Stock Market Today (LIVE): Oil Market Is Living on Borrowed Time; Stocks Notch Records, Oil Prices Eased (for Now)

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Strait Closure? Exxon Warns of More Pain

4:21 pm — XOM -1.02% today

Exxon Mobil (XOM 1.02%) CEO Darren Woods had a message for investors Friday: you ain’t seen nothing yet. The Strait of Hormuz closure has been cushioned by tankers in transit, strategic reserves, and commercial stockpiles — but those buffers won’t last forever. Meanwhile, Exxon’s stock is flat since the war began, even as oil prices have surged about 57% — suggesting the market still hasn’t fully priced in what’s coming. Even after the strait reopens, Gulf oil flows need one to two months to normalize. And then governments have to refill depleted stockpiles, adding a fresh wave of demand just when everyone exhales.

• The bill is coming due: Once in-transit supplies are exhausted and reserves drawn down, Woods expects prices to climb beyond today’s approximately $108/barrel. Exxon warns its Middle East production could fall 750,000 barrels per day if the strait stays closed through Q2.
• Exxon vs. Chevron (CVX 1.31%) — not as close as they look: Exxon has outpaced its closest rival dramatically over five years (+167% vs. +85%), largely on the strength of disciplined capital allocation and the Pioneer Natural Resources acquisition. Chevron, by contrast, has faced headwinds from environmental litigation and unresolved liability exposure — a gap that matters when evaluating which oil major to own heading into a prolonged supply shock.

Today’s Change

(-1.02%) $-1.58

Current Price

$152.75

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$641B

Day’s Range

$151.13 – $155.01

52wk Range

$101.19 – $176.41

Volume

15M

Avg Vol

22M

Gross Margin

21.56%

Dividend Yield

2.62%

Today’s Change

(-1.31%) $-2.53

Current Price

$190.78

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$386B

Day’s Range

$189.76 – $194.00

52wk Range

$133.77 – $214.71

Volume

293K

Avg Vol

12M

Gross Margin

14.66%

Dividend Yield

3.57%

Closing Bell

4:08 pm

Stocks kicked off May with records across the board, as Apple (AAPL +3.26%) beat Q2 earnings and revenue estimates — sending shares up nearly 5% — and oil prices eased on hopes for a U.S.-Iran peace deal. The S&P 500 closed above 7,200 for the first time; both it and the Nasdaq notched their best monthly gains since 2020. Trump later poured cold water on Iran’s proposal, saying he was “not satisfied,” trimming oil’s losses.

• Best month since 2020: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed April with their strongest monthly performances since 2020, yet all three major indexes had dipped sharply when the U.S.-Iran war began; they’ve since recovered and now trade well above where they started 2026.
• The Iran wildcard: Brent crude settled at $108.17 a barrel, down 2% on the day — but Trump’s rejection of Iran’s latest offer signals the conflict (and elevated energy prices) isn’t resolved yet.

Rolls-Royce Guidance Holds Despite Headwinds

3:36 pm — RYCEY +1.49%

By Yasser El-Shimy
Team Rule Breakers

Rolls-Royce (RYCEY +1.24%) issued an AGM Statement and Q1 Trading Update on April 30, 2026, reiterating full-year underlying operating profit guidance of at least 16% growth. Management cited strong demand across Civil Aerospace and Defence divisions.  The +8.4% single-day gain reflects the market’s relief that macro headwinds have not materially impacted the aerospace recovery thesis. At current levels, Rolls-Royce trades at a meaningful premium to historical averages, but the earnings upgrade cycle appears intact, and our turnaround thesis is vindicated.

Dolby’s Guidance Ruins a Good Quarter

3:02 pm — DLB -12.29%

Dolby (DLB 10.41%) beat Q2 estimates on revenue ($396M vs. $385.8M expected) and non-GAAP EPS ($1.37 vs. $1.33) — then watched its stock fall 10% anyway. The villain: Q3 guidance of just $0.63 non-GAAP EPS, roughly a third below Wall Street’s $0.98 expectation. Turns out investors don’t love a beat when the next act looks this rough.

• The number keeping bulls in their seats: Full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance of $4.30–$4.45 still nudges ahead of consensus, hinting Q3’s ugly guidance may be a one-quarter blip rather than a trend.
• The number sending bears to the exits: GAAP earnings top out at $2.81 for the full year — putting Dolby at 20x+ earnings for a mid-single-digit grower. That’s a lot to ask.

Today’s Change

(-10.41%) $-6.68

Current Price

$57.46

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$6.1B

Day’s Range

$55.73 – $62.92

52wk Range

$55.73 – $78.28

Volume

2.1M

Avg Vol

685K

Gross Margin

87.86%

Dividend Yield

2.15%

OLED Beats the Fear, Not the Bar

2:15 pm — OLED +8.27%

Universal Display (OLED +10.82%) just had one of those quarters — revenue down 14%, earnings down 44%, guidance cut — and the stock jumped 14% anyway. Go figure. After a brutal six-month skid of 37%, expectations had cratered so far that “not a disaster” was apparently enough to throw a party.

• The buyback heard ’round the market: A $400 million repurchase program — about 9% of market cap — suggests management thinks the stock is a bargain right now. Hard to argue.
• Blue OLED is (almost) here: AI-powered materials research is closing in on the long-elusive phosphorescent blue OLED element, with a full update due at a conference next week.

Oracle Jumps 7% After OpenAI Reassurance

2:00 pm – ORCL +7.40%

Oracle (ORCL +6.47%) shares popped 7% Thursday after OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told Bloomberg the company is actually outperforming expectations — a direct rebuttal to a Wall Street Journal report claiming OpenAI was missing targets and that Friar herself had raised spending concerns. Awkward! The two companies are tied together by a $300 billion deal in which Oracle builds AI infrastructure for OpenAI.

• Why Oracle sweats every OpenAI headline: Oracle is burning significant cash through 2028 before analysts expect it to turn free cash flow positive in 2029 — so OpenAI hitting its targets isn’t just nice to have, it’s the whole plan.
• The funding backstop: OpenAI recently closed a $122 billion funding round, which at least suggests investors aren’t panicking — and that’s reassuring for Oracle bulls watching this story closely.

Today’s Change

(6.47%) $10.44

Current Price

$171.83

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$464B

Day’s Range

$166.15 – $174.30

52wk Range

$134.57 – $345.72

Volume

26M

Avg Vol

30M

Gross Margin

64.30%

Dividend Yield

1.24%

Today’s Lunchtime News

1:05 pm — TSLA +3.4%

Tesla (TSLA +2.45%) shares are on track to finish the week higher after a 7% drop the prior week tied to investor concerns over rising AI and robotics capex. CFO Vaibhav Taneja said 2026 capital expenditures will exceed $25 billion and will result in negative free cash flow for the rest of the year.

• Semi production milestone: Tesla announced the first Semi rolled off the high-volume production line in Sparks, Nevada, this week, marking a real production launch after years of delays. Tesla had been producing the Semi in limited quantities for testing with clients like Frito-Lay since 2022. The standard range version is priced at $260,000, with the long range trim at $290,000.
• Musk-empire revenue: Tesla’s amended annual filing showed it booked $537 million in sales last year from SpaceX and xAI, with $430.1 million coming from xAI for products like Megapack battery storage. SpaceX bought $100 million in Cybertrucks in Q4 alone, accounting for nearly 18% of all Cybertrucks sold in the U.S. that quarter and underscoring the deep interconnection between Musk’s companies.

Is Bitcoin’s Rally About to Break?

12:25 pm — BTC +2.7%

Bitcoin (BTC +2.21%) surged 12.7% in April, marking its best month in a year, yet data from CryptoQuant suggests the rally rests on a shaky foundation of high-leverage derivatives rather than actual coin accumulation. While spot demand has contracted, perpetual futures have become the “sole driver” of price action — a divergence that historically precedes sharp corrections. This shift highlights a changing revenue landscape for exchanges like Coinbase Global (COIN +1.90%), which are increasingly pivoting toward derivatives as traditional spot trading fees become less reliable in a reactive, macro-driven market.

• Derivatives vs. Reality: Outright purchases of Bitcoin remained negative throughout April, signaling that current price gains lack the structural support of long-term investors.
• Macro Headwinds: Without regulatory breakthroughs on the CLARITY Act, crypto prices remain tethered to interest-rate

Atlassian Cloud Sales Beat Estimates

11:25 am — TEAM +23.5%

Atlassian (TEAM +29.10%) shares surged 23% Friday after the collaboration software giant smashed fiscal third-quarter expectations, reporting adjusted earnings of $1.75 per share on $1.79 billion in revenue. The results offer a reprieve from the “SaaS-pocalypse” — a brutal sector sell-off fueled by fears that AI models would displace traditional software tools. Cloud revenue jumped 29% to $1.13 billion, while data center sales significantly outperformed estimates. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes noted that customer expansion remains robust, suggesting that market anxieties regarding AI-driven disruption for established software players may be exaggerated.

• Monetizing the Machine: Analysts highlight the “Teamwork Collection” bundle as a primary growth engine, as enterprise customers upgrade tiers specifically to secure more AI credits.
• Leaner Operations: Following a 10% workforce reduction in March, the company is successfully pivoting saved capital into enterprise sales and proprietary AI integration to protect its competitive moat.

AerCap’s Compounding Machine Keeps Delivering

11:20 am — AER -1.5%

By Jim Gillies

A compounding machine, with entrenched industry tailwinds, rolling up lesser players at distressed prices, offering services that amount to “lowest cost provider,” with the best CEO in the space, diligently returning capital to shareholders, trading for a more than reasonable valuation.

Oh, and it’s a near 14-bagger off of its March 2020 intraday COVID low — that matters because I’ve been an advocate for this stock pretty much since then; my first recommendation of the name in the Foolish service I run, Hidden Gems Canada, came in May 2020 at a dividend-adjusted share price of just under $25.

I’m talking about aircraft lessor AerCap Holdings (AER 0.89%) which is flirting with a $145 stock price today after their Q1 earnings.

Roblox: Great Quarter, Terrible Outlook

10:15 am — RBLX -17.5%

By Yasser El-Shimy
Team Rule Breakers

Roblox (RBLX 18.35%) put up a genuinely strong Q1 2026: DAUs, hours, revenue, and free cash flow all grew impressively year-over-year. But nobody’s talking about that. The headline is a bookings guidance gut-punch: Management slashed full-year 2026 bookings growth from 22%-26% all the way down to 8%-12%, a 14- to 18-point haircut in a single quarter.

The culprits? Two self-inflicted wounds. First, Roblox rolled out mandatory age verification across its platform, which unexpectedly strangled new user acquisition and throttled the in-app communication features that make Roblox, well … Roblox. Second, Russia banned the platform in December, knocking a chunk of users off permanently. Toss in a $57 million regulatory settlement accrual from U.S. state attorneys general, with more states still at the table, and you’ve got a noisy, uncomfortable quarter despite the underlying numbers holding up.

Here’s where I land on it: The long-term thesis is still alive, but it’s on probation.

Alphabet’s Cloud Surge Powers a Standout Quarter

10:05 am — GOOG -0.2%

By Matt Frankel, CFP®
Team Hidden Gems

Alphabet (GOOG +0.27%) this week delivered its fastest revenue growth in two years, and the engine was unmistakably Google Cloud. Consolidated revenue climbed 22% year over year to $109.9 billion, beating Wall Street’s $107 billion consensus, while Cloud revenue alone jumped 63% to $20 billion and cleared estimates by nearly $2 billion. That acceleration matters because Cloud growth had been 48% just one quarter earlier, suggesting enterprise demand for Alphabet’s AI infrastructure is compounding rather than plateauing. Backing that up, Cloud’s order backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to over $460 billion, giving management a multi-year line of sight on contracted demand.

Top of the Morning

9:50 am — RDDT +7.0%

By Morning Show host Tim Beyers
Team Rule Breakers

The human-centered internet is having a moment in the age of AI. Reddit (RDDT +13.10%) reported a 69% increase in revenue and a 7X increase in net income in Q1.

The stock is up just over 13% as I write this morning, and deservedly so.

Reddit offers investors a beautiful story of scaling done extremely well. Mostly, that seems to be because Reddit ads are just present enough in feeds to not deter users while also being effective enough to keep marketers coming back for more. Data licensing to the big AI players doesn’t hurt, either.

8:20 am

By Morning Show host Alicia Alfiere
Team Rule Breakers

Etsy (ETSY 1.82%) stock popped earlier this year on the news that it is selling its second-hand and vintage clothing business, Depop, for $1.2 billion in cash. This could be a good thing for the overall business, as the sale will allow leadership to focus only on the Etsy marketplace.

Etsy is also going through a period of transformation and the first quarter showed some potentially early signs of positive momentum for the marketplace of vintage, unique, and personal items:

Opening Bell

9:15 am — AAPL +4.2%

The S&P 500 surged past the 7,200 milestone to kick off May, propelled by a 3% jump in Apple (AAPL +3.26%) shares. Despite a second consecutive quarterly miss in iPhone revenue, Apple’s superior revenue guidance and earnings beat effectively calmed Wall Street. Broader markets found further support as West Texas Intermediate futures fell 2% on reports that Iran is engaging with U.S.-backed peace amendments via mediators. This follows an April where the Nasdaq logged its best monthly performance since 2020, signaling robust appetite for tech growth.

• Geopolitical De-escalation: Crude prices retreated toward $103 as Pakistani mediators facilitated a potential breakthrough in the U.S.-Iran conflict.
• Technological Resilience: Analysts at Barclays suggest that while the recovery’s speed might invite a short-term “breather,” the underlying trajectory for tech remains historically strong.

Before the Opening Bell

8:15 am — AAPL +3.4% in premarket trading

Equity futures started May in the green as Apple (AAPL +3.26%) climbed 3% following a fiscal second-quarter beat. Despite iPhone revenue missing targets for the second time in three quarters, a robust sales outlook and broad earnings strength have pushed the S&P 500 above the historic 7,200 level. While the Nasdaq faces slight premarket pressure, markets remain remarkably resilient even as geopolitical tensions with Iran persist.