more quickly; Mexico's workforce/government Is slow to react;
• between China and Vietnam, China is much more bureaucratic (the government) and more regulated; Vietnam is troubled less by bureaucracy and regulatory control.

Recommendation: read Malcolm Harris' biography of Palo Alto, c. 2023.

BRK -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50722BRK. 

Six-year-old grandson trying to figure out why AAPL did so well today, and BRKB did not:

See the blog's disclaimer.  

10 to 1 odds: not one analyst, not one talking head on CBNC, not even Becky Quick will address these two charts downloaded within 30 seconds of each:

The US market:

BRK-B: holy mackerel -- and then think about this -- AAPL is having one of its best days ever; AAPL is BRK's biggest holding -- to be negative today, literally all of BRK's publicly traded companies must be doing incredibly bad to pull down BRK despite AAPL surging. And or, the sentiment of BRK's investors have given up on BRK. BRK proves the exception to the rule: generally the stock of a company with a new CEO rises. Investors love seeing a new CEO in the vast majority of such cases. 

Again 40% of BRK's market cap is tied up in cash. Market cap: $1.01 trillion; cash, $400 billion. 

AMD -- We're In The Middle Of A Prolonged, Unpopular War -- NASDAQ Hits A Record High -- Other Indices Not Far Behind -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50721ARCHIVES. 
Locator: 50721AMD.

AMD: earnings out today -- after the close -- after hours, before earnings -- AMD holding its gains today -- numbers are out --

• beat but basically in line with what the whisper numbers probably were -- 
• most important share price -- after hours, shares: up 1.33% --> up as much a 1.7%; after a huge day before the close. Holy mackerel, now AMD is up 3% in the after hours.
• gross margin at record -- 55% gross margin -- again, remember this is AMD -- the #2 just months ago and has now caught up with Nvidia. 

MU: holy mackerel. MU was up $64 during the day; now after AMD's numbers are out, MU is up another $7 after hours.  

Today's meme: we're in the middle of a prolonged, unpopular war -- mainstream media. And yet, the market continues to do incredibly well. I'll come back to this later, if I remember, if I have time.

Headline today: Iran has relaxed transit rules without any quid pro quo from the US. 

It's being reported by some sources that Iran will now allow ships to transit the strait but ships must adhere to Iran's e-mailed instructions. This has all the fingerprints of Saudi Arabia and China demanding that Iran find some solution to getting those ships through the strait. Trump: that's a nice first step, but let's see "all" ships get through. And sooner than later, no controls through e-mail. This certainly looks like Iran has blinked; it's interesting that The New York Times has not yet reported this.

Covid vaccines: evidence -- overwhelmingly safe. The government did what it could do to hide that evidence. Link here. Warms the cockles of my heart. Link here. I think I've had not less then five Covid "shots." It was also during this period that I began taking annual flu "shots" again. 

AAPL Is Having A Surprisingly Good Day -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50720AAPL. 

Tag: Apple. 

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Ticker AAPL Today

AAPL is having a huge day today. No idea why. Probably because it is being reported that Apple is in talks with both Samsung and Intel for chip support. This should tell observers that Apple simply can't keep up. Not only does Apple need TSM, it also needs Samsung and Intel. It may simply be supply chain diversification but however you look at it, it has to be bullish.

And, of course, this didn't hurt, from earlier today (I don't subscribe to Seeking Alpha). For me it's clickbait. It's a lot more productive to use chatbots to get the investing information I need.

AWS -- AI Update -- Meta -- Graviton -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50719AWS. 

There's a gazillion things going on right now in AI, but if I had to list the top three that investors need to watch, these are the three:

• memory;
• accelerators; and, 
• LDCs. 

As an aside, the above --

• memory: MICRON (MU);
• accelerators: AWS: and, 
• LDCs: Texas. 

This post is on accelerators: link here. 

A reminder, Graviton, link here. August 31, 2025:

Amazon chips: wiki. Must-read. Annapurna Labs -- an Israeli company now fully owned by Amazon.

In November 2024 Annapurna announced their second generation Trainium 2 intended for training AI models. Based on their internal testing, Amazon are claiming "a 4-times performance increase between Trainium 1 and Trainium 2".

AWS Graviton - an ARM-based CPU developed by Annapurna Labs for exclusive use by Amazon Web Services.

Note: some sources call them "Trainum 2" chips and other sources call them "Trainium2" chips. In AI, "spaces" are "tokens."

From CHIPS:

AWS (Amazon): new chips -- Ocelot (quantum computing); competing with Nvidia -- Trainium, Inferentia. World's largest supercomputer to be completed in 2025 (?) -- Project Rainier -- partnered with Anthropic, AI --> Claude.

Beth: Amazon's chip business, run rate -- Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro on EC2, is now $20 billion and growing triple-digits y/y. Link here. Link here. 

Now, today, link here.

Micron -- An Update -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50718MU. 

See blog's disclaimer: this is not an investment site. This is for the extended family. 

From the blog, April 25, 2026, link here:

Wasteland Capital: MU breaks $500. Up 550% in one year. The largest and fastest one year upwards earnings revision in history for any mega cap. Link here. 

Hardly a wasteland. A year ago I bought MU for under $80. Actually, I think I bought my first position in MU two years ago. I've long forgotten. I don't check specifics on a stock unless I plan to sell it or buy more. With MU I'm doing neither. 

One day:

Five days: 

Why Isn't BRK Doing Better? May 5, 2026

Locator: 50717BRK. 

This is quite amazing. I listened to BRK's CEO Greg Abel's presentation and I thought Geico was a standout subsidiary for BRK this past year. 

Did he mention this, or did I simply miss it: despite an incredibly favorable year for the insurance business overall -- paraphrasing what Abel said -- GEICO reported a 34% drop in earnings! Holy mackerel. And that was after years of GEICO working to turn this company around! And despite operating earnings rising 17.7 percent year-over-year, BRK still missed estimates by a significant amount. 

Interesting, in the chatbot response below, it was not mentioned that Abel and Ajit Jain were both skeptical of AI. Ajit Jain said the word "skeptical"; Abel seemed to concur. 

Query: why isn't BRK doing better? It earned $10 vs $5 last year.

Reply:

PSA: For Apple Laptop Users -- Your Own Personal Internal Search Engine -- SPOTLIGHT -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50716PSA. 

From PCMagazine, link here. 

Apple's Spotlight is a handy search tool that tracks down anything and everything across your computer, but macOS Tahoe introduces new Actions and Quick Keys functions, allowing you to kick off a range of commands right from the search results window.

Want to send someone an email or text, set up a calendar event, start a timer, create a new note, or change a system setting? You can do all that and more. Even better, you can assign a two-letter keyboard combination to trigger any of those actions and save you some time.

To take advantage of these new features, you'll need to be running macOS Tahoe or higher. Click the Apple icon, go to System Settings > General > Software Update, and click the Upgrade Now button to allow the latest update to install. With that complete, let's go through how to use Actions and Quick Keys with your favorite apps, files, and other items. 

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Spotlight

This is an EDGE application. That means it stays entirely within your system -- it does not go outside your system. The advantages are huge.

Apple will now have three levels of search:

• Spotlight;
• web browser;
• chatbot.

Spotlight is Apple's fast, built-in search tool on macOS (MacBook, iMac) that instantly finds files, apps, emails, contacts, and images across your computer. 

Triggered by Command+Space, it also performs calculations, conversions, and quick actions (like setting alarms or running shortcuts) without opening separate apps.

What Can Spotlight Do?

• Instantly Find Anything: Searches documents, images, and emails by name or contents.
• Launch Applications: Type the first few letters of an app (e.g., "saf") and hit Return to open it.
• Quick Calculations & Conversions: Perform math (e.g., ) or convert currencies/measurements (e.g., "200 CAD to USD") directly in the search bar.
• System Actions: Search for "Do Not Disturb" to toggle it, or find files instantly.
• Get Definitions: Lookup dictionary definitions, search web results, or check weather, sports, and movies.
• Find Text in Images: With Live Text, you can search for words contained within photos.

How to Use Spotlight:

• Launch: Press the Command (⌘) — Space bar keys together, or click the magnifying glass icon in the top-right menu bar.
• View Location: Select a file result, then hold down the Command (⌘) key to see its file path.
• Open Result: Press Return to open the top result or double-click an item in the list. 

You can customize what Spotlight searches for by navigating to System Settings > Spotlight.

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Ticker AAPL Today

AAPL is having a huge day today. No idea why. Probably because it is being reported that Apple is in talks with both Samsung and Intel for chip support. This should tell observers that Apple simply can't keep up. Not only does Apple need TSM, it also needs Samsung and Intel. It may simply be supply chain diversification but however you look at it, it has to be bullish.

And, of course, this didn't hurt, from earlier today (I don't subscribe to Seeking Alpha). For me Seeking Alpha is clickbait. It's a lot more productive to use chatbots to get the investing information I need.

NACHO Tuesday -- And Along With Your NACHO And TACO, Happy Cinco De Mayo -- May 5, 2026

Locator: 50715B. 

Updates

Later, 6:45 p.m. CT: after just two days, Project Freedom was so successful, Trump says he will pause Project Freedom (but not the blockade) to see if Iran and US can sign some kind of agreement to keep the strait open. My hunch: Saudi was in dire straights. 

 Original Post

Most interesting meme yesterday: Trump has gotten himself into a prolonged, unpopular war. 

• that may be true; in fact, it probably is true. 
• the questions are, does Trump care; and is Trump doing the right thing? 
• I know one thing for sure: Israel / Netanyahu is happy as a lark.

State dinner for King Charles III ("no more kings") --

• one needs to remember that Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, was one of the few Cabinet-level officials to attend:
• Secretary of State Rubio was there;  
• on the other hand, Howard Lutnick was not.

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Back to the Bakken 

WTI: $102.80.

New wells reporting:

• Wednesday, May 6, 2026: 15 for the month, 115 for the quarter, 272 for the year, 
• 42102, conf, Hunt Oil, Burke 155-90-36-25H-1,  
• 41890, conf, Oasis, Feiring State 5793 13-16 3BU
• 41889, conf, Oasis, Feiring State 5793 13-16 2BU, 
• Tuesday, May 5, 2026: 12 for the month, 112 for the quarter, 269 for the year,  
• 41359, conf, Devon Energy, Marvin 27-34 2H, 

RBN Energy:  how a prolonged conflict with Iran could disrupt US gasoline, jet and diesel markets. Link here. Archived.

The U.S. is seeing softer domestic demand for traditional fuels as efficiency improves and biofuels gain ground, but pockets of the country remain highly dependent on imported gasoline and jet fuel. If the Iran war drags on for an extended period, the key question becomes how much of each region’s gasoline, jet fuel and diesel demand can be covered by U.S. refineries and how much each still needs from international suppliers. Some parts of the country could face real product challenges if the disruption is prolonged. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll zero in on which PADDs are at the highest risk for shortages and price spikes.

As we’ve addressed in the RBN blogosphere, the war against Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz have seriously impacted the flows of refined products and LPG that underpin the Pacific Basin fuel market. With the strait effectively blocked to virtually all shipping for the last several weeks (see Eyes of the Ranger), large volumes of crude oil, LPG, naphtha and refined products bound for Asia were suddenly stranded, forcing refiners in South Korea and elsewhere to cut runs and curb gasoline and jet fuel exports (see Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad). As of May 4, the situation remains volatile and peace talks are uncertain.

In today’s blog, we use our Future of Fuels analysis to estimate how much gasoline, diesel and jet fuel demand is met by each PADD’s production compared to how much it relies on imports. From this, we identify which regions are most exposed if hostilities drag on for additional months or into this winter. 

PADD 5 Jet Fuel and Gasoline

The biggest refined product risk from a prolonged conflict is gasoline and jet fuel in PADD 5 (gray section in Figure 1 below). The West Coast market is structurally tight and increasingly dependent on imports under normal circumstances, making it especially vulnerable to supply disruptions (see I Need More).

Figure 1: U.S. Regional Prospects and Challenges. Source: RBN Future of Fuels