Goldman Sachs Made Billions Trading Iran’s Volatility; SanDisk Up 300% This Year Alone; Evergrande CEO Pleads Guilty and OpenAI Did A Thing
- Dipo Owolabi
- Apr 14
- 5 min read
Today’s headlines show how quickly markets can swing when geopolitics, index flows, corporate collapse, and AI valuations collide. Goldman Sachs turned Middle East volatility into a record trading quarter, Sandisk got another lift from analyst support and a Nasdaq-100 boost, China Evergrande’s founder is now pleading guilty in Shenzhen, and OpenAI is facing fresh questions over whether its $852 billion valuation still matches the company’s changing strategy. From Wall Street to Shenzhen, all this and more in today’s Read It And Eat! |
Markets Around The World
Markets as of 13th April 2026.. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Goldman Sachs Makes Billions Trading Iran-Triggered Volatility
Goldman Sachs just posted a record-breaking quarter in equities trading, with its stock division bringing in $5.3 billion in revenue for the first quarter, beating the bank’s previous quarterly high of $4.3 billion set in late 2025. City AM says the surge came as Middle East volatility rattled markets, with investors rushing to adjust equity exposure amid rising geopolitical and inflation fears. Goldman’s overall pre-tax profit also rose to $5.6 billion, up 19%, while investment banking revenue climbed nearly a fifth to $12.7 billion.
The bigger story is that Goldman did not simply benefit from a busy market; it profited from one of the most fear-driven trading environments in recent memory. The article says the firm’s wealth management revenue also rose 10% to $4 billion, but fixed-income, currency and commodities trading came in softer than expected, suggesting the gains were not evenly spread across the bank. Even so, the equities desk did enough to set a new all-time high and remind investors why trading-heavy banks often thrive when uncertainty spikes.
Still, the market reaction was not uniformly celebratory, with Goldman’s shares slipping in pre-market trade as investors wondered whether this was a peak-earnings moment rather than the start of a longer run. That tension is the heart of the story: geopolitical shocks can produce huge short-term profits for Wall Street, but they also raise the question of how repeatable those gains really are. Goldman’s results show that in volatile periods, the bank is still one of the clearest ways to monetize chaos. City AM
SanDisk Up 300% This Year Alone; To Be Added To The NASDAQ
Sandisk’s stock popped again because two bullish forces hit at once: a fresh price-target hike from Citi and confirmation that the company will join the Nasdaq-100. Motley Fool reports that Citi analyst Asiya Merchant raised her target on Sandisk to $980, while Nasdaq is removing Atlassian and replacing it with Sandisk, forcing index funds to buy the stock. That combination helped push Sandisk up 11.83% on the day, with the shares trading around $952.50.
The move also reflects how strong Sandisk’s momentum has become in 2026. The Motley Fool notes that the stock was the best-performing S&P 500 stock of 2025 and is already up 275% in 2026, while analysts continue to point to strong demand for memory chips and AI-related storage needs. In short, Wall Street is not just rewarding Sandisk for past performance; it is betting that AI infrastructure will keep driving memory demand higher.
The Nasdaq-100 inclusion matters because it creates automatic buying pressure from funds that track the index, which can reinforce an already powerful rally. That does not guarantee the stock keeps climbing forever, but it does explain why Sandisk can move so sharply on what looks like a simple index change. The stock has become a market story about momentum, AI demand, and how index inclusion can amplify already strong investor sentiment. Motley Fool
China Evergrande’s founder, Hui Ka Yan, has pleaded guilty to eight charges in Shenzhen, including misuse of funds, fundraising fraud, and illegally taking public deposits, according to Reuters. The court said Hui “expressed remorse,” and the case now marks one of the most dramatic legal chapters in the collapse of China’s most indebted property developer. Evergrande has already defaulted on most of its roughly $300 billion in liabilities, making this plea part of a much larger bankruptcy and fallout story.
The significance goes beyond one man’s legal trouble. Evergrande’s failure became a symbol of China’s property-sector crisis, with ripple effects that hurt investors, slowed confidence, and added pressure to the broader economy. Reuters reports that Hui has not been seen publicly since he was detained in 2023, and that the company also faced additional charges including illegal lending, fraudulent securities issuance, and bribery. The case underscores how deeply the collapse of a once-dominant developer has shaken China’s financial system.
What makes the story especially important is that the consequences are still not over. Reuters says verdicts will be handed down later, and legal experts quoted in the piece expect severe penalties because of the scale of the losses and the social anger surrounding the case. Even if the court case closes one chapter, the liquidation, creditor recoveries, and broader property-sector damage are still unfolding in slow motion. Reuters |
OpenAI Investors Question $850Bn Valuation As Strategy Shifts; From Mass Market To Enterprise
OpenAI is facing fresh scrutiny from some of its own backers as its $852 billion valuation comes under pressure. Reuters reports that investors are questioning whether the number still makes sense as the company shifts more aggressively toward the enterprise market to fend off competition from Anthropic and a resurgent Google. The concern is not just about valuation, but about whether the company is changing direction too often while trying to stay ahead in the AI race.
That skepticism is sharpened by how much OpenAI has already raised and how quickly its roadmap has changed. Reuters says the company completed a $122 billion fundraising round last month and has redrawn its product roadmap twice in the past six months because of competitive threats. Some investors worry that a pivot toward enterprise and code could dilute the consumer momentum that made ChatGPT such a breakout success in the first place.
At the same time, OpenAI leadership is pushing back hard on the idea that its investors are losing faith. Reuters reports that CFO Sarah Friar said the claim does not reflect the facts, while the company described the fundraise as oversubscribed, completed in record time, and backed by major global investors. The real tension here is that OpenAI is now being judged like a late-stage giant, not a scrappy startup, which means every strategic shift gets measured against an enormous valuation and even larger expectations. Yahoo Finance
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