Throw around a little ticker tape if you like. Stocks hit new all-time highs today as Wall Street celebrated a great Q2 for most companies, including SpaceX. Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company beat expectations in its first-ever earnings report today, but the stock, which you very likely hold, is a different story… we’ll get to that later.

Few companies are having a better earnings season than Big Oil, which is raking in big profits. How long can it last? Our Texas correspondent Elizabeth Trovall starts us off today.  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor  

Oil and gas companies are starting to turn in their second quarter report cards. So far, ExxonMobil and Chevron have shown they are raking in high earnings due to elevated wartime oil and refined product prices.

Exxon hit record production out of the Permian Basin (the engine of U.S. oil production), but regardless of if you’re a Permian-only operator like Diamondback Energy or a big international oil major like Chevron, there’s one price lifting all boats out there.

“The West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude oil spot price averaged about $95.75 a barrel in the second quarter,” said Andy O’Conor, senior vice president of energy and natural resources ratings at Morningstar DBRS. “[That’s] almost a $24-a-barrel increase from the average in the first quarter.”

Employment and new oil rigs in the Permian Basin and other parts of Texas had been on the decline. But higher oil prices due to the war have reversed that trend, according to Karr Ingham, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

“We'll see how long it lasts, but that's an extraordinary story in 2026, is the rig count in Texas, in the Permian, ceasing to decline, and not only flattening out but turning north and going up pretty strongly in recent months,” Ingham said.

And that drilling could boost production somewhat, he said.

“You’re not getting another million barrels a day out of the Permian or out of Texas in the near term,” Ingham said. “You might get a few 100,000 barrels a day over the course of a few months.”

Translation: Big Tech’s AI spending spree is driving up the cost of government debt, too. 

When investors buy long-term Treasurys, they like to be paid some extra yield to lock away their money for seven, 10, or even 30 years. That’s called the “term premium,” and they’re on the rise in the past week or so.

We told you yesterday about the record-breaking box office for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” Some small part of that success might be attributable to BMW, which is beaming ads to Spidey (and its new model) onto dashboards around the country this week.

The carmaker calls the deal a one-off, but Techspot points out the ad comes just a couple years after an exec said he wouldn’t monetize a “private space” like the cabin of its car. Some drivers are furious, still stinging BMW had charged, then walked back, a subscription fee for its heated seats. Even after you pay off a luxury car, is it ever entirely yours?