Ships are still stuck in Hormuz, but that hasn’t stopped the Wall Street bull.

While the S&P 500 ticked down 0.24% on Monday as Iran War peace talks appeared to stall, that snapped a 14-day winning streak that pushed the market to three consecutive closing records through Friday. And recent data from FactSet shows a rip-roaring start to earnings season is giving Wall Street plenty of evidence to keep believing in its bull case.

Politics, Schmolitics

So why did Wall Street shrug off a war that had the world in panic mode just a month ago? As veteran market researcher Ed Yardeni told Bloomberg last week: “History shows that geopolitical crises turn out to be great buying opportunities … investors are looking past the war.” And after looking past the war, investors found plenty of upside. Friday’s record close capped off the longest winning streak since 1971, driving the index up more than 12%.

The rally was fueled in part by Big Tech, which has returned to Wall Street’s good graces after a big-time valuation reset. The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF is up 18% from a March 30 low, outpacing the broader market; according to Bloomberg data analysis, more than half of the recent gains in the broader index were driven by a new Mag 7 that swaps Tesla for Broadcom. Bloomberg Intelligence data projects the standard Mag 7 cohort will deliver profit growth of 19% this year, compared with just 17% for the rest of the index. “Anytime geopolitics takes front and center, it usually means focus on fundamentals and you can make a lot of money,” Morgan Stanley senior portfolio manager Andrew Slimmon told MarketWatch.

None of the cohort has reported its latest quarterly results yet (Tesla kicks things off on Wednesday), though the FactSet report shows that the Other 493 are riding the rising tide:

• Of the 10% of S&P 500 companies that reported through Friday, FactSet found that 88% reported actual earnings per share above estimates. That beats both a five-year average of 78% and a 10-year average of 76%.
• Meanwhile, all 11 sectors had reported year-over-year revenue growth, with strong revenue figures in the financial sector pushing the overall growth rate to 9.9%. If that holds through the rest of the earnings season, it would mark the highest figure since the third quarter of 2022.

Bear With Me: Not everyone’s buying the bull case. Matt Gertken, chief geopolitical strategist at BCA Research, said on CNBC’s Squawk Box Monday that investors risk growing “complacent” with assumptions of imminent peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank’s macro research head flagged in a note to clients on Monday that optimism over peace talks similarly sparked a market rally in the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which was followed by the worst selloff since 2008.

Eli Lilly is stocking its medicine cabinet with treatments that go beyond blockbuster GLP-1 drugs. On Monday, the pharma giant announced it’ll buy blood cancer treatment-maker Kelonia Therapeutics in a deal worth as much as $7 billion.

Lilly will pay about $3.3 billion up front under the terms of the agreement, expected to close in the back half of the year, and the rest if Kelonia hits specified regulatory and commercial milestones. Kelonia is developing a next-gen blood cancer treatment that reprograms T cells to help patients’ immune systems fight cancer.

The revolutionary aspect of Kelonia’s treatment is that it’ll reprogram its cells within the body. Current treatments extract cells, modify them outside the body, and then reintroduce them. Unlike current treatments, Kelonia’s therapy won’t require patients to undergo chemotherapy preemptively.

More than Mounjaro’s Maker

Cancer drugs made up more than $9 billion worth of Lilly’s $65 billion in revenue last year, and buying Kelonia would further boost Lilly’s position in the $240 billion cancer drug market. Johnson & Johnson’s blood cancer treatment, Carvykti, generated nearly $2 billion in sales last year. But Lilly has been on a buying spree that goes beyond cancer:

• Lilly said in late March it had agreed to buy sleep disorder drug-maker Centessa Pharmaceuticals for as much as $7.8 billion and announced in February a $2.4 billion deal for the genetic biotech company Orna Therapeutics. Lilly kicked off the year by announcing the purchase of Ventyx Biosciences, which is developing drugs to treat inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s, for more than $1 billion.
• The acquisitions are part of a wider plan for Lilly, which has been a leader in weight-loss drugs. Of the $19 billion Lilly notched in fourth-quarter revenue, more than $7 billion came from Mounjaro and $4 billion from Zepbound, both GLP-1 drugs.

Strategic Shuffle: While it feels like GLP-1 drugs and their ads are already everywhere, JPMorgan analysts predict the market still has plenty of room to run. The researchers expect about 25 million Americans to take GLP-1s by 2030, up from 10 million this year and 6 million last year. The global market could grow to $200 billion in turn. Lilly’s not giving up its leading spot in the race to supply those scripts and debuted an obesity pill, Foundayo, this month. But as the market becomes more crowded, Lilly’s investing part of its GLP-1 windfall in shoring up the rest of its portfolio.

Like Y2K fashion, matcha and Jacob Elordi, bank charters are suddenly in vogue.

The latest fintech to apply for one is Mission Lane, a credit card startup founded in 2018.

The company isn’t venturing into deposit accounts but will offer a credit-protection product along with cards for an estimated 70 million Americans who are “systematically underserved by traditional financial institutions and have a demonstrated need for affordable access to credit,” per Bloomberg.

Regulatory Appeal

Mission Lane is following the path of several other fintechs looking to obtain a more traditional spot in the industry. Last month, AI lending marketplace Upstart and British digital bank Revolut jumped on the bank charter bandwagon, and neobank Mercury Technologies sought approval at the end of last year. In December, the OCC announced a conditional greenlight for several crypto firms, including Ripple and BitGo. In 2025, the number of bank charter applications exceeded those of any other year over the past decade, according to a report by Klaros Group, which expects another record in 2026.

Businesses seem to be taking advantage of a friendlier regulatory landscape under the Trump administration. (Klaros found that the time required for approvals has plummeted from a median high of 321 days in 2024 to a median of 166 days so far this year). Fintechs are trading the flexibility that comes with being an agile startup for other advantages:

• “Leading fintechs are reaching new levels of scale and maturity, allowing them to reap greater strategic and financial benefits from a charter to offset the accompanying investments,” experts at consulting firm Oliver Wyman wrote in a report last year.
• The transition also alleviates concerns over the long-term risks of relying on a sponsor bank, they added.

No More Newbs: Gone are the days when the typical applications were from experienced bank management teams looking to launch a new bank. According to Klaros’ report, all 12 bank charter applications were from established businesses seeking approval to add a bank to an existing structure.