Chips bled $400B in seven hours. The rally has a problem.

Stock Market Edge

Records Held, Then Chips Snapped The rally’s leadership question is open again

1. Premarket snapshot: S&P 500 closed Tuesday at 7,400.96, down 0.16% from Monday’s record. Nasdaq fell 0.71% to 26,088.20 after touching fresh highs Monday. Dow inched up 0.11% to 49,760.56. Futures traded near flat into Wednesday’s open as desks waited on the Warsh vote and weighed the chip drawdown’s reach.
2. Sector rotation: Information Technology led the losses, with the SOX falling roughly 5% in its worst session in seven months. Qualcomm dropped 13%, Intel 9%, Micron 3.6%, AMD 2%. Defensives absorbed flows. Wendy’s rallied 9% on a Trian take-private report.
3. Earnings or guidance: CoreWeave fell 7% on softer Q2 revenue guidance of $2.45–2.60bn versus $2.69bn consensus, despite Q1 revenue jumping to $2.1bn. Datadog gained 28% on a Q1 beat. Vital Farms dropped 20% on a surprise quarterly loss. Lowe’s drew a Citi upgrade ahead of next week’s print.
4. Cross-asset nuance: 10-year Treasury yields stayed elevated, holding most of the roughly 40 basis points added since the Iran conflict began. The dollar firmed against the yen on hawkish repricing. Brent crude settled at $107.77, with WTI at $102.18, both feeding directly into the inflation backdrop the new Fed chair inherits.

---

📊 There’s a level on SPX I’m watching closely this morning. My full analysis briefing has it – plus what happens if we hold it, and what happens if we don’t. [Read it here →]

---

Crypto Market Edge

Bitcoin Decouples While Chips Bleed Institutional flow does what retail used to do

1. Price snapshot: Bitcoin held the $80,000–$82,000 range through Tuesday’s equity selloff, refusing to follow chips lower. Ether traded above $2,300 as ETF flows turned negative. Toncoin extended a 94.6% monthly gain. Chainlink, Sui, and Solana outperformed BTC on the week, while XRP and BNB lagged.
2. Flows and positioning: Spot BTC ETFs logged a fifth consecutive weekly inflow, drawing $153.87m for the week ending May 1 and roughly $2.78bn over the five-week run. Spot ETH ETFs posted $82.47m in net outflows over the same week, the first negative weekly print since early April. Fear and Greed sits in mid-range.
3. Leadership and rotation: BTC dominance edged higher as alt rotation stayed selective rather than indiscriminate. The TON, LINK, SUI, and SOL moves trace to asset-specific catalysts, not a broad cycle re-entry. That pattern matches an early-rotation tape, not a late one.
4. Catalysts and roadmap: Today’s chair vote brings the first Fed leader with documented crypto holdings, now pledged for divestment, just as stablecoin and custody rules approach finalisation. CME’s CFTC-regulated Bitcoin volatility futures launch in June. SEC approved a one-million-contract position limit on IBIT options.

---

TL;DR – The Bottom Line

• Warsh faces the final Senate vote today to take the Fed gavel from Powell, with a 3.8% April CPI print waiting in the in-tray.
• Chip stocks suffered their worst single-day drawdown in seven months, with Qualcomm down 13% on the day, even as the SOX held a 60% year-to-date gain.
• WTI settled at $102.18 after a 4.19% single-day gain on Trump labelling the US-Iran ceasefire “unbelievably weak” and “on massive life support” overnight.
• Bitcoin ETFs extended a five-week inflow streak to roughly $2.78bn while Ether ETFs posted their first negative weekly print since the start of April.
• Markets now price almost 30% odds of a December Fed rate hike, the cleanest signal yet that the rate-cut narrative has fully drained from the curve.