All-Time Highs During a War. Let That Sink In.

We were somewhere around S&P 6,900 when the absurdity began to take hold.

I was sitting on my laptop... half-watching CNBC, half-reading the LikeFolio dashboard... when both things happened at exactly the same time. The Nasdaq hit an ALL-TIME RECORD HIGH. And a Navy destroyer was enforcing a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

I texted Landon. "S&P just hit a record. During a naval blockade."

He sent back one line. "Consumer Score is still surging."

That’s it. That’s the whole conversation. Because when you’ve been staring at consumer data for a decade, you stop being surprised when it’s right. You just start being surprised when anyone is still listening to the people who were wrong.

And a LOT of people were wrong.

Not us. Not this month.

We told you the Strait doesn’t matter anymore the morning the blockade went live. We told you to buy the Iran dip when everyone was panic-selling. We told you NCLH was bottled up by oil, not fundamentals. It popped 9% the next day.

The timestamps don’t lie. The links are right there.

But here’s the thing... and I’ll get to this in a minute... not every stock at record highs deserves to be there. Some of them earned it. Some of them are freeloading. And the consumer data tells you exactly which is which.

First, though. Let me tell you how absurd this week has been.

Monday: Naval blockade goes live. Oil spikes. Every newsletter in America screams PANIC. Market finishes... green.

Tuesday: S&P erases every point it lost since the war began. Nasdaq posts its best nine-day run in HISTORY.

Wednesday: All-time highs. Both indexes. New records. Warships in the Strait. Ceasefire expiring in six days.

Three days. Three records. One active war.

The beautiful, overpaid, Patagonia-vested COWARDS on Wall Street are still hedging. Still "cautiously constructive." Still telling you to "maintain a balanced portfolio." You know what a balanced portfolio gets you in this market? The privilege of watching other people make money.

The consumer doesn’t hedge. The consumer ACTS.

And while the analysts were hedging, America was winning.

This is the chart they don’t want you to see:

The United States produces 22.8 million barrels per day. More than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The country that spent 50 years afraid of Middle East oil disruptions now outproduces the entire Middle East.

U.S. crude exports surging toward 5 million barrels per day. Record levels. Flowing through the Gulf of America... not the Persian Gulf. Corpus Christi. Houston. Louisiana. Running at full capacity while the Strait sits at zero crossings.

This is why the market hit all-time highs during a blockade. America filled the gap. The chess board looks chaotic. But the pieces clearly favor the United States. And the Gulf of America is the new center of global energy.

Now. About those freeloaders.

Here’s what the data says right now: some stocks at record highs EARNED it. Consumer demand is real. Revenue is growing. The LikeFolio scores back it up. Apple at 85. Microsoft at 88. Tesla at 88... outselling every car in China at 3-4x the price.

And some of them are just along for the ride. Sitting in the S&P 500, getting pulled up by the tide, with consumer data that says "this is fine" while the stock price says "THIS IS INCREDIBLE."

You know what we call the gap between what consumers are doing and what the stock price implies?

An opportunity. In both directions.

Netflix reports after the bell today. We told you yesterday that our Consumer Score was 48. Not terrible. Not great. Just... fine. The market is priced for great. If it gets fine instead...

After that: April 22. Tesla earnings. Iran ceasefire expiry. The two biggest catalysts of 2026 on the same day. And our Consumer Score for Tesla is 88... the opposite of Netflix.

The next six days are going to be wild.

But here’s what I know for certain: the consumer data has been right every single time this month. When we said buy the dip, the dip got bought. When we said the Strait doesn’t matter, the market agreed. When we said Tesla was winning, the stock rallied.

The data doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t care about the blockade. It doesn’t care about the ceasefire. It tracks what 330 million Americans actually DO with their money.

And right now, what they’re doing... is spending.

All-time highs during a war. Let that sink in.

We drove on toward earnings season. The trunk full of conviction. The consumer leading the way. As always.