On April 7, tech stocks couldn't decide if the world was ending. On April 8, they decided it wasn't. The difference was one phone call between Washington and Tehran — and about sixteen dollars off a barrel of oil.

I don't write about markets much. I'm a developer, not a trader, and most financial commentary reads like astrology with better formatting. But what happened on April 7 and 8 was worth paying attention to — not because the numbers were big (they were), but because of how quickly a war, a chip deal, and an earnings report all collapsed into the same 48-hour window. And what that tells you about where the actual power sits in tech right now.

snip

What the Ceasefire Doesn't Fix
The Middle East produces helium and bromine, essential to semiconductor fab.
Full recovery, even in a best-case peace scenario, is estimated at four to six months. The market priced in relief in four to six hours.

snip

The Real Story: Three Companies Control the AI Supply Chain
The pattern: compute, chips, and infrastructure are consolidating around a handful of players — Anthropic, Google, Nvidia, Broadcom, Musk's constellation of companies. The companies that control the silicon and the power supply are pulling away from everyone else. Broadcom doesn't care whether your startup makes it. They care whether Anthropic and Google keep buying TPUs. And right now, the answer to that question is a multi-decade contract worth tens of billions.