Zolak/iStock via Getty Images Introduction To The United States Brent Oil Fund The United States Brent Oil Fund LP ETF ( BNO ), which was set up as a Delaware limited partnership on September 2, 2009, by United States Commodity Funds, LLC (USCF) (a Californian-based provider of commodity-based ETFs) but only began trading on the markets on June 1, 2010, has, so far, managed to garner total assets ...
Zolak/iStock via Getty Images Introduction To The United States Brent Oil Fund The United States Brent Oil Fund LP ETF ( BNO ), which was set up as a Delaware limited partnership on September 2, 2009, by United States Commodity Funds, LLC (USCF) (a Californian-based provider of commodity-based ETFs) but only began trading on the markets on June 1, 2010, has, so far, managed to garner total assets under management (AUM) of over $830M. BNO has an expense ratio of 1.14% and doesn't pay any distributions to its holders. What Does BNO Do? BNO may be an ETF, but it is structured as a Limited Partnership (LP), which means when investors buy shares of BNO, they are essentially buying shares of a partnership whereby USCF (the issuer) serves as the general partner. So, what does this partnership entail? Well, BNO’s goal is to serve as an accessible vehicle for market players to play the daily price moments of Brent crude oil (rather than the price changes of the lighter, sweeter, US-centric alternative of WTI crude), and the former attempts to do so by investing in crude oil future contracts (more commonly known as futures). To get more specific, at the start of every month, BNO holds the near-month futures contract of Brent until the last two weeks of the expiration of said contract (after which it will gradually shift to the next month's contract of Brent futures during a 4-day period). For those not familiar with futures contracts, these are standardized and highly liquid financial contracts traded on a certain exchange (in this case, the Intercontinental Exchange, also known as ICE) that enable their holders to be exposed to the movements of certain commodity prices without necessarily owning those commodities physically. Investors could perhaps imagine how buying, transporting, holding, and selling physical barrels of oil in gargantuan quantities would come across as very impractical and cumbersome for the standard individual investor. Against that overbearing scenario, ...
Smile/DigitalVision via Getty Images Sysco ( SYY ) has agreed to acquire Jetro Restaurant Depot in a blockbuster $29.1 billion deal, combining two foodservice giants in a move that could reshape restaurant supply chains. The transaction includes $21.6 billion in cash proceeds for Jetro shareholders plus 91.5 million Sysco shares, announced Monday. Sysco down about 15% so far today. In light of thi...
Smile/DigitalVision via Getty Images Sysco ( SYY ) has agreed to acquire Jetro Restaurant Depot in a blockbuster $29.1 billion deal, combining two foodservice giants in a move that could reshape restaurant supply chains. The transaction includes $21.6 billion in cash proceeds for Jetro shareholders plus 91.5 million Sysco shares, announced Monday. Sysco down about 15% so far today. In light of this, below is a list of the top-ranked U.S. food distributor stocks based on Seeking Alpha’s Quant Ratings. The stocks are ranked in descending order by their Quant Rating scores, with market capitalizations ranging from micro-cap to large-cap companies within the food distribution sector. United Natural Foods, Inc. ( UNFI ) leads the list with a near-perfect Quant Rating of 4.97, earning a Strong Buy designation. The Andersons, Inc. ( ANDE ) and US Foods Holding Corp. ( USFD ) follow closely behind with Strong Buy ratings of 4.63 and 4.58, respectively. Sysco Corporation ( SYY ), the largest company on the list by market cap at $39.18B, rounds out the top four with a Buy rating of 4.23. The remaining stocks on the list carry Hold ratings. The Chefs’ Warehouse, Inc. ( CHEF ), Performance Food Group Company ( PFGC ), and HF Foods Group Inc. ( HFFG ) each have Quant Ratings below the 3.5 bullish threshold, with scores of 2.97, 2.84, and 2.60, respectively. Seeking Alpha’s Quant Ratings system grades stocks on their relative performance across critical quantitative measures, including valuation, growth, stock momentum, and profitability. Ratings are provided on a scale from 1 to 5, with any rating of 3.5 or above considered bullish and any rating of 2.5 or below considered bearish. Here is the list: United Natural Foods, Inc. ( UNFI ), Quant Rating: 4.97 The Andersons, Inc. ( ANDE ), Quant Rating: 4.63 US Foods Holding Corp. ( USFD ), Quant Rating: 4.58 Sysco Corporation ( SYY ), Quant Rating: 4.23 The Chefs’ Warehouse, Inc. ( CHEF ), Quant Rating: 2.97 Performance Food Group Co...
Rasi Bhadramani WTI Crude Oil futures ( CL1:COM ) settled at $102.88 per barrel on Monday, marking the first close above the $100 threshold since July 2022. The milestone caps a record-breaking month for oil markets, with international benchmark Brent Crude ( CO1:COM ) soaring approximately 55% in March—the largest monthly gain since the contract’s inception in 1988, surpassing the previous record...
Rasi Bhadramani WTI Crude Oil futures ( CL1:COM ) settled at $102.88 per barrel on Monday, marking the first close above the $100 threshold since July 2022. The milestone caps a record-breaking month for oil markets, with international benchmark Brent Crude ( CO1:COM ) soaring approximately 55% in March—the largest monthly gain since the contract’s inception in 1988, surpassing the previous record of 46% set during the first Gulf War in September 1990. The surge comes as the conflict between the U.S.-Israel alliance and Iran enters its fifth week, with President Donald Trump issuing direct threats against Iranian energy infrastructure. On Monday, Trump warned via Truth Social that the U.S. would destroy Iran’s oil wells, power plants, and Kharg Island unless the Strait of Hormuz was reopened. In a Financial Times interview, the president also said his preferred approach would be to “take the oil,” drawing comparisons to U.S. actions in Venezuela following the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro. The conflict escalated further over the weekend when Yemen’s Houthis launched ballistic missiles at Israeli military targets, marking their first direct involvement in the war. The attack has heightened concerns over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a critical shipping channel linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, through which an estimated four to five million barrels of oil pass daily. Analysts warn the crisis could push prices significantly higher. Société Générale projected that prolonged supply disruption could drive oil to $150 per barrel in April, while strategist David Roche of Quantum Strategy cautioned that any U.S. move to seize Iran’s Kharg Island—through which 90% of Iranian oil flows—could trigger full-scale escalation and disrupt Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline carrying 5 million barrels daily. Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, said global equity markets are now pricing in a scenario of “higher-for-longer” oil prices and interest rates as recession risks m...
The S&P 500 Index ($SPX ) (SPY ) today is down -0.75%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DOWI ) (DIA ) is down -0.21%, and the Nasdaq 100 Index ($IUXX ) (QQQ ) is down -1.18%. Stock indexes turned lower this afternoon as the market digests the first $100+ oil...
The S&P 500 Index ($SPX ) (SPY ) today is down -0.75%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DOWI ) (DIA ) is down -0.21%, and the Nasdaq 100 Index ($IUXX ) (QQQ ) is down -1.18%. Stock indexes turned lower this afternoon as the market digests the first $100+ oil...
With key leaders stepping away from Amazon’s AI team, is the online retail giant simply evolving, or is it a potential red flag investors shouldn’t ignore?
With key leaders stepping away from Amazon’s AI team, is the online retail giant simply evolving, or is it a potential red flag investors shouldn’t ignore?
The nation’s largest “off-retail” retail chain, Ross Stores (NASDAQ:ROST), just delivered one of its strongest quarters in years, yet Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets is running a short thesis against it. As far as the numbers go, Q4 FY2026 comparable store sales surged 9%, stacked on top of a +3% comp in the prior year. EPS came in ... Ross Stores Beat Earnings and Gained 68% in a Year. Reddit Is Still ...
The nation’s largest “off-retail” retail chain, Ross Stores (NASDAQ:ROST), just delivered one of its strongest quarters in years, yet Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets is running a short thesis against it. As far as the numbers go, Q4 FY2026 comparable store sales surged 9%, stacked on top of a +3% comp in the prior year. EPS came in ... Ross Stores Beat Earnings and Gained 68% in a Year. Reddit Is Still Betting Against It.
Former Suriname President Chandrikapersad “Chan” Santokhi died unexpectedly on Monday, the government announced, after leading the small but oil-rich South American nation until last year. The administration of current President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons described Santokhi’s passing as “sudden,” offering condolences to his relatives, friends and political colleagues. Santokhi, 67, served as presid...
Former Suriname President Chandrikapersad “Chan” Santokhi died unexpectedly on Monday, the government announced, after leading the small but oil-rich South American nation until last year. The administration of current President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons described Santokhi’s passing as “sudden,” offering condolences to his relatives, friends and political colleagues. Santokhi, 67, served as president from 2020 to 2025. He previously was minister of justice and police between 2005 and 2010, and also led the Progressive Reform Party. The Surinamese leader unsuccessfully sought re-election last year after implementing market-oriented reforms tied to an International Monetary Fund program, as Suriname positions itself for an offshore oil boom.
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is investing $2 billion in artificial intelligence cloud company Nebius to develop a full-stack AI cloud platform for developers and enterprises. The partnership will support Nebius in deploying more than 5 gigawatts of Nvidia-powered capacity by the end of 2030, the companies said in a March 11 statement. "AI is at another inflection point — agentic AI, driving incredible com...
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is investing $2 billion in artificial intelligence cloud company Nebius to develop a full-stack AI cloud platform for developers and enterprises. The partnership will support Nebius in deploying more than 5 gigawatts of Nvidia-powered capacity by the end of 2030, the companies said in a March 11 statement. "AI is at another inflection point — agentic AI, driving incredible compute demand and accelerating infrastructure buildout," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in the statement
Analysts at Jefferies say that while regulatory scrutiny may affect Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB), the company could still present attractive long-term investment opportunities. In a note to clients, Jefferies highlighted that concerns around regulatory and...
Analysts at Jefferies say that while regulatory scrutiny may affect Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB), the company could still present attractive long-term investment opportunities. In a note to clients, Jefferies highlighted that concerns around regulatory and...
Veteran returns to club 44 years after being sacked ‘It boils down to two words: energy and enthusiasm’ Roy Hodgson insisted he does not require “a crutch” after making a shock return to Bristol City at 78 years old and believes he is healthier than when last coaching two years ago, when he was taken ill at Crystal Palace. The former England manager, who took training at the Championship club for ...
Veteran returns to club 44 years after being sacked ‘It boils down to two words: energy and enthusiasm’ Roy Hodgson insisted he does not require “a crutch” after making a shock return to Bristol City at 78 years old and believes he is healthier than when last coaching two years ago, when he was taken ill at Crystal Palace. The former England manager, who took training at the Championship club for the first time on Monday, has taken interim charge for the final seven games of the season. Hodgson left Palace in February 2024 , four days after collapsing at training, but he was tempted out of retirement by Richard Scudamore, the former Premier League chief executive who joined City’s board last October. Hodgson was at home in Richmond, west London, when he received a message out of the blue from Scudamore, a lifelong City fan, asking if he could pick his brains. Continue reading...
“You can deceive, manipulate, and lie. That’s an inherent property of language. It’s a feature, not a flaw,” CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview at RSA Conference 2026. If deception is baked into language itself, every vendor trying to secure AI agents by analyzing their intent is chasing a problem that cannot be conclusively solved. Zaitsev is betting on contex...
“You can deceive, manipulate, and lie. That’s an inherent property of language. It’s a feature, not a flaw,” CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview at RSA Conference 2026. If deception is baked into language itself, every vendor trying to secure AI agents by analyzing their intent is chasing a problem that cannot be conclusively solved. Zaitsev is betting on context instead. CrowdStrike’s Falcon sensor walks the process tree on an endpoint and tracks what agents did, not what agents appeared to intend. “Observing actual kinetic actions is a structured, solvable problem,” Zaitsev told VentureBeat. “Intent is not.” That argument landed 24 hours after CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz disclosed two production incidents at Fortune 50 companies. In the first, a CEO's AI agent rewrote the company's own security policy — not because it was compromised, but because it wanted to fix a problem, lacked the permissions to do so, and removed the restriction itself. Every identity check passed; the company caught the modification by accident. The second incident involved a 100-agent Slack swarm that delegated a code fix between agents with no human approval. Agent 12 made the commit. The team discovered it after the fact. Two incidents at two Fortune 50 companies. Caught by accident both times. Every identity framework that shipped at RSAC this week missed them. The vendors verified who the agent was. None of them tracked what the agent did. The urgency behind every framework launch reflects a broader market shift. "The difficulty of securing agentic AI is likely to push customers toward trusted platform vendors that can offer broader coverage across the expanding attack surface," according to William Blair's RSA Conference 2026 equity research report by analyst Jonathan Ho. Five vendors answered that call at RSAC this week. None of them answered it completely. Attackers are already inside enterprise pilots The scale of the exposure is already visible ...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Introduction Micron ( MU ) has been seeing its stock decline from its peaks despite the company reporting record-breaking guidance for its Q2 earnings that would, in essence, triple the company’s financials compared to 2 years ago. I’ll dive into why I still believe that Micron is not worth an investment at this current price, as it is down more than 4% ...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Introduction Micron ( MU ) has been seeing its stock decline from its peaks despite the company reporting record-breaking guidance for its Q2 earnings that would, in essence, triple the company’s financials compared to 2 years ago. I’ll dive into why I still believe that Micron is not worth an investment at this current price, as it is down more than 4% since my sell rating on the company . Current Dynamics The main driver of the decline has been Micron’s decision to increase its fiscal 2026 Capex guidance by over $25B . Though this is to fast-track domestic manufacturing, the hike gave the signal of the ever-coming oversupply trap if the AI boom slows even at a slim margin. More recently, the ratepayer protection pledge has forced the hyperscalers like Amazon ( AMZN ) and Google ( GOOG ) to internalize long-dated energy utility liabilities. There are some concerns that these infrastructure premiums will directly put costs onto tech balance sheets and potentially cool the available capital for HBM. This ties in with the $100B New York megafab that has faced significant timeline resets, as the first fab will now start in Q3 of 2030 due to labor shortages and construction complexities. This shows the difference between theoretical planning and the real-world friction I mentioned in my earlier analysis, which would certainly affect such a large-scale endeavor. Another pillar of the bull case behind Micron has been Agentic AI, which can autonomously plan, reason, and act to do multi-step tasks. The nature of agentic AI, which can generate thousands of continuous inference loops per user session, in essence acts as a sustained baseload of compute demand, multiplying the amount of HBM required per user by an order of magnitude. However, that monetization wall has remained a risk, as while reports have indicated that 79% of organizations have adopted AI agents, only 34% have achieved full implementation . More so, research from S...
Two Chinese container ships sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday on their second attempt to leave the Gulf after turning back on Friday, ship-tracking data showed. The critical waterway has effectively been shut since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28. The vessels sailed in close formation out of the strait and into open waters, data on the MarineTraffic platform showed. ...
Two Chinese container ships sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday on their second attempt to leave the Gulf after turning back on Friday, ship-tracking data showed. The critical waterway has effectively been shut since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28. The vessels sailed in close formation out of the strait and into open waters, data on the MarineTraffic platform showed. “Both vessels successfully crossed on a second attempt today, marking the first container vessels to...
Investors looking to navigate the choppy market should consider certain defensive plays, according to Barclays. That's because it's become clear that geopolitics, oil, artificial intelligence disruption and private credit are no longer just side risks this year, analyst Andrew Ferremi said in a note last week. "Global markets have entered a phase where geopolitical risk and structural disruption a...
Investors looking to navigate the choppy market should consider certain defensive plays, according to Barclays. That's because it's become clear that geopolitics, oil, artificial intelligence disruption and private credit are no longer just side risks this year, analyst Andrew Ferremi said in a note last week. "Global markets have entered a phase where geopolitical risk and structural disruption are no longer episodic shocks but persistent features of the investment landscape," he wrote. Stocks tumbled again last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending Friday more than 10% from its most recent high and entering correction territory, while the S & P 500 notched its fifth straight week of losses. The market has been see-sawing in 2026: First, investors grappled with fear over AI disruption in certain sectors . Private credit risks also weighed on the market as major funds saw rising redemptions . Then, the Iran war broke out at the end of February, sending oil prices higher. Ferremi and his team polled the firm's sector analysts on the best ideas for investors to manage the latest bout of market volatility. One top play is investing in stocks that are the most defensive in the current environment and are rated overweight by the analysts covering them. Many also pay dividends. Here are some of the names that made the cut. Investors can nab attractive portfolio income with Extra Space Storage , coming in with the highest yield on the list at roughly 5 % . The real estate investment trust focuses on self-storage properties, which have historically been resilient through economic cycles, analyst Brendan Lynch wrote. The sector's financials should continue to improve as supply pressures ease, he said. It will also benefit as AI drives enhanced marketing and pricing capabilities, he added. "We believe the largest players are best positioned to capture demand and leverage technology given large volumes of customer data and strong brand recognition," Lynch said. Th...