Here are five things you need to know this morning:

Oil price tops US$85: The price of the North American oil benchmark has topped US$85 a barrel for the first time since October as OPEC production cuts couple with an uptick in demand. The most heavily traded West Texas Intermediate contract gained more than one per cent in premarket trading on Tuesday morning, the third session in a row in positive territory. Against that backdrop of high prices, Canadian oil producers are pumping out so much volume that it’s actually starting to build up, Bloomberg reports. Stockpiles in Alberta are increasing mostly in anticipation of the official opening next month of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, a development that will make a lot more Canadian heavy crude available for international refiners to buy.  

Bitcoin drops five per cent: The supply and demand picture might be looking rosy, but the same can’t be said of the market for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, as the price of bitcoin is off by more than five per cent on Tuesday morning. It’s important to remember that sell-off comes on the heels of a significant rally of about 90 per cent between late January and early March, but it’s a good reminder of just how volatile the crypto market can be. The catalyst for the sell-off appears to be a reduction in demand from ETFs, which saw money pour into them at a feverish pace earlier this year. The 10 bitcoin-holding ETFs that went public in New York in January have seen US$12 billion worth of money pour into them since launch, but they collectively saw US$86 million worth of withdrawals on Monday, according to Bloomberg. The next major event on the crypto calendar is the so-called halving expected later this month, a development that will raise the bar to mine for new bitcoins even higher, and theoretically drive up the price of the existing pool of tokens.  

Tesla sales plunge: Shares in electric carmaker Tesla could be volatile on Tuesday as the company revealed a sharp drop in the number of vehicles it sold in the first quarter. The EV company says it shipped just over 386,000 vehicles in the first quarter, far less than it did at the end of 2023 and far less than analysts were expecting. The shares fell by more than seven per cent in the moments after the numbers came out. Analysts were expecting the number to decline, but not by as much as it did. For context, the sales figures are far less than first-quarter forecasts for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler-owner Stellantis. (Not that any of that would be evident from the various companies’ stock prices, where market darling Tesla is worth more than twice what the latter three are worth put together.)

Nuvei going private: Celebrities: They’re just like us! Because sometimes even they can lose money on an investment. In the case of Ryan Reynolds, it certainly seems as though that’s what’s happened with his stake in Montreal-based payment firm Nuvei. The company announced late Monday that it has agreed to go private in an all-cash deal with U.S. buyout firm Advent. In April 2023, the company announced that Reynolds had bought a stake in the company, at a time when the public shares were trading hands on the TSX for about $56 apiece. That compares with today, where the shares are poised to open at just over $44 after the deal was announced. We don’t know exactly how much of a stake Reynolds bought in the first place — much less what he paid, or whether he’s keeping his slice after the deal goes through — but if it is the paper loss it looks like, it’s an interesting development for a famous Canadian whose investments have made as many headlines as his blockbuster movies. It just goes to show that whether it's running a Welsh football club or an investment portfolio, you can’t win them all.

Trump Media shares fizzle out: Speaking of losing money, after an explosive debut on the Nasdaq last month, shares in Trump Media and Technology Group have wiped out all of their gains since going public after the company revealed it continues to lose money and will struggle to meet its liabilities moving forward. Shares in the company lost 21 per cent of their value on Monday, bringing the market capitalization to just over US$6 billion. That’s less than they were worth before going public and about half the peak they hit on March 26. The company said in a regulatory filing that it lost more than $50 million last year, against just over $4 million in revenue. Trump owns about half the company, according to filings, which means his stake is valued at just over $3 billion.