U.S.-Iran strikes, Snowflake soars, Robinhood's new AI tools and more in Morning Squawk

Crude oil is higher after Iran targeted an American air base, reversing a more than 5% drop in oil prices yesterday and keeping geopolitics front and center ahead of the April PCE inflation release. Snowflake jumped more than 37% in extended trading after a strong Q1 and a $6 billion AWS spending commitment, while Salesforce beat estimates but issued slightly weak full-year guidance. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank could spend up to $20 billion on an acquisition, Robinhood unveiled AI tools for trading and shopping, and Lamborghini said it was right to cancel all-electric cars as Ferrari faces EV backlash.

Analysis

The cleanest read-through is that the market is still underpricing dispersion inside AI infrastructure. SNOW’s AWS commitment is not just a vendor spend headline; it is a signal that hyperscaler economics remain dominant even for software vendors touting multi-cloud optionality, which should support AMZN’s cloud mix and weaken the case for smaller infrastructure providers trying to win on price alone. The second-order loser is every “AI platform” story that depends on premium pricing without a clear distribution advantage — if the market rewards SNOW for scale access while punishing weaker guidance at CRM, investors will likely re-rate software into winners with actual compute leverage and away from names where AI is still a margin story rather than a revenue story.

Geopolitics is the bigger macro swing factor for the next 24-72 hours, but the most important part is not spot oil direction — it is the inflation impulse path. If crude stays bid into the PCE print, the market will start pricing a slower easing cycle again, which is negative for duration-sensitive growth and positive for cash-flow-heavy financials and defense-adjacent industrials. The consensus is likely too focused on immediate oil price volatility and not enough on implied policy reaction; a one-day energy spike matters less than whether it changes the Fed’s confidence that disinflation is intact.

JPM’s M&A optionality is strategically important because it implies capital return may not be the only use of excess capital if organic growth plateaus. That creates a subtle valuation floor: a large acquisition would likely be framed as capability acquisition, not balance-sheet empire building, which is supportive for the stock if investors believe Dimon will buy growth at a discount rather than chase scale. On the other hand, the fact that he is even discussing a jumbo deal suggests management sees fewer easy paths to incremental ROE accretion from the current business mix than the market assumes.

The contrarian opportunity is in the Ferrari/Lamborghini split: the market is treating EV luxury skepticism as brand-specific, but it may actually be a demand-truthing event for the entire ultra-luxury EV segment. If affluent buyers continue to favor hybrid flexibility over pure EV novelty, suppliers tied to high-end battery and power electronics demand could see longer commercialization timelines than consensus expects. BA remains a slower-burn positive on production normalization, but the bigger trade is that any airline capacity improvement plus stable oil would reinforce the disinflation trade and pressure defensive energy hedges.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long AMZN / short a basket of smaller cloud-infrastructure beneficiaries for 2-6 weeks; the thesis is that AI spend is concentrating with the largest compute platforms, and SNOW’s deal is evidence of that moat widening.
• Buy SNOW on weakness only after the open; use a tight risk limit if the gap holds, because the move is likely to attract momentum but may fade if investors focus on margin dilution from the AWS commitment. Prefer a call spread over outright stock for defined risk.
• Add JPM as a 3-6 month core long versus CRM; JPM has optionality from capital deployment and higher rate sensitivity, while CRM’s light guide suggests software multiples should stay compressed absent a clearer AI monetization path.
• Trade oil volatility via short-dated call spreads on XLE or long XOM/CVX only if crude holds through the PCE print; if inflation comes in hot and geopolitics stay tense, the move can extend 5-10% in energy equities, but this is a tactical trade with event risk.
• Avoid chasing RACE weakness outright; instead, pair short RACE against long hybrid-exposed auto suppliers over 1-3 months if the market starts extrapolating luxury EV skepticism into broader premium EV demand disappointment.