In this live market commentary from the New York Stock Exchange, Kenny Polcari opens with a rundown of the previous day’s market action, highlighting a sharp tech pullback triggered by a Wall Street Journal story about OpenAI missing revenue and user‑growth targets. He details the performance of major indices, sector ETFs, and individual tech stocks, noting that while the broader market fell, several defensive sectors closed higher. Polcari then shifts to commodities, explaining how ongoing Strait of Hormuz tensions and the UAE’s decision to exit OPEC+ are pushing WTI crude above $103 a barrel. He assesses gold’s decline amid a stronger dollar and rising inflation concerns, and notes modest upticks in 2‑, 10‑, and 30‑year Treasury yields. The VIX is described as unusually calm despite the upcoming FOMC decision and big‑tech earnings. Polcari offers his view on the Fed’s likely hold on rates, the limited prospect of cuts this year, and the longer‑term challenges of unwinding years of easy money. He previews the key economic releases and earnings (Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, plus a list of other corporates) slated for the day, and provides a brief technical analysis showing S&P and Nasdaq above key trend lines and in overbought RSI territory. The segment ends with a promotional plug for Slatestone Wealth and a step‑by‑step recipe for brown‑butter parmigiana pasta.
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Well, good morning. Yes, it's me, Kenny Polcari, your host of the party, coming to you live from the New York Stock Exchange here in the Financial District in New York City. And today is Wednesday, April 26th, 2026, and here are the things that you need to know to get your day started. Well, tech got punched in the face yesterday. The Wall Street Journal article ignites a fire in the sector. OpenAI, is that the canary in the coal mine? Oil is up, gold is down, bond yields are up, and the VIX is just kind of treading water in the Place and Zone. The FOMC reports at 2 PM and Big Tech reports at 4:05 PM after the bell. And what do we have for dinner tonight? We're gonna have the brown butter Parmigiana pasta. It is delicious. And I will be joining Liz Klayman today at 3:30 after the Fed meeting on Fox Business. Be sure to tune in. So look, we, we came off of these back-to-back record closes for both the NASDAQ and the S&P yesterday as investors decided to take a breath. Nothing really dramatic, nothing broken, just a little reality, reality check courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, written in an article written a, uh, bourbon gin. Here's what happened. They dropped a story pre-opening to the market yesterday that OpenAI has missed its own internal revenue and user growth targets, and the CFO apparently supposedly raised red flags internally about the company's ability to pay its massive computing contracts if the top line doesn't start moving. I mean, do I need to go on from here? That's all the market needed to hear, and it took a hammer to anything tech. The NASDAQ down 1%, the XLK down 1.7%, ARKK lost 1.4%. The growth trade gave up 1%. Cybersecurity down 0.6%. Semis lost a whopping 3.7%. Uh, robotics lost 2.2%. Software gave up 0.6%. Quantum computing lost 2.2%. Even ARKW lost 1.5%. Those are just ETFs. Individual names lost even more. NVIDIA down 1.6%. AMD down 3.4%. Broadcom down 4.4%. Marvell down 3.1%. Arm Holdings down 8%. CoreWeave down 5.8%. At the end of the day, the Dow gave back 25 points. The S&P lost 35. The NASDAQ lost 229. The Russell slammed down 32 points, or 1 full percent. The transports lost 111. The equal-weight S&P lost 38, and the Mag 7 gave up 100 points. Not a disaster by any stretch, but it was a little bit of a breather. Now, what's important to note is that while stocks closed mostly lower, they were well off their lows during the middle of the day, right? I'm trying to be a little bit optimistic here. Of the 11 S&P sectors, we saw utilities, financials, consumer staples, energy, healthcare, real estate all ended the day higher. Uh, not bad considering the overall negative tone. The losers included industrials, tech, consumer discretionary, communications, and basic materials. Now look, let's be clear, one Wall Street Journal story doesn't unwind the whole AI trade, but it does raise a legitimate question considering what is happening after the bell tonight. Think earnings from Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. And here's the one question that they're all going to be asking. We've been talking about this all week. Are the hyperscalers spending money think $625 billion in 2026 all told, like there's no tomorrow on this AI CapEx spending chasing a customer base that isn't growing fast enough to justify it. Because that was the plotline from the Wall Street Journal story, essentially suggesting that the whole thing is about to blow a gasket. Now, before you go light your hair on fire, remember, it's an article written by a journalist, not the CFO, not the CEO, and definitely not by someone who's signing the checks. Now, You got to ask, because I'm a little bit curious, was this just a coincidence that this article came out just 36 hours ahead of all these key earnings that we're going to get tonight? Is Burry suggesting that the hyperscalers are in way over their heads? Or is he just stirring the pot ahead of this main event, you know, to create drama? I say strap in, because this is where the rubber meets the road tonight at 4 o'clock. Now meanwhile, oil is doing what oil always does when the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, right? It goes up and Every day it goes up a little bit more. West Texas Intermediate teased and kissed $100 a barrel yesterday, was up over 3% as Trump made clear that he is not flinching, that he is not ending the blockade until Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions. Now, we're now 9 weeks into this conflict with no resolution in sight, all while the IEA is warning of an unprecedented supply shock. This morning, oil is up another $3.50, trading at $103.40 a barrel. And then yesterday, just to make sure that the oil story couldn't get any more difficult, the UAE dropped a bombshell. They announced that they are walking out on OPEC+ effective Friday. The UAE is OPEC's third largest producer and it's been a member since 1967. And they are done. They're done being constrained by production quotas while Iranian missiles are targeting their shipping lanes and the Hormuz closure has slashed their output by about 45%. Their energy minister has had enough. They want freedom. They want to pump. They want to pump what they want. They want to pump when they want. Period. The end. So here's the twist. The UAE leading OPEC is good for oil prices or not, depending on your perspective and the global consumer, right? Think more supply is lower prices. Once Hormuz reopens, the strait reopens, Abu Dhabi has the capacity to flood the market with an additional 2+ million barrels per day that quota restrictions have been holding back on them, right? Saudi influence over the cartel just took a serious hit, and OPEC's grip on global supply, well, it's already been weakened by US state, US dominance, you know, of shale, and it just got weaker. So while oil stays bid today at $103.40 because nothing has really changed yet, the market is gonna start pricing in what a post-conflict quota-free UAE looks like. And that's going to be a different conversation. And it's coming sooner than people think. In my opinion, it can't come soon enough. Gold. Well, that continues to tell us the story, right? It's more concerned about inflation and rates than it is about the geopolitical conflict. Yesterday it fell by 1.8% or $85 to end the day at $4,565. And this morning it's down another $30 or 7/10 of a percent at $4,569. Now look, oil is screaming that inflation and rates and the rising dollar is getting a bit stronger, right? And that's not good for gold. That leaves gold up only about 5% year to date, a far cry from where it was in January, up 30%. As I said yesterday, gold appears to be in this $4,260, $4,750 trading range, and if the inflation story gets any stickier, then gold's going to get a little bit weaker. Bonds were unchanged yesterday, but this morning there's some upside pressure. The 2-year is up 1 bips at 3.84%, uh, the 10-year is up 1 bips at 4.359%, while the 30-year is up 1 bips at 4.949%. Now, while they remain in the okay zone, they continue to tick closer to that danger zone. Just another cautionary flag. Now, in the VIX, well, that continues to tell you that investors are just not getting anxious yet, right? It closed last night at 1785, down 1%, and now sits below all 3 key trend lines, um, right, suggesting that it's calm. I find that very interesting because we're just hours away from the FOMC rate decision, which is expected expected to be unchanged, and earnings from the big tech, right? And this is usually a recipe for some angst, founded or unfounded, not calm. And yet, after yesterday's Wall Street Journal article raising questions about AI's CapEx in the hyperscalers, I would have expected the anxiety level to build a little bit. Instead, it did the exact opposite, which is a little bit curious. But let's see how the day, how the day goes and how those reports go. Now, about the Fed. We've been discussing this ad nauseam, right? I don't expect to hear anything other than rates are going to stay on hold. But I do expect Jay Jay to emphasize that, that the rising cost, energy and raw materials are going to present a problem for the Fed, which only means that cuts have now been pushed off further. And they've been actually, in my mind, at least taken off the table this year. I wonder if he's going to preempt the Bank of England and ECB by saying that there's a possibility of a rate hike. Is now on the table in the US the way they're expected to do in Europe. Now, my gut says no because it's Jay Jay's last meeting. I don't think he's going to be in a position to opine on the rate picture going forward. And if he does, I'm betting that the market is going to discount because it's going to allow time for Kevi Warszcz to go in there and take control. It's not going to rush to judgment. Current Street expectations, though, are for zero rate cuts for the balance of this year, which is very different than what it was 3 months ago. And if you believe what Jamie Dimon says, right, you better brace yourself for a rate hike in 2027. Look, we all know what Kevin Walsh wants to do, right? The question is whether he can actually pull it off, because unless something changes, I don't see how he can actually justify cutting rates unless he simultaneously shrinks the balance sheet. You can't ease on one hand and then keep liquidity sloshing around on the other hand, because that's a policy that's more confusion, right? Ongoing confusion for the markets. And yes, That may very well be the endgame— rate cuts paired with QT. But here's the problem: that takes time. That takes a fair amount of time. In fact, you would say it takes a lot of time. Remember, it took nearly 15 years of zero rates and an ever-expanding balance sheet to get us here. 15 years of easy money, 15 years of asset inflation, 15 years of liquidity-driven markets. You don't unwind that overnight. So even if Kevvy comes in with that plan, the market is going to need time to digest it, price it, and in the end, believe it, which means that this transition may not be smooth and definitely not quick. ECO data today includes mortgage apps, retail inventories, building permits, housing starts, durable goods orders, and of course, the FOMC rate decision at 2:00 with the press conference starting at 2:30. We've got another 30 names reporting this morning. Some of the key names to watch: General Dynamics, that's aerospace and defense. PSX, which is Phillips 66, that's oil refineries. Humana, managed care. You got Stanley Works, which is machinery and equipment. You've got Generac, which is electrical power equipment. You got, um, Old Dominion, which is trucking. Regeneron, which is biotech. And SoFi, consumer finance. But by now, you know, it's all going to be about what happens after after the ballot, right? Brace yourself for Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. We don't need to keep talking about it because we've been doing that for days. European markets, they're all lower this morning. Spain was in the lead, down about 0.7%, with Germany down only 0.2%. Everyone else was kind of in between as they await their policy decisions tomorrow. US futures are treading water essentially. They're flat. The Dow is flat. The S&P's up 2%. The Nasdaq's up 75%. The Russell is flat. The S&P closed at 7,138 last night, down 35 points. So we're at this crossroads, right? The recent action of the last 2 weeks has been all about tech once again. Tonight we're about to learn who's right, the bulls or the bears. It's all very exciting. Now, from a technical standpoint, we are well above all 3 trend lines on both the S&P and the NASDAQ. The relative strength indexes are both in overbought territory, and that is key, especially right now. So any disappointment is going to cause a very swift reaction. The question is, if, uh, if big tech disappoints, how quickly will we test those trend lines? Now you can call me at 561-931-0190 and let's talk about how Slatestone Wealth can help you navigate these markets to help you reach your end goal. Okay, so look, what are we having for dinner tonight? We are going to have the brown butter parmigiana pasta. It is simple, quick, and it is so good. For this, you need linguine, you need butter, sage, pepper, a splash of lemon juice— I mean just a splash— and of course the fresh grated Parmigiano cheese. That's it. You want to bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil on the back burner and get it ready for the pasta. Now, in a large sauté pan, you're going to melt a stick of butter. That's going to, like, for, for about a half a pound of linguine, right? Uh, you're gonna put it on medium-high heat. You're going to add 3 or 4 sage leaves. You're going to cook it until the butter browns. Don't burn it. You just want it to brown. Lower the temperature if you have to. Once it's all nice and brown, remove it from the heat and take out the sage leaves. Add the pasta to the water. You're gonna cook it for 8 minutes or until it's al dente. Now, slowly reheat the butter on medium-low. Add about a half a ladle of the pasta water to the butter. Now, once the pasta's done, using tongs, add the pasta directly to the sauté pan and toss it to coat in the butter. Now, here's the important part. You're gonna add 2 handfuls of the fresh grated cheese. And don't do anything. Just let it sit on top of the pasta until it melts, right? Once it melts, then you can stir it. Uh, you're gonna add a little bit of pepper on top. No salt, you don't need salt, just pepper, and a splash of the lemon juice, right? You may need to add a little bit more of the pasta water just to keep it creamy, but once you do, serve it immediately and enjoy. I'm sure you're gonna call me tomorrow and thank me later. Look, this is Kenny, live from the New York Stock Exchange. Until tomorrow, take good care.
