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Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• The S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all eased as Wall Street backed away from record highs.

• Brent crude jumped to $114.44 as the Strait of Hormuz standoff kept escalating.

• Amazon Supply Chain Services went live for all U.S. businesses. The incumbents took the hit.

• GameStop bid $125/share cash-and-stock for eBay and fell 10.1%; eBay rose 5.1%, because being chased still beats doing the chasing.

• Palantir's Q1: revenue +85% to $1.63B, U.S. +104%, full-year guide bumped to ~71% growth. Reported after the bell.

Market News

Amazon Walked Into Logistics

Monday was the kind of session where the indexes tried to act bored, and crude knocked the table over.

The S&P 500 fell 0.4% to 7,200.75, the Dow dropped 557.37 points to 48,941.90, and the Nasdaq slipped 46.64 points to 25,067.80. After Friday’s fresh records, that’s not a wipeout but a market discovering that even bull markets occasionally have to look at the thing flashing red on the commodity screen.

The flashing red thing was oil. Brent jumped 5.8% to $114.44, while the 10-year Treasury yield moved up to 4.43% from 4.39% late Friday. That combination is not ideal for markets, as it suggests higher input costs, more persistent inflation, and a bond market gradually reducing expectations of rate cuts.

Then Amazon made things worse for the transport crowd by opening its logistics network to outside businesses. UPS fell 10.5%, FedEx dropped over 9%, and the Dow Jones Transportation Average sank 4.8%. Amazon is now trying to turn its delivery machine into a third-party logistics platform, the AWS playbook, just with more warehouses.

There were still pockets of appetite:

• Tyson jumped after a strong quarter.

• eBay rose after GameStop’s takeover proposal.

• Palantir delivered the after-hours AI print that growth investors wanted to see.

But Monday's tape wasn't about whether earnings season is broken. It was about whether the market could keep levitating when the two cleanest stories, easing and margin expansion, suddenly have oil and Amazon leaning on them.

Peel Take: Monday wasn't a market panic. It was a margin check. Oil above $114 forces every fuel-sensitive business to prove its model again, and Amazon turning logistics into an open service forces every carrier to prove its moat again. That's the through-line: investors didn't suddenly hate risk. They hated companies that suddenly looked like price takers. The rally can survive ugly headlines. It has a much harder time forgiving anyone whose costs are moving faster than their leverage.

What's Ripe

Tyson Foods (TSN) 8.0%

• Tyson rose after beating fiscal Q2 earnings expectations and raising its full-year operating income outlook. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.87 versus estimates of $0.78, while revenue rose 4.4% year over year to $13.65 billion.

• Chicken, pork, and prepared foods helped offset weakness in beef, where volumes dropped as high prices weighed on demand.

• Peel Take: This was not flashy, but it was exactly what investors want in a choppy market: beat expectations, raise guidance, and don’t say anything terrifying on the earnings call. Beef is still a problem, but chicken and prepared foods are doing the heavy lifting. Sometimes the real AI trade is “Actual Income”.

eBay (EBAY) 5.1%

• eBay climbed after GameStop offered to buy the company for $125 per share in cash and stock, valuing the proposal around $55.5B. eBay confirmed it had received the unsolicited, non-binding bid and said it would review the offer.

• The stock didn't trade anywhere near the proposed takeout price, which tells you investors are treating this less like a signed deal and more like a headline with homework attached. Still, when a buyer shows up with a number that large, the target gets to enjoy the first bounce while everyone else argues about probability.

• Peel Take: The target gets paid for the dream before the bankers have to explain the wiring. The 5% pop versus the implied 30%+ takeout premium is the market quietly handicapping how this will actually play out. Ryan Cohen running an unsolicited bid for a $50B-plus legacy platform is the kind of deal regulators audition to slow-walk, and arb desks know it.

What's Rotten

UPS (UPS) 10.5%

• UPS got crushed after Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services for all U.S. businesses, with FedEx falling 9.12% in sympathy.

• The fear isn't that Amazon steals every package tomorrow. The fear is that Amazon now has an obvious way to turn its own logistics capacity into a third-party business at scale. That's a brutal setup for carriers already dealing with uneven freight demand, labor costs, and customer pricing pressure.

• Peel Take: UPS investors weren’t reacting to one press release. They were reacting to the negotiating table six months from now, when every big shipper has a new Amazon quote sitting next to the old carrier contract. The worst competitor is the one that built the network for itself and just realized it can rent the spare parts to your customers… at marginal cost.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) 8.6%

• Norwegian sank after reporting Q1 revenue of $2.3B and adjusted EPS of $0.23, but cutting its full-year adjusted EPS outlook to $1.45-$1.79. Management pointed to Middle East disruption, higher fuel costs, softer European demand, and booking volume below its optimal booked position.

• That’s a lot of small problems arriving in the same suitcase. Cruise investors can handle one soft spot when pricing is strong. They get less forgiving when fuel spikes, routes get complicated, and the booking curve starts sounding less enthusiastic.

• Peel Take: Cruise lines sell optional happiness while charging mandatory fuel surcharges. That math works when consumers are confident, and crude behaves. When Europe softens, itineraries need workarounds, and oil is back above $110, it doesn’t matter whether the quarter was technically a beat; the multiple compresses on its own.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Morgan Stanley

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📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Excel Modeling: Build Models That Actually Work

Build fast, clean, and professional financial models using Excel like a pro.

🎓 Check out the Excel Modeling Course

🌟 WSO Academy Q1 Update

🔁 Feeling Stuck After On-Cycle Recruiting?

If you’re feeling discouraged because the first wave of on-cycle recruiting has passed, don’t worry, this is extremely common. Many students secure internships through:

• Off-cycle recruiting later in the year

• Boutique investment banks

• Networking opportunities that arise throughout the semester

In other words, missing the first wave of recruiting does not mean you missed your opportunity.

The most important thing now is to continue building momentum by improving your resume, technical preparation, and networking strategy. The mentors and the Academy team are here to help you navigate the next steps.

Apply to WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• GameStop proposed to acquire eBay for $125 per share in cash and stock, valuing the bid at around $55.5B.

• UCB agreed to acquire Candid Therapeutics for up to $2.2B to expand its autoimmune-disease pipeline.

• Global Net Lease agreed to acquire Modiv Industrial in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $535M.

• SAP agreed to acquire Prior Labs as part of a broader plan to invest more than EUR1B in AI over the next four years.

• Mesirow agreed to acquire LeafHouse Financial Advisors, pushing its fiduciary assets under management or advisement to about $138B after close.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

If a company sits on a huge cash pile, what does it signal to you?

Waiting for deals: 31.7% // Playing it safe: 12.2% // Market uncertainty: 39.0% // Missed opportunities: 17.1%

Student Success Corner

👉 Are you next? Find out with WSO Academy

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

For the positive numbers, n, n+1, n+2, n+4, and n+8, the mean is how much greater than the median?

Answer: 1

Today

The total cost for Company X to produce a batch of tools is $10,000 plus $3 per tool. Each tool sells for $8. The gross profit earned from producing and selling these tools is the total income from sales minus the total production cost. If a batch of 20,000 tools is produced and sold, then Company X’s gross profit per tool is?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

Happy Investing,
Chris, Vyom, Ankit, Mitchell, Fernanda, Nick, & Patrick

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