Last night’s market move made me ask myself a question first: if oil prices have surged like this, how can US stocks still be up?

Brent crude is up to around $91, up 2.2%, a five-week high; the 10-year Treasury yield is pushed up to 4.64%, the highest in two months. By all the usual logic, these are valuation-compression signals—if inflation expectations rise and rates follow higher, tech stocks should face pressure.

What happened instead? The Nasdaq rose 1.29%, the S&P 500 gained 0.89%, and the Philadelphia semiconductor index jumped 5.2%. The logic is completely flipped.

So is this semiconductor rally a real reversal, or just a rebound from being oversold?

Looking at the unusual moves last night, Micron was up 12.26%, SanDisk was up 14%, AMD was up about 8%, and Nvidia also climbed nearly 2% (linked to the news that it invested in Nebius). The interesting part is that no single piece of news can fully explain the whole sector’s rise—more like money is collectively betting that big manufacturers’ AI capital expenditures will keep going up after an earlier pullback. In other words, this trade isn’t just “buy Nvidia” anymore—storage and equipment are being pulled into the same narrative.

So what exactly is the market betting on now?

To put it bluntly, it’s betting that the AI earnings story can hold up, and that the inflation line can be put aside for now. Whether this bet is solid can’t be talked into existence—it depends on the earnings reports.

Tonight is the first test point: Alphabet’s after-hours results. With full-year capital expenditures of $180 to $190 billion, can the cloud business absorb and support growth at this scale? This time, it can’t be dodged. Tesla is under different pressure—investors are waiting for its first quarterly free cash flow turnaround in over two years. Capital expenditures in 2026 could reach $25 billion; the bigger the rollout, the tighter the cash. Even if Robotaxi expands fast, the current commercial scale still can’t make up for this gap.

How long can this divergence last?

My view is that it can’t last too long. If earnings deliver well, the logic can continue; if not, the two hanging knives—oil prices and interest rates—will come down first. This week’s set of earnings reports is basically the answer. #USStocks