Morning Forecast: Wednesday 29th April
The most consequential 30 hours of 2026 starts now.
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).
👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance
🏛️ Powell Exits, Mag 7 Reports: Federal Reserve announcement collides with hyperscaler capex guides that could break the artificial intelligence thesis.
🤝 Microsoft Tears Up OpenAI Pact: Redmond loses model exclusivity but kills the artificial general intelligence clause and concentration risk.
📉 Hyperscaler Capex Becomes Binary Tonight: Oracle’s slide reprices the assumption that OpenAI revenue can fund $600 billion in compute.
⛽ Gas Hits Four-Year High: National average reaches $4.176 a gallon, narrowing the Fed’s energy-disinflation path to rate cuts.
📊 Defensives Absorb the AI Selloff: Coca-Cola, General Motors, and energy held the tape as semiconductors cracked, signaling rotation not exit.
💸 Musk’s $114B Payday Filed: Tesla registers 304 million shares covering the reinstated 2018 award after seven-year court battle.
📺 FCC Targets Disney TV Licenses: Early renewal review on ABC-owned stations sets precedent for Comcast and Paramount probes.
🛢️ BP Earnings Confirm Refiner Boom: Beat reinforces that integrated oil is enjoying its best earnings cycle since 2022.
🧠 One Big Thing
Today stacks three events that reset positioning across rates and the artificial intelligence trade. The Senate Banking Committee votes on Kevin Warsh's nomination at 10 AM Eastern, lining up Powell's successor. The Federal Reserve decides rates at 2 PM Eastern, with Chair Jerome Powell holding what is widely expected to be his final press conference. Hours later, four of the largest names in the index report earnings and deliver capital expenditure guides that markets will read as the health check on artificial intelligence spending. Powell sets the cost of money, Warsh signals the next chapter, the hyperscalers set whether the trade still funds itself. A soft capex guide from even one name could turn yesterday's chip selloff into a broader rotation.
⚖️ Fear & Greed
📉 The Number That Matters
$600 BILLION
OpenAI's compute bill runs to roughly $600 billion, and reporting that Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar privately questioned how to fund $600 billion in commitments triggered yesterday's selloff in semiconductors, neoclouds, and Oracle.
⚔️ Winners vs Losers
WALD 0.00%↑: Waldencast plc soared after announcing the SEC concluded its investigation into the company’s prior financial restatement and Obagi Cosmeceuticals accounting practices without recommending any enforcement action.
STX 0.00%↑: Seagate Technology Holdings jumped after reporting fiscal Q3 revenue of $3.11 billion and adjusted EPS of $4.10, both exceeding the high end of guidance, and issuing Q4 revenue guidance of $3.45 billion and EPS of $5.00 well above consensus.
NXPI 0.00%↑: NXP Semiconductors rallied after Q1 revenue of $3.18 billion (up 12% YoY) and non-GAAP EPS of $3.05 topped estimates, with Q2 revenue guidance of $3.35 to $3.55 billion implying 18% growth driven by automotive and industrial demand.
BE 0.00%↑: Bloom Energy surged after Q1 revenue jumped 130% to $751 million and EPS of $0.44 trounced the $0.09 consensus, with management raising 2026 revenue guidance to $3.4 to $3.8 billion on the back of Oracle’s selection of Bloom as sole power provider for its 2.45 GW Project Jupiter AI campus.
WDC 0.00%↑: Western Digital Corporation rose in sympathy with Seagate’s blowout earnings ahead of its own Q3 fiscal 2026 report due Thursday, with investors extrapolating the read-through on tight HDD supply and AI-driven storage demand.
SBUX 0.00%↑: Starbucks Corporation gained after Q2 comparable sales grew 6.2% (versus 4% expected), revenue rose 9% to $9.5 billion, and the company raised its fiscal 2026 EPS guidance to $2.25 to $2.45, marking the first top and bottom line growth in over two years under CEO Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan.
V 0.00%↑: Visa Inc. climbed after Q2 net revenue grew 17% to $11.2 billion (the fastest pace since 2013) and adjusted EPS of $3.31 beat estimates, while the board authorized a new $20 billion multi-year share repurchase program.
Losers
OI 0.00%↑: O-I Glass tumbled after Q1 adjusted EPS of $0.05 missed the $0.19 consensus and the company cut full-year 2026 guidance, citing a sharp step-up in European energy costs following expiration of favorable contracts and elevated price competition in Southern European wine markets.
RCKY 0.00%↑: Rocky Brands sank after Q1 gross margin compressed 470 basis points to 36.5% on more than $7 million of incremental tariff costs, and management warned Q2 EPS would fall by roughly $0.20 versus prior year on additional tariff timing.
ENPH 0.00%↑: Enphase Energy slid after issuing soft Q2 revenue guidance of $280 to $310 million that includes a roughly 3 percentage point hit to gross margin from reciprocal tariffs, signaling continued pressure despite a slight Q1 beat.
HOOD 0.00%↑: Robinhood Markets fell after Q1 revenue of $1.07 billion and EPS of $0.38 missed consensus, with crypto trading revenue collapsing 47% to $134 million and management raising full-year expenses by $100 million to support its Trump Accounts program rollout.
BKNG 0.00%↑: Booking Holdings dropped after issuing soft Q2 guidance calling for room night growth of just 2% to 4% and gross bookings, revenue, and adjusted EBITDA each rising only 4% to 6%, a sharp deceleration from Q1’s 16% revenue growth as Middle East conflict headwinds weigh on travel demand.
📊 Market Snapshot
Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $77036 (▲ 0.92%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2324 (▲ 1.54%)
XRP: $1.39 (▲ 0.78%)
Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: $7141 (▲ 0.01%)
NASDAQ 100: $27229 (▲ 0.22%)
FTSE 100: £10273 (▼ 0.33%)
Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.36% (▲ 0.28%)
Oil (WTI): $104 (▲ 3.97%)
Gold: $4574 (▼ 0.46%)
Silver: $72.84 (▼ 0.27%)
Data as of: UK (BST) 09:53 / US (EDT): 04:53 / Asia (Tokyo): 17:53
✅ 5 Things to Know
🏛️ Powell’s Last Stand Meets the Mag 7 Reckoning
The most consequential 30 hours of 2026 starts now. The Federal Reserve announces at 2:00 PM ET, with Chair Jerome Powell holding what is widely expected to be his final press conference at 2:30. Markets price a 100% probability of a hold at 3.50% to 3.75%. The Senate Banking Committee votes on Kevin Warsh’s nomination at 10:00 AM, lining him up to take over when Powell’s term ends May 15. Q1 GDP advance estimates land before the bell, with consensus at 1.8% growth against the Atlanta Fed’s 1.2% tracker. (CBS News)
After the close, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon all report. These four alone account for roughly 38% of the S&P 500’s market cap, and their combined 2026 capital expenditure runs between $470 billion and $660 billion depending on the broker. After Tuesday’s report that OpenAI missed internal revenue and user targets, every line of capex commentary will be parsed for signs of softening commitment. Goldman expects the Fed to reiterate wait-and-see; Moody’s Mark Zandi puts it more bluntly, calling the central bank “stuck in place.” (CNBC)
Sensei’s Insight: Powell will leave the door cracked for cuts later this year, but the real signal sits in tonight’s capex guides. If even one hyperscaler trims AI spend, Tuesday’s selloff stops being a wobble and becomes a thesis break. VIX at 19 says options markets already give that meaningful odds.
🤝 Microsoft and OpenAI Rewrote the Whole Deal
Microsoft and OpenAI tore up their original partnership and rewrote it Monday, hours before Microsoft’s biggest earnings print of the year. Microsoft’s exclusive license to OpenAI’s models is gone, and so is the Artificial General Intelligence clause that would have severed access if OpenAI’s board declared the technology had crossed that threshold. Microsoft will no longer pay OpenAI a share of Azure revenue, while OpenAI continues to send 20% of its sales back to Redmond through 2030, now subject to a total cap. Microsoft retains its intellectual property license through 2032 and its roughly 27% equity stake worth about $135 billion. (CNBC)
The trade lifts three overhangs at once: single-customer concentration in Microsoft’s $625 billion cloud backlog, the Artificial General Intelligence kill-switch, and ambiguity around the $50 billion AWS deal Microsoft was reportedly weighing legal action over. The cost is real. AWS Bedrock and Google Cloud now have direct access to OpenAI’s flagship models, eroding Azure’s distribution moat just as the OpenAI revenue story has come into question. Wedbush’s Dan Ives called it a net positive that ends “previous uncertainty,” while BMO and Oppenheimer trimmed price targets but kept buy ratings. (Bloomberg)
Sensei’s Insight: Microsoft removed its biggest binary risk and gave up its biggest competitive moat in the same breath. Tonight’s call needs to show in-house Phi models and Maya silicon are filling the gap. If they are not, losing OpenAI exclusivity quietly downgrades Azure’s AI story right when it can least afford it.
📉 Oracle’s Crater Is Tonight’s Test for Every Hyperscaler
Tuesday’s chip slide was not really about chips. It was the market’s first concrete repricing of the assumption underwriting nearly every AI infrastructure bet placed since January 2025: that OpenAI’s revenue can support its compute bills. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting that Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar privately questioned whether OpenAI can fund roughly $600 billion in compute commitments put Oracle’s $300 billion Stargate contract under a different light. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index snapped an 18-session winning streak, with Arm down 8%, AMD off 5%, Broadcom and Nvidia each between 2% and 3% lower, and SoftBank down 10% in Tokyo. (CNBC)
The deeper question is whether the next leg lower has been opened or this was a healthy reset. Anthropic reportedly hit $30 billion in annualized revenue in April, edging past OpenAI’s roughly $25 billion run rate, while Gemini’s share of generative AI web traffic has nearly quadrupled to 21.5% even as ChatGPT’s slipped from 86.7% to 64.5% in twelve months. Hyperscaler bookings are contractual through 2027, but the demand thesis assumes one anchor tenant that may be growing slower than the spending it underwrites. Oracle alone needs roughly $100 billion in incremental borrowing through 2028 to deliver. (Yahoo Finance)
Sensei’s Insight: Tonight’s capex guides are now binary events for the AI complex. Hold the line and chips bounce. Trim by 5% and the trade that drove fifteen months of gains breaks open, and Oracle’s funding math gets a lot harder to defend tomorrow morning.
⛽ Pump Prices at a Four-Year High Reset the Inflation Math
The national average for a gallon of regular gas hit $4.176 yesterday, the highest reading since August 2022 and the fifth straight day of increases. Year-on-year, gasoline is up roughly 30%, and since the Iran war began February 28, pump prices have climbed about 40%. March’s CPI showed gasoline up 21.2% month-on-month, the largest single-month gasoline jump since the index started in 1967. The Energy Information Administration now expects 2026 gasoline to average $3.70, with peaks above $4.30 in coming weeks; Patrick De Haan at GasBuddy warned West Coast prices could reach $8 a gallon if disruption runs through summer. (CNBC)
The market read is split. Refiners are the cleanest winners, with Marathon Petroleum up roughly 96% and Valero up 128% over twelve months as crack spreads exploded. The 3-2-1 crack spread, the rough margin a refiner earns turning crude into gasoline and diesel, sits near $41 after spiking above $52 at the height of the conflict. The losers are airlines (Delta absorbed roughly $400 million in additional Q1 fuel costs even with its Trainer refinery hedge), trucking, and consumer-discretionary names that depend on disposable income. JPMorgan estimates every 10-cent rise in pump prices removes roughly $12 billion a year in US consumer spending power. (Yahoo Finance)
Sensei’s Insight: Energy disinflation was the central case for Fed cuts later this year. With pump prices at four-year highs and refiners booking war-margin earnings, that path narrows. Watch how Powell handles the question this afternoon. He will not commit, but the framing tells you which side of the dual mandate is winning.
📊 The Real Economy Held While AI Cracked
The Nasdaq fell almost 1% Tuesday and made the headlines, but the more useful read on the day sat below the surface. The Dow finished essentially flat as Coca-Cola jumped 6% on a strong earnings beat, General Motors raised full-year guidance to $13.5 billion to $15.5 billion in adjusted operating profit after a 41% earnings beat, and energy heavyweights ExxonMobil and Chevron both closed in the green. Even consumer confidence, often the first thing to break in a stagflation scare, hit its highest level of 2026: the Conference Board’s index climbed to 92.8 on improving job-market and pay expectations. (Yahoo Finance)
The split shows where money is rotating, not whether it is leaving. Defensives and quality cyclicals absorbed flows from the AI complex while the Russell 2000 fell 1.2% on profit-taking after a more than 10% April rally. The retail-investor takeaway: Tuesday’s selling was sharp but surgical, hitting Oracle, semiconductors, neoclouds, and OpenAI-adjacent names. Consumer staples, autos, and energy were not part of it. With Q1 GDP and core PCE landing tomorrow alongside Apple’s earnings, the question is whether tonight’s hyperscaler capex commentary triggers more rotation into defensives or pulls money back into AI on a strong showing. (CNBC)
Sensei’s Insight: When defensives rally with energy in a tech selloff, the market is voting that earnings risk is concentrated, not systemic. That changes which sectors get a Fed-day bid this afternoon. It also says the rate-cut bull case lives on consumer resilience, not on AI multiples.
Stories You Might Have Missed
💸 Tesla Files to Deliver Musk’s $114B Payday
Tesla filed an S-8 with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday to register roughly 304 million shares tied to Chief Executive Elon Musk’s reinstated 2018 pay package, ending a seven-year legal battle. Musk must exercise the full award between May 21 and August 15 at a strike price of $23.34, costing him roughly $7.1 billion in cash or shares; the underlying stock is worth about $114 billion at current prices. The interim 96 million share package granted in August 2025 was canceled. Barclays projects Musk’s voting stake will rise from roughly 11% to about 16.8% post-exercise, an overhang the bank expects investors to absorb cleanly. (Yahoo Finance)
📺 FCC Pulls Disney Stations in for Early Review
The Federal Communications Commission ordered Disney to file early license renewals for all eight ABC-owned television stations Tuesday afternoon, tied to a longstanding diversity, equity, and inclusion probe and to political pressure following an on-air joke about First Lady Melania Trump. The licenses were not due until 2028 to 2031; Disney now has until May 28 to comply. It is the first network-owned-station early review in decades and triggers a multi-year administrative process that legal analysts say is almost impossible for the FCC to win. Disney shares fell roughly 1%; near-term operational and advertising impact should be minimal, but it sets a precedent for Comcast and Paramount, both already under FCC investigation. (CNBC)
🛢️ BP Earnings Show the Other Side of the Oil Trade
BP shares climbed Tuesday after the energy major beat Q1 expectations, with Chief Executive Meg O’Neill telling investors the business “continues to run well” and that BP made “further progress” toward its 2027 targets. The beat reinforces what Marathon and Valero already showed: integrated oil and refining is enjoying the best earnings cycle since 2022, with crack spreads still wide and crude differentials favorable to producers operating outside the disruption zone. ExxonMobil reports Friday and Chevron next week, both with $20 billion-plus 2026 buyback authorizations supporting the names. The energy sector is now the cleanest hedge most retail portfolios still have against a longer Iran war. (TheStreet)
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There will be a cheat sheet coming out later today for the FOMC event. Make sure you keep an eye out for it.
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).