May 4th Pre-Market

Good Morning

Oil slightly up and stocks about flat in pre-market now as Trump's Project Freedom kicks off, Iran is already pushing back.

Ryan Cohen, the Chewy founder turned GameStop CEO, woke up and decided he wants to buy eBay for $56 billion, because of course he did. Spirit Airlines is might be goner as they are already canceling booked flights. Palantir reports earnings tonight.

Let's dig in…

Today's Big Picture

1. Project Freedom

Trump's plan starts today with 15,000 troops and 100+ aircraft. No warship escorts. Shipowners are saying publicly they won't move without a cease-fire guarantee, and Iran's IRGC has mines in the water. So the strait stays closed as of now and oil stays above $110. That keeps inflation expectations sticky and pulls 2026 rate cuts further off the table until further development.

2. Cohen's eBay Bid 

Ryan Cohen built Chewy, sold it to PetSmart for $3.35B, then took over GameStop and turned it profitable through brutal cost cuts. Now he's offering $125 per share for eBay. The stock opened at $118 in premarket, which means the market puts roughly 60% odds on a close. The financing gap is the tell. GameStop has $9.4B in cash and a $20B TD Bank letter against a $56B deal, with the rest needing equity issuance at an $11B market cap. Cohen says he'll go directly to shareholders in a proxy fight, so this drags out for months.

3. Spirit Is The Template, Not The Story 

Spirit shut down after Washington rejected a $500 million bailout request. The administration just set a precedent that war-driven corporate distress doesn't get federal backstops. JetBlue has the most debt among low-cost carriers and Frontier has the most fuel exposure, so they reprice first. If Brent stays above $110, Spirit is the first bankruptcy of the war, not the last.

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Palantir $PLTR ( ▲ 3.57% )  
reports after the bell. Government revenue is already priced in, so the commercial number is the line that matters. The print resets the bar for AMD, Super Micro, and Arm later this week.

Advanced Micro Devices $AMD ( ▲ 1.71% )  
got cut to hold at HSBC on tight 2026 wafer capacity, one day before earnings. Sell-side now has to revisit 2026 estimates before tomorrow's print. If management confirms the capacity squeeze, the rest of the Street follows HSBC down.

FedEx $FDX ( ▼ 5.51% )  
is leaking after Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services, opening its logistics network to outside businesses. UPS is taking the same hit. This is a multi-year thesis break for the whole freight complex, not a quarterly miss.

Norwegian Cruise Line $NCLH ( ▼ 6.17% )  
cut guidance and said consumers are rethinking travel plans. That's both a fuel-cost story and a demand warning. Royal Caribbean and Carnival reprice in sympathy and the cruise group becomes the cleanest short on a stretched consumer.

Coinbase $COIN ( ▲ 5.42% )  
is bid as Bitcoin cleared $80,000 and the CLARITY Act compromise removed the stablecoin yield overhang. Institutional crypto allocators sidelined on regulatory uncertainty just lost their main reason to wait. Circle and crypto exchange names move with it.

Amex Global Business Travel $GBTG ( ▲ 1.2% )  
agreed to go private with Long Lake Management at $9.50 per share, valuing the deal at $6.3B. Corporate travel M&A landing the same morning NCLH warns on consumer demand tells you private capital sees a different cycle than public markets.

What to Watch

Fed's Williams (12:50 PM ET) 
Centrist voice on the board. If he flags oil-driven inflation as persistent rather than transient, the no-cuts-this-year camp gets a credible leader and the front end of the curve repositions.

Yen Intervention Round Two 
Japan likely spent $35 billion last week buying yen to stop their currency from falling. To pay for it, they may have sold US Treasury bonds. If Tokyo intervenes again this week, US bond yields could rise and stocks feel it.

AMD Capacity Line (Tuesday After The Bell) 
HSBC's downgrade today raises the guidance bar. The 2026 wafer capacity commentary is where the trade lives, not the headline EPS.

- John

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