PGRA

Meta is laying off 8,000 employees, 10% of its entire global workforce starting May 20, with a second, larger wave planned for the second half of the year. And this morning, Microsoft made a move that is in some ways even more significant. For the first time in its 51-year history, Microsoft is offering voluntary retirement buyouts to roughly 7% of its U.S. workforce, approximately 8,750 employees whose combined age and years of service total at least 70. The offer was announced via an internal memo from Chief People Officer Amy Coleman this morning, is open to employees at the senior director level and below, and gives eligible workers a 30-day window to decide after May 7. Microsoft has never done this before. The company has historically preferred forced layoffs over offering long-tenured employees a graceful exit on their own terms but after cutting more than 15,000 people in 2025, including 9,000 in a single round last July, the optics of another brutal round clearly warranted a different approach. The timing also matters. Microsoft reports earnings next week, and CFO Amy Hood will almost certainly face direct questions about it. The stated reason across both companies is efficiency. But look at what's underneath it. Meta just posted $60 billion in profit on $200 billion in revenue and committed $135 billion in capital spending for 2026 almost entirely on AI infrastructure. Microsoft spent over $80 billion on data centers and AI tools last fiscal year and has frozen hiring across its cloud and North American sales divisions to protect margins while the AI buildout continues. These are not companies cutting because they're struggling. They are companies swapping human labor for AI capacity while they are winning and doing it with enough scale and speed that CFOs now project AI will eliminate 502,000 U.S. jobs this year alone, nine times the number from last year. The word efficiency is doing a lot of work right now.

Big move pending in OIL.🛢️ Binary play, even though the falling wedge on the hourly is inherently bullish. Descending volume, and now price has arrived at the 3/4 level. We await.

Two days ago.