NVIDIA beat by $2.8 billion and the stock fell.

📊  Today’s Big Picture

This morning at the White House, Kevin Warsh took the oath of office as the 17th Chair of the Federal Reserve.

President Trump administered the oath himself. The last time a sitting president personally swore in a Fed Chair was 1987.

The week that ended this morning was the most consequential week of Q2.

• NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) posted $81.6 billion in revenue, beat every line, and the stock fell anyway.
• The April FOMC minutes showed a committee openly debating rate hikes.
• The 20-year Treasury cleared at 5.12%. The second-highest yield in the bond’s history.
• Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) told us the low-income consumer is feeling the oil shock at the register.

Five days. Four signals. One verdict.

The bond market is repricing. The AI economy is not. And Kevin Warsh just inherited both.

By the end of this issue, you’ll know what happened, what worked, and what to be positioned for next.

🔍  Signal vs. Noise

Three Headlines, Three Realities

1. The first headline this morning is that Warsh inherits a dovish Fed.

• What the math says: the April FOMC minutes released Wednesday include the sentence “a majority of participants highlighted that some policy firming would likely become appropriate if inflation were to continue to run persistently above 2 percent.”

The new Fed Chair wants to cut rates. The committee he just inherited is debating hikes.

The June 16-17 meeting is going to be uncomfortable.

2. The second headline is that NVIDIA disappointed.

• What the math says: NVIDIA reported $81.6 billion in revenue versus a $78.8 billion consensus.

Q2 guidance came in at $91 billion. That is $4.2 billion above the Street and $1 billion above the whisper number.

The company raised the dividend 25 times over and authorized $80 billion in additional buybacks.

The stock fell 1.8%.

When a great print moves a stock down, the positioning was full coming in. Every fund manager who wanted to be long was already long.

That is not a story about NVIDIA. That is a story about expectations.

3. The third headline is that the bond market won.

• What the math says: the 30-year hit 5.19% intraweek. That is the highest yield since 2008.

The 20-year auction cleared at 5.12% on Wednesday.

That is the second-highest yield in the 20-year bond’s history.

We told you Monday this auction would tell us whether foreign buyers were still showing up.

They were. At 67.67% of the auction. Well above the trailing average.

Foreign demand did not decay this week. It accepted the new price.

Every Major Bank Reset Its NVIDIA Price Target Within 12 Hours Of The Print.

A CFA Charterholder who advises on the framework now used by 4,000 investors mapped the rotation.

• Baird raised its NVIDIA target to a Street-high $500.
• Truist raised to $307.
• Cantor reiterated “all-in”.

But the real rotation was underneath.

• SoftBank ripped 20% Thursday and another 11% Friday.
• Lenovo jumped 15% in Hong Kong.
• AMD, Broadcom, and TSMC caught the bid that NVIDIA could not hold.

The capex cycle is real. The trade is rotating.

If you hold individual technology stocks or concentrated growth funds, the rotation the institutions just made is the same kind of rotation that ran from 2000 to 2003…

See what's inside →

📰  From Around the Market

Every issue, we bring you the most important stories from around the world and show you why they matter. Think of this as your shortcut through the noise - one click per story, and you’re caught up.

Walmart beat earnings, then guided light on fuel costs.

Walmart reported Q1 yesterday morning.

Revenue came in at $175.7 billion, beating consensus.

But Q2 EPS guidance of $0.72-$0.74 missed the $0.75 consensus.

Management cited a 250 basis point operating margin drag from higher fuel costs in distribution and fulfillment.

The Iran-Hormuz oil shock is now in America’s largest retailer’s operating margin.

The stock fell 6% intraday.

OpenAI is reportedly filing for an IPO.

The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI is preparing to file confidentially for an IPO as soon as this week.

The target is a September 2026 public debut at a valuation that could exceed $1 trillion.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead bankers.

OpenAI’s last private round in March closed at $852 billion post-money.

If this filing lands, it will be the largest tech IPO in history.

Eli Lilly’s new obesity drug cleared late-stage trials.

Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) next-generation obesity drug retatrutide posted 70.3 pounds of average weight loss after 80 weeks in Phase 3 trials.

That is 28.3% of body weight. A threshold previously associated only with bariatric surgery.

45.3% of participants achieved a 30%+ reduction.

The obesity drug market just got a new ceiling.

👀  What to Watch For

Monday May 25. US markets closed for Memorial Day.

US equity and bond markets are closed Monday.

Asian and European markets continue to trade. Any weekend headlines on Iran, Hormuz, or Warsh will hit spot Bitcoin and gold before U.S. markets reopen Tuesday.

Thursday May 28. The big release.

• April PCE inflation releases at 8:30 AM ET.
• The Q1 GDP second estimate releases at the same minute.
• Initial jobless claims land at the same time.

Three macro releases in one minute.

PCE is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure. The April reading is the first read on whether the Iran oil shock has fed into core inflation.

A hot PCE print makes Warsh’s first FOMC on June 16-17 even harder.

June 16-17. Warsh’s first FOMC.

The new Fed Chair runs his first meeting in three and a half weeks.

Markets price near-zero probability of a cut.

Markets price over 40% probability of a hike by year-end.

The committee Warsh just inherited is split 8 to 4 in favor of firming.

The first test of Warsh’s ability to lead a committee he did not assemble starts June 17 at 2:00 PM ET.

💭  Today’s Final Thought

This week, the bond market told us foreign buyers will pay 5.12% for 20-year U.S. debt.

The Federal Reserve told us eight committee members think rate hikes are on the table.

NVIDIA told us AI capex is not slowing.

Walmart told us the oil shock is eating consumer margins.

And the White House told us the Fed transition is going to be political.

Every one of those signals points in the same direction.

Higher yields for longer. Stronger AI investment than the bond market implies. A consumer under pressure. And a new Fed Chair fighting his own committee.

The retail investor will read about all of this in Monday morning’s papers.

The institutions finished positioning by Wednesday afternoon.

Markets give the week’s verdict on Friday. The portfolios built around it were already in place.

- Rami Al-Sabeq (Editor in Chief | Future Finance)

About Future Finance

Future Finance is written by Rami Al-Sabeq, Editor-in-Chief, and his research team. His macro-to-crypto work has been featured in Unchained and Cryptonary, and his independent essays appear at RamiWrites.Substack.com.

Behind every issue sits Head of Research Tyler Hubbard, whose track record across 590+ digital asset picks has produced an 85% directional accuracy rate and a 426% average peak return. That’s as of the third-party audit measuring performance through April 30th, 2026. Follow him on TradingView here.