Thursday, April 30th, 2026
This has been about the most newsworthy past couple of days for the stock market in recent memory. The Federal Reserve sees a changing of the guard after eight years of Jerome Powell at the helm, AI capex is both propelling growth for Big Tech “hyperscalers” and raising caution flags, and another morning of Q1 earnings and economic data is informing market growth. It’s nice not to have to lead off this column with the Strait of Hormuz (for once).
The Dow is surging ahead +340 points at this hour, on an +8% surge in Visa V shares as it joins payment initiatives utilizing the AI universe. The S&P 500 is +34 points at this hour and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is +174 points currently. The small-cap Russell 2000 is hanging onto positive territory right now, +0.40%. A huge afternoon Wednesday for the biggest of tech investors paves the way forward for the next step in the AI revolution.
Jobless Claims Sink to Historic Lows: +189K
Initial Jobless Claims had been on a slow trajectory lower over the past year, indicative of a robust labor market. This morning, +189K takes another big step lower — lower, even than the pre-Covid levels that compared to jobless claims last seen in the 1960s, 60 years ago! Expectations had been for a still-favorable +212K expected, and more than -70K fewer one-week claims than its one-year high of +259K over Labor Day 2025.
Continuing Jobless Claims plummeted to 1.785 million the week before last, the lowest since April of 2024, which was peak “Great Reopening” following the Covid pandemic. This is lower than the downwardly revised 1.808 million the prior week, and again suggests we have the strongest labor market in more than a half-century. We don’t know where all the thousands of newly laid-off employees are getting their income from; perhaps half of them all found new jobs right away and the other half took early retirement. Perhaps.
First Print on Q1 GDP Bounces Back to +2.0%
Following a lower-growth Q4 2025, which saw +0.5% growth overall — the weakest since Q1 of the same year — the first print on Q1 2026 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached +2.0%. This suggests a decent bounceback from the long government shutdown in Q4, although expectations were for +2.2% growth in Q1.
March PCE Numbers Mostly In-Line — Or Better than Expected
The latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report is out this morning, as well, with the month-over-month index at +0.7% as expected, and +3.5% year over year, also as expected. This is the strongest growth seen since June of 2022 and May of 2023, respectively, and follow +0.4% and +2.8% the prior month, respectively. More strong economic news to fuel this morning’s pre-market trading.
Core PCE year over year met expectations at +3.2%, last seen in November of 2023, and 20 basis points (bps) up sequentially. This number strips out volatile food and energy costs, which we expect will spike as of April data next month. This is the only dark cloud in this data set, as core inflation is still well above the Fed’s +2.0% target. Then again, incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh may have a different idea of where that target should be.
Personal Income doubled expectations to +0.6% in March, the highest since July of last year, while Personal Spending matched the expected +0.9% for the month. Consumption was up +1.6% and Real Spending equalled last October, at +0.2%. Again, look closely to see the fly in the ointment here: spending is outpacing monthly income by 30 bps.
Earnings Results at a Glance: CAT, LLY, COP & More
Without spending too much time on the cornucopia of earnings results this morning, let’s separate them by sector:
Eli Lilly LLY posted a +21% earnings surprise this morning, with strong outperformance from GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. Shares are up +6$ on the news, but still down year to date. Merck MRK posted a narrower-than-expected loss per share for a +15% surprise, while Bristol-Myers Squibb BMY beat expectations by +9.7%.
Oil major ConocoPhillips COP caught spiking oil prices at the tail-end of its quarter, outperforming expectations by +9.25%, while oil refiner Valero VLO outpaced estimates by +37.5% in the quarter. Both stocks are down a tad on the news, but still up big year to date.
Caterpillar CAT saw a big +21.7% earnings beat on +22% revenue growth in the quarter, benefiting greatly from equipment sales for data center buildout demand. It’s true, folks: Caterpillar counts as an AI play, +6% in today’s early trading and +41% year to date.
After today’s close, Apple AAPL expected to post earnings growth of +16.4% and revenues up +14.8%. The iPhone maker only has one earnings miss in the past five years. Shares are down a tad this morning and relatively flat year to date.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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