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Tech’s most consequential day of the earnings season arrived Wednesday with the Nasdaq Composite meandering between positive and negative territory as traders opted for restraint over risk ahead of a session loaded with potential flashpoints. If the index can hold its ground, it’s looking at a 12.8% gain for the month of April, a remarkable run that now hinges on what the Fed and Big Tech have to say before the closing bell.
On the macro side, oil is adding to the unease. Brent briefly topped $115 a barrel and WTI pushed above $103 on fears of prolonged shipping disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, while the UAE’s unexpected departure from OPEC injected fresh volatility into energy markets.
Jerome Powell takes center stage this afternoon, with the Fed’s rate decision and accompanying policy statement set to be dissected line by line. Any hint of a shift in the rate path, in either direction, will land hard on a tech-heavy index that remains sensitive to the cost of capital. Adding a further wrinkle, the Senate Banking Committee is expected to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to succeed Powell when his term expires May 15, injecting renewed uncertainty.
Here’s a look at where things stand as of morning trading:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 48,926
Nasdaq Composite: 24,704 Up 0.17%
S&P 500: 7,141 Up 0.04%
Market Movers
Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL), Meta Platforms (Nasdaq; META) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) all report after the bell, and the pressure is real. OpenAI is casting a long shadow over the sector after reports surfaced that the AI bellwether has come up short of its own internal growth targets, a development that sent AI-adjacent names sliding on Tuesday. The relationship between OpenAI and the broader tech ecosystem is also in flux, with Amazon confirming that OpenAI’s models will be accessible via AWS just a day after the company restructured its partnership with Microsoft.
Susquehanna’s Christopher Rolland raised his price target on AMD from $300 to $375, holding his Positive rating on the stock. SoFi posted a clean quarter, clearing the revenue bar with $1.09B against a $1.05B consensus while adding 1.1 million new members to bring its total to 14.7 million.
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