This was an action-packed week in markets. If you like earnings reports, record-setting runs, and shocking developments, your cup runneth over.  There’s a ton going on right now, so we invited our good friends George Kailas of Prospero.AI and Dennis Dick from the Stock Trader Network to drop by for a new episode of Let’s Talk Markets Live. They joined us during a week bursting at the seams with ominous economic indicators–downward revisions to earlier employment numbers, rising jobless claims, creeping inflation. So what are the markets doing? The Nasdaq and S&P 500 scaled to new heights early and often this week. Some of the current rally is owed to anticipation of next week’s all-but-inevitable interest rate cut. But Dennis argues that there’s something much bigger going on here.The AI rally “is for real,” says Dennis. “It's not going away. And I think a lot of those stocks just have a relentless buy-the-dip mentality on them, because everybody thinks this is going a lot higher, and they're not wrong. They haven't been wrong.” As usual, the Magnificent 7 drove the stampede. But it was an older cowboy who moseyed down Wall Street with stunning revelations about its first-quarter performance. In a late Tuesday press release, Oracle announced that its projected future revenue from customer contracts jumped by 360% in the first quarter. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business is projected to grow 77% to $18 billion in its current fiscal year before scaling to $144 billion in 2030. As Dennis observed, “Oracle has ignited the AI trade here again. I don't think anybody expected this type of revenue growth.”How could they? It was actually a first-of-its-kind achievement. Never before has a company worth more than $500 billion increased its value by more than 25% in a single day of trading. By the end of Wednesday’s rally, Oracle was up 36%. George points out that there’s another phenomenon at play here, one that includes but goes beyond the AI boom.“When there's a positive news event–[especially in AI, crypto, and short squeezes]–I think, ‘What do all three of these things have in common?’”Actually, says George, it’s you. “It’s retail attention, right? This is the kind of move that you wouldn't expect from a company of Oracle’s size,” George observes. “But I'd say this is the new normal. You get the initial move, and then you get the expectation that retail is going to follow the initial news move.”Speaking of retail investors, Oracle wasn’t the only rogue cowboy making headlines this week. According to the brand new AI-powered Urvin Chatbot beta (more on that at a later date!):“Gamestop popped after hours on Q2 results: a double beat on revenue and EPS, a special dividend via warrant payout, and a highlight of roughly $528 million in Bitcoin holdings strengthening the balance sheet. Coverage points to improved profitability (some note a 22% revenue jump and a swing to profit; others cite a narrower loss), putting GME back on traders' radars alongside broader market catalysts this week.”TL; DR Dennis noted that GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen followed up the good news with a concise tweet:“Not bad for a piece of crap retailer.” Dennis is more generous in his assessment. He points out that “They've raised a lot of money, there's a lot of cash here, and there's a good brand…So maybe this is a turnaround story.” Zooming out from the week’s headlines, George warns, “there will be a Piper to pay on this, whether or not we're still increasing our spending, eventually our credit rate is going to go down. Eventually we might be on a path to stagflation.” Dennis agrees, but also points out that it doesn’t much matter to investors at the moment.“Is inflation going to be a problem in 2026 from tariffs, from an easing Fed? Probably. It’s probably going to be a problem.”Until then? “This market is YOLO,” says Dennis “This market is all about short-term gratification. It isn't worrying about 2026. It's worrying about right now.”

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