BUSINESS

FIFA has banned several national teams have been banned from participating in the World Cup. Here is a short history of why some countries did not play.

Takeways and lessons learned from On Air Fest 2026

The AI landscape just shifted — and one move sparked a mass migration entrepreneurs didn’t see coming.

Jim Cramer is not mincing words. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, the “Mad Money” host is warning investors that an oil price shock of $150 to $200 a barrel is now a real possibility.In his Sunday CNBC column, Cramer drew a direct parallel to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Brent crude surged from around $95 to $139 in a matter of weeks on fears of losing roughly 7 million barrels per day of Russian supply.His warning this time is starker. The Strait of Hormuz carries far more oil than Russia ever exported.Why this oil shock could dwarf 2022The math is the problem. Kpler data show that roughly 13 million barrels per day moved through the strait in 2025, representing about 31% of all seaborne crude flows globally.That is nearly double the Russian supply that rattled markets in 2022. Cramer’s logic is straightforward: If losing 7 million barrels pushed Brent to $139, losing double that could push prices into territory markets have never seen.”If oil could spike from $90 to $139 in a few weeks in 2022 on a loss of 7 million barrels, it could go up a lot more on a loss of double that amount,” Cramer wrote in his Sunday piece.Here is what’s actually happening at the Strait of HormuzThe situation on the water is serious. An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander confirmed on March 2 that the strait was closed, warning that any vessel attempting to pass would be targeted, Al Jazeera reported.More Oil and Gas:Energy giant sends blunt $20 billion message on dividend growth147-year-old oil giant just raised dividend 4% in 2026Top energy stocks to buy amid Venezuela chaosAt least five tankers have been damaged, two crew members killed, and about 150 ships are stranded outside the waterway. Major shipping firms, including Maersk, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd, have all suspended transits.Qatar also halted liquefied natural gas production after Iranian drone strikes hit its facilities at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, threatening roughly 20% of global LNG supply.Key disruptions hitting global energy marketsTanker traffic through the strait dropped roughly 70% before falling to near zero.Brent crude has risen about 10% since the conflict began, touching near $83 per barrel.European natural gas futures jumped around 30% following the Qatar facility strikes.LNG tanker freight rates surged more than 40% in a single session.Cramer’s advice on oil stocks: stay in, brace for painDespite the alarm in his tone, Cramer is not telling investors to run. He is urging them to hold positions and prepare for pain before the eventual recovery.His core argument is that extreme oil prices are self-defeating. At $150 or $200 a barrel, demand destruction kicks in quickly. Prices come back down, and when they do, the equity rebound tends to be fast and punishing for anyone who stepped out.”If you get out of the stock market, I can promise you that you will be left behind by the rally that comes from lower rates and lower oil,” Cramer wrote. He urged investors to steel themselves rather than flee.

Jim Cramer urges investors to hold their positions in oil stocks and anticipate an eventual recovery.TheStreet/Shutterstock

A split signal from energy stocksEarlier in the week, on March 4, Cramer flagged a signal that briefly offered some hope. Despite the Hormuz crisis, major energy stocks were actually falling rather than surging.On “Mad Money,” Cramer noted that Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton (HAL) were all down 1%-2%, even as crude climbed. He compared it to 1991, when oil plunged the moment Operation Desert Storm began because markets had already priced in the worst outcome.By Sunday, March 8, however, his tone had darkened. Cramer said he would not be surprised if oil climbed even further, noting that shipping companies may continue refusing Hormuz transits, even with the Trump administration’s $20 billion tanker reinsurance program in place.The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve problemOne factor Cramer flagged as a compounding concern is the depleted state of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. President Joe Biden drew it down significantly in 2022 to blunt that year’s oil surge. It has not been fully replenished since.Cramer noted that President Donald Trump has downplayed the need to tap the reserve this time around. That leaves the U.S. with a smaller cushion than it had in 2022, limiting one of the key tools available to cool a price shock quickly.The bottom line on the Hormuz closureCramer’s message is not a comfortable one. A sustained Hormuz closure is unlike anything modern markets have fully dealt with, and the $150 to $200 price range he is flagging is no longer a fringe scenario.His advice is to expect the sell-off, absorb it, and stay the course for the recovery that follows when the strait eventually reopens. The only real question, as he put it, is how long that takes.Related: Energy stocks jump as Goldman Sachs warns of potential ‘doubling’

The sudden escalation in the U.S.-Iran war has rattled global markets. Oil prices are climbing, volatility is back and strong, and investors are once again asking one familiar question: Where can money hide during geopolitical uncertainty?According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, the answer may lie in two sectors. That is defense and energy. Why? Because both have historically gained attention during global conflicts.In early March 2026, the Wall Street bank revised its investment outlook amid rising tensions in the Middle East. The firm highlighted defense companies as a high-conviction opportunity, while maintaining a broadly bullish stance on U.S. equities.But why are defense stocks suddenly back in the spotlight? Which companies could benefit the most?Morgan Stanley says defense stocks could benefit from geopolitical tensionsMorgan Stanley analysts argue that escalating global conflicts often push investors toward industries tied to national security and energy supply.That trend appears to be unfolding again.The U.S.–Iran confrontation has sparked a classic “risk-off” reaction in financial markets. Oil prices are surging every new morning. With that, investors have rotated into safer sectors and companies tied to military technology.One early standout is Palantir (PLTR). PLTR has so far recorded a 17% gain over the past month amid geopolitical developments. The company’s deep ties with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies make it a key player in modern defense technology.More Palantir Palantir CEO delivers curt 8-word message to investorsPalantir drops  immigration enforcement bombshellPopular analyst reveals 9 ‘buy the dip’ tech stocksMorgan Stanley analysts say the correlation between rising energy prices and defense stocks has strengthened during the latest geopolitical shock.Meanwhile, sectors such as autos and banks,  traditionally tied to economic growth, are facing more caution from investors.So where exactly are analysts placing their bets?Morgan Stanley recently re-evaluated major defense contractors and re-stacked its industry ratings, highlighting companies with strong exposure to next-generation military technologies.

Shutterstock

Among its top picks is Northrop Grumman, which the firm considers a standout due to its advanced defense portfolio and consistent performance.Rising U.S. defense spending could also unlock major contract opportunitiesBehind Morgan Stanley’s optimism lies a powerful macro trend: rising global defense budgets.The White House has proposed $1.01 trillion in defense spending for 2026, one of the largest military budgets in U.S. history.Roughly $150 billion has already been appropriated through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, funding initiatives like the Golden Dome anti-missile program and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.Still, much of the spending has not yet translated into contracts.That gap could create opportunities for defense contractors as funding moves through the appropriations process.Key programs expected to receive funding:$3.9 billion for hypersonic weapons$3.5 billion for next-generation F-47 fighter jets$2.5 billion for missile and munitions production$15.1 billion for cybersecurity initiativesA 30% increase in Space Force funding to $40 billionStill, that’s not enough yet. Towards the end of 2025, the Pentagon also asked defense companies whether they could quickly manufacture 300,000 drones. That’s huge. And that’s interesting too. Why? This signals massive potential demand in that sector.Several companies are to benefit if these programs move forward.Lockheed Martin (LMT)Northrop Grumman (NOC)RTX Corporation (RTX)General Dynamics (GD)Despite that clarity, investors remain cautious. Why? The lengthy and sometimes opaque federal budgeting process has historically made it difficult to predict which companies will ultimately win the biggest contracts.The Middle East conflict is also shaking global energy marketsThe recent U.S strikes on Iran triggered spikes in WTI crude, Brent crude, and natural gas prices, with tensions disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.Related: 156-year-old energy giant to pay $17 billion in dividends as oil spikes to $110Economists at Morgan Stanley describe the disruption as more of a logistics shock than a production shock, noting that no oil supply has been lost so far.Still, higher oil prices can ripple through the economy. A moderate increase tends to push headline inflation higher temporarily, though the Federal Reserve often looks past such short-term pressure.A much larger oil spike could tell a different story.Morgan Stanley expects an upward revision to the 4Q GDPRising energy costs could slow economic activity, weaken business confidence, and delay hiring or investment plans. That uncertainty is precisely why defense stocks often gain attention during geopolitical crises.Yet Morgan Stanley remains surprisingly optimistic. According to the company statement, they expect an upward revision to 4Q GDP to a 1.5% quarter-over-quarter annualized rate.The firm also argues that history shows geopolitical shocks rarely trigger long-lasting bear markets. Especially if inflation pressures remain contained. In other words, volatility may rise, but the broader bull market could survive.Related: Oil spike sends powerful message for everyone

Over the weekend, Andrej Karpathy—the influential former Tesla AI lead and co-founder and former member of OpenAI who coined the term “vibe coding”— posted on X about his new open source project, autoresearch. It wasn’t a finished model or a massive corporate product: it was by his own admission a simple, 630-line script made available on Github under a permissive, enterprise-friendly MIT License. But the ambition was massive: automating the scientific method with AI agents while us humans sleep. “The goal is to engineer your agents to make the fastest research progress indefinitely and without any of your own involvement,” he stated on X.The system functions as an autonomous optimization loop. An AI agent is given a training script and a fixed compute budget (typically 5 minutes on a GPU).It reads its own source code, forms a hypothesis for improvement (such as changing a learning rate or an architecture depth), modifies the code, runs the experiment, and evaluates the results. If the validation loss—measured in bits per byte (val_bpb)—improves, it keeps the change; if not, it reverts and tries again. In one overnight run, Karpathy’s agent completed 126 experiments, driving loss down from 0.9979 to 0.9697.Today, Karpathy reported that after leaving the agent to tune a “depth=12” model for two days, it successfully processed approximately 700 autonomous changes.The agent found roughly 20 additive improvements that transferred perfectly to larger models. Stacking these changes dropped the “Time to GPT-2” metric on the leaderboard from 2.02 hours to 1.80 hours—an 11% efficiency gain on a project Karpathy believed was already well-tuned. “Seeing the agent do this entire workflow end-to-end and all by itself… is wild,” Karpathy remarked, noting that the agent caught oversights in attention scaling and regularization that he had missed manually over two decades of work.This is more than just a productivity hack; it is a fundamental shift in how intelligence is refined. By automating the “scientific method” for code, Karpathy has turned machine learning into an evolutionary process that runs at the speed of silicon rather than the speed of human thought. And more than this, it showed the broader AI and machine learning community on X that this type of process could be applied far beyond computer science, to fields like marketing, health, and, well, basically anything that requires research.Autoresearch spreads far and wideThe reaction was swift and viral, with Karpathy’s post garnering more than 8.6 million views in the intervening two days as builders and researchers scrambled to scale the “Karpathy loop”.Varun Mathur, CEO of AI tool aggregator platform Hyperspace AI, took the single-agent loop and distributed it across a peer-to-peer network. Every node running the Hyperspace agent became an autonomous researcher.On the night of March 8–9, 35 autonomous agents on the Hyperspace network ran 333 experiments completely unsupervised. The results were a masterclass in emergent strategy:Hardware Diversity as a Feature: Mathur noted that while H100 GPUs used “brute force” to find aggressive learning rates, CPU-only agents on laptops were forced to be clever. These “underdog” agents focused on initialization strategies (like Kaiming and Xavier init) and normalization choices because they couldn’t rely on raw throughput.Gossip-Based Discovery: Using the GossipSub protocol, agents shared their wins in real-time. When one agent found that Kaiming initialization dropped loss by 21%, the idea spread through the network like a digital virus. Within hours, 23 other agents had incorporated the discovery into their own hypotheses.The Compression of History: In just 17 hours, these agents independently rediscovered ML milestones—such as RMSNorm and tied embeddings—that took human researchers at labs like Google Brain and OpenAI nearly eight years to formalize.Run 36,500 marketing experiments each year instead of 30While the ML purists focused on loss curves, the business world saw a different kind of revolution. Eric Siu, founder of ad agency Single Grain, applied autoresearch to the “Experiment Loop” of marketing.”Most marketing teams run ~30 experiments a year,” Siu wrote on X. “The next generation will run 36,500+. Easily.” He continued:”They’ll run experiments while they sleep.
Current marketing teams run 20-30 experiments a year. Maybe 52 if they’re ‘good’.
New landing page.
New ad creative.
Maybe a subject line test.
That’s considered “data-driven marketing.”
But the next generation of marketing systems will run 36,500+ experiments per year.”Siu’s framework replaces the training script with a marketing asset—a landing page, an ad creative, or a cold email. The agent modifies a variable (the subject line or the CTA), deploys it, measures the “positive reply rate,” and keeps or discards.Siu argues that this creates a “proprietary map” of what resonates with a specific audience—a moat built not of code, but of experiment history. “The companies that win won’t have better marketers,” he wrote, “they’ll have faster experiment loops”.Community discussion and ‘spoiling’ the validation setDespite the fervor, the GitHub Discussions revealed a community grappling with the implications of such rapid, automated progress.The Over-Optimization Trap: Researcher alexisthual raised a poignant concern: “Aren’t you concerned that launching that many experiments will eventually ‘spoil’ the validation set?”. The fear is that with enough agents, parameters will be optimized for the specific quirks of the test data rather than general intelligence.The Meaning of the Gains: User samionb questioned whether a drop from 0.9979 to 0.9697 was truly noticeable. Karpathy’s response was characteristically direct: “All we’re doing is optimizing performance per compute… these are real and substantial gains”The Human Element: On X, user witcheer, Head of Growth at crypto platform Yari Finance, documented their own overnight run on a Mac Mini M4, noting that while 26 of 35 experiments failed or crashed, the seven that succeeded revealed that “the model got better by getting simpler”. This insight—that less is often more—was reached without a single human intervention.The future: curiosity as the bottleneckThe release of autoresearch suggests a future of research across domains where, thanks to simple AI instruction mechanisms, the role of the human shifts from “experimenter” to “experimental designer.”As tools like DarkMatter, Optimization Arena, and NanoClaw emerge to support this swarm, the bottleneck of AI progress is no longer the “meat computer’s” (Karpathy’s description of the human brain’s) ability to code—it is our ability to define the constraints of the search.Andrej Karpathy has once again shifted the vibe. We are no longer just coding models; we are seeding ecosystems that learn while we sleep.

The company lifted its outlook for networking revenue and disclosed a big bump in orders for enterprise AI servers.

At a Republican event, the U.S. president delivered a speech that doubled down on recent comments he won’t sign anything else until he gets the voting bill.

Oil is causing all sorts of jitters. And the markets are responding in kind.Crude prices are surging like we have not seen since the 1970s. The kind of volatility is unseen and unheard of in recent times. The Iran war is now a direct threat to production and shipping.Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is at a virtual standstill. Brent crude briefly surged to nearly $119.50 a barrel before pulling back, while U.S. benchmark crude also rose. That goes to show how rapidly traders can add a “war premium” to energy prices when supply routes look vulnerable.There are no two ways about it; we are in the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s, at least in terms of price action.But a JPMorgan (JPM) view making the rounds is providing much-needed context and nuance to the situation. According to the astounding view, we are pricing the situation all wrong. Some may believe that the US attacking Iran means that perhaps the US is the most vulnerable in this fight. However, according to this analyst’s forecast, it is the opposite. Europe and Asia are the most in trouble.The reason is structural. America’s energy profile has changed dramatically over decades, and net petroleum imports are down dramatically since peaking in 2005, as domestic production and exports increased.The catch is that even if the macro damage is limited, gasoline prices can still become a political trigger. Whichever administration is in power will need to address the situation quickly, because politics can move markets.JPMorgan’s James Sullivan said the bank’s base case, even as oil prices swing, remains:

Oil’s war premium meets JPMorgan’s bombshell prediction.Photo by peshkov on Getty Images

JPMorgan says America is insulated, but Asia is notJPMorgan’s main point is that investors need to distinguish macroeconomic effects from market and political effects. Those two will rarely move in sync.The U.S. is far less vulnerable to an oil import shock as I write this. Think back to the panic of the Gulf War or the panic in the 1970s. You cannot compare this to any previous Middle East crises.Related: Oil shock sends blunt message on stock market inflation riskThe Energy Information Administration says U.S. net petroleum importspeaked in 2005 and have been going down ever since domestic production rose and exports increased. That means Americans will still feel higher prices at the pump, but the country is less exposed to imported barrels than it used to be.It’s a different math problem when we skip a few continents. The Iran conflict has disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a major chokepoint for global oil shipments. Reports describe ships getting backed up and Gulf producers cutting output because exports can’t move normally and storage is filling. If that persists, import-dependent economies may face tough choices. There is a narrow set of options: pay up, ration, or curb industrial activity.That’s why this episode can feel “1970s severe” in headlines. But the issue is more nuanced at the surface level. The U.S. may be less exposed economically, while parts of Asia could feel sharper pressure through higher fuel costs, supply-chain disruption, and growth concerns, which is why they are scrambling behind the scenes to broker a much-needed ceasefire between all parties involved.Oil’s next move may depend on politics, not supply mathMarkets don’t trade base cases; they trade probabilities. Hence, even if JPMorgan is right and the conflict remains “limited,” investors will keep coming back again and again to reprice the situation.More Oil and Gas:Energy giant sends blunt $20 billion message on dividend growth147-year-old oil giant just raised dividend 4% in 2026Top energy stocks to buy amid Venezuela chaosAt the moment, investors are primarily focusing on repricing time. What everyone is looking at is how long Hormuz remains locked up, and whether producers can keep exporting without running into physical bottlenecks. Related: Gas prices surge 9% to highest level in 11 monthsReuters reported Gulf producers are cutting output as blocked routes and storage constraints collide. At the same time, world governments are discussing potential emergency measures to stabilize the market, with China emerging as a key arbiter. AP News described a similar dynamic: rising concern that transport and production disruptions could persist long enough to push oil higher if conditions get worse from here.Domestic politics may matter as much as barrels in the US. If crude’s spike translates into higher gasoline and diesel prices, the pressure doesn’t stay on refiners and consumers. Instead, the battleground becomes Congress. And political pressure can create the quickest “offramp”: faster de-escalation efforts, corridor security, reserve releases, or some combination of those moves.Investors should look for two signals:Investors should seek confirmation that logistics are improving, such as the reopening of shipping lanes, the reduction in backed-up tankers, and a decrease in insurance costs.Concrete policy actions, such as coordinating emergency stock releases, announcing naval escorts, or verifying steps towards de-escalation.Crude can fall just as fast as it rose if those signals arrive quickly. If they don’t, the “1970s shock” narrative becomes more credible, suggesting that prolonged inaction could lead to significant economic disruptions similar to those experienced during that decade. That’s because uncertainty is what is being priced in, not just a scarce resource.Related: Oil spike sends powerful message for everyone

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.Why we love this dealWhile small apartments are the norm in ultra-crowded cities like New York and Tokyo, that doesn’t mean living in one is easy. You have to come up with unusual solutions that people living in larger spaces don’t have to think about. But once you do, you may be pleasantly surprised by how the right storage options can transform your space.One classic trick in small apartments is utilizing vertical space, and the Hzuaneri Bathroom Cabinet from Amazon can do just that. It’s not only compact enough to fit into many different spaces, but it’s also got an Art Deco-inspired look, thanks to arched cutouts on the doors and brushed gold hardware. Best of all, it’s just $50.Hzuaneri Bathroom Cabinet, $50 at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

This cabinet measures 32.7 inches high, 7.1 inches deep, and 14.6 inches wide, making it ideal for that tiny space between the toilet and the sink. It’s made of engineered wood and has one shelf inside, dividing the space into two 12.6-inch cubes. However, the shelf is adjustable, so if you need a space that can accommodate taller items, you can move it up higher. The unit has a small decorative shelf on top as well, which is perfect for a bouquet or other ornamental items.The details that make this cabinet shine start with the doors. Each features an Art Deco-inspired arched cutout, further enhanced by the gold handles and feet. It features adjustable knobs on the feet, so they can be customized in case your floor isn’t perfectly even. The unit comes with an anti-tipping device for extra security, too, so you won’t have to worry about it falling and hurting someone.While the cabinet does require assembly, the manufacturer advises that it should only take between 30 and 40 minutes. It comes flat-packed with easy-to-follow instructions as well. The $50 price is for the white version of this cabinet, but if you prefer black, that model is on sale for $52, so it won’t cost you much more. Related: Walmart’s dreamy cloud couch sectional is on sale for 41% off, and it comes in 8 colorsIt’s also worth noting that this cabinet is not limited to bathroom use. It would be perfect in a laundry room to hold supplies. And if you need more storage space, you can line up two side by side for just $100.Details to knowColors: Black and white.Material: Engineered wood.Measurements: The cabinet measures 32.7 inches high, 7.1 inches deep, and 14.6 inches wide.Why shoppers love itShoppers have good things to say about this cabinet, highlighting its appearance and value. “This is a mighty little cabinet,” one reviewer wrote. “Adorable and functional. We easily swapped the knobs to tie into the existing cabinets and painted the gold base before installation.” A second said, “For the price, this cabinet is a nice option. Especially if you live in a small space and need extra storage. I’m happy with it.”If you like this style but it’s still too large for your needs, you’ll be happy to learn that Hzuaneri has several similar-looking items on its Amazon storefront. It makes an even slimmer Bathroom Storage Cabinet that retails for only $37. Lastly, it has an ultra-tall version, the Slim Bathroom Cabinet, for $55, so if you’re looking to utilize your vertical space to the fullest, you should check it out.Shop more deals Vasagle Tall Storage Cabinet, $68 (was $76) at AmazonGrusign Bathroom Cabinet, $63 (was $70) at AmazonSuper Deal Wood Storage Cabinet, $99 (was $110) at AmazonThe Hzuaneri Bathroom Cabinet is attractive and functional, and at just $50 at Amazon, it’s an affordable way to add more storage space anywhere you need it.