From AI Pullback to Oil Surge: Top WallStreetBets Stories This Week

March 7, 6:44 pm

Oracle imploded twice, BlackRock quietly gated a $26B fund, oil spiked 21% on Iran, and a TikToker with 160M followers allegedly dumped a Chinese shell stock on his own fans. Here's a recap of this week on /WallStreetBets.

AI Infrastructure Is Cracking

The two biggest stories this week revolved around Oracle: first, they cut thousands of jobs blaming "AI cash crunch," then they scrapped plans to expand their flagship data center with OpenAI. Meanwhile, Nvidia's Jensen Huang called OpenAI's $30B investment round potentially "the last one."

In other words. The guy whose chips power the AI boom is signaling capital for AI buildout may be drying up.

Combine that with the viral game theory post on when VCs will pull the rug on the AI bubble — which laid out a compelling dot-com parallel and concluded that the weakest AI companies are already living on borrowed time — and you've got a thesis forming: the AI capex supercycle may be closer to its peak than most admit.

Relevant tickers: $ORCL - $NVDA

BlackRock Just Quietly Limited Withdrawals on a $26B Fund

BlackRock's $26 billion private credit fund restricted investor withdrawals this week, which generated a ton of buzz on /WallStreetBets. Private credit has been one of the hottest institutional trades of the last 3 years. When the biggest asset manager on earth starts gating redemptions, that's not a routine housekeeping move.

Relevant ticker: $BLK

The Khaby Lame Pump & Dump

One of the most detailed DD posts of the year dropped this week — a breakdown of how TikTok's biggest influencer (160M followers) may have been used to pump a Chinese shell company ($ANPA) onto the NASDAQ before dumping on retail investors.

The playbook: exploit Regulation S to build a captive float offshore, list on a US exchange, use an influencer with global reach to generate FOMO liquidity, then exit. The stock has since collapsed. The influencer has quietly deleted all promotional links.

The post argues this won't be a one-off — it's a new, more sophisticated version of the China Hustle, and retail investors are the exit liquidity.

Read the full post if you haven't. It's one of the best pieces of investigative finance writing to come out of WSB in years.

Iran Conflict & Oil Futures

US crude is up ~21% since the Iran conflict started. The Treasury is apparently considering direct intervention in the oil futures market to combat price spikes — a move analysts are calling "unprecedented."

Gas is already up 27 cents/gallon in a week. Trump told Reuters he's "not concerned" about rising prices. Treasury Secretary Bessent — a former macro hedge fund manager — is reportedly spearheading the response.

For investors: energy infrastructure, nat gas pipelines, and independent power producers are suddenly very relevant again.

Relevant tickers: $XOM - $CVX

Walmart is trading at 47x Earnings

A well-upvoted post this week asked the question everyone's been too polite to say out loud: Walmart is trading like a tech company and the fundamentals don't support it.

Revenue growth is ~5-6%, EBITDA growth has slowed, and the ad business — while real — seems to be hitting a ceiling on traffic. Compare it to Coke at 25x with better brand moats and international exposure.

Is this a crowded defensive trade that's gotten ahead of itself? The author thought so enough to buy puts.

Relevant ticker: $WMT

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