Morning traders, Happy Friday, where blue screens are freezing industries like airlines and banking worldwide.
$CrowdStrike (CRWD.US)$, a cyber security firm took most of the blame, falling more than 9% after the firm told NBC a faulty update to its "Falcon Scanner" caused at least some of the issues that began Friday at 5:30 am. Most of the problems appear to have caused Microsoft 365 and Azure software and...

Big money is jumping into $CrowdStrike (CRWD.US)$ put options amid increasing demand for protection against deepening losses as the stock slumps more than 8%.
CrowdStrike's stock fell to $314.56 Friday morning after CEO George Kutz posted on LinkedIn that the company's customers were impacted by a defect found in a content update for Microsoft Windows hosts. The event caused a global outage, forcing airli...

$SVB Financial (SIVB.US)$ good ol fashioned bank run. thanks Peter thiel!

$GameStop (GME.US)$ The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched an expansive criminal investigation into short selling by hedge funds and research firms, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The investigation, run by the DoJ's fraud section with federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, is probing how hedge funds tap into research and set up their bets, looking for signs that they improperly coordinated trades or broke other laws to profit, the report said. Authorities are scrutinizing the financial relationships between hedge funds and researchers, the report added, and examining if those funds engaged in insider trading or other abuses.
Anson Funds and Marcus Aurelius Value are among the more than a dozen firms under the scanner of the investigators, according to the report. The department is also examining trading in dozens of stocks like Luckin Coffee Inc and GSX Techedu Inc, on which Carson Block's Muddy Waters Capital and Andrew Left's Citron Research also circulated research, the report said. Trading in short targets such as Santa Ana, California-based Banc of California Inc and Mallinckrodt Plc is also being examined, according to the report.
The move by the DoJ comes after the U.S. securities regulator earlier this year said it is considering measures to require big investors to disclose more about short positions, or bets that stocks will fall and the use of derivatives to bet on other stock moves. The regulator also moved to protect small investors from trading apps that use features common to video games in order to boost risky trading activity.
The review of rules by the Securities and Exchange Commission was prompted by January's GameStop saga and the meltdown of Archegos Capital Citron, one of the world's best known short-sellers, in January said it would publicly stop detailing companies' shortcomings following backlash against it and others who said video retailer GameStop's stock is not worth its price.

MACRO
• Asia Stocks Set for Cautious Open as Oil Tops $100
Stocks in Asia look set for a cautious open Wednesday after oil jumped back above $100 a barrel.
Equity futures signaled muted starts for Japan, Australia and Hong Kong. Contracts on the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ and $NASDAQ 100 Index (.NDX.US)$ made modest gains after U.S. shares erased an advance to close lower.
• U.S. Inflation Accelerated to 8.5% in March, Hitting F...