THE NONEXPERT a view, not a verdict.

WTI Crude Retreats to $93 as Inventory Reality Bites Into the War Premium

The crude market had a story it wanted to tell — conflict, scarcity, triple-digit oil — and for a while, the data played along. Then the EIA released its weekly inventory figures, and the story got complicated. WTI crude fell more than 2% on the day to approximately $93.00 per barrel, pulling back sharply from a recent run above $100 that had been fueled almost entirely by war-driven supply anxiety. The move was fast. A market that rallies on fear doesn’t always unwind gracefully when the fear proves partially misplaced. The inventory build — unexpectedly large by most accounts — didn’t tell traders that the geopolitical risk had vanished. It … Read more

RBC’s Micron Call Is Really a Bet on AI’s Memory Addiction

There is something quietly radical about RBC Capital Markets’ latest research note on Micron Technology. On the surface, it reads like a standard buy recommendation on a cyclical chipmaker. Dig a bit deeper and it becomes a structural argument: artificial intelligence has permanently rewired the economics of memory, and the old boom-bust logic of DRAM and NAND pricing cycles just doesn’t apply the same way anymore. Whether that argument ultimately holds is another matter entirely. The timing, though, is striking. Micron’s shares have risen 3.2% on recent momentum alone, carried partly by enthusiasm surrounding Nvidia’s GTC 2026 event, which reinforced market conviction around the durability of AI infrastructure spending. The … Read more