Space has been the theme of the week here at the NYSE. Earlier this week we hosted our third annual Space Summit, this morning NASA’s Jared Isaacman rang the opening bell and tomorrow we welcome the crew of Artemis II. Today is the final trading day of April and keeping with that theme some might say the market has gone to the moon this month. As we’re writing April is the best month for the S&P 500 since the >10% gain in November of 2020.

Over the last twenty-four hours consuming all of the news flow has been like drinking through a fire hose. There have been a ton of earnings announcements, central bank updates, economic data and of course Iran related headlines. To recap yesterday before the Fed meeting and the mega-cap tech earnings after the close the story of the day was the continued move higher in oil prices which hit a new highs as President Trump told aides to prepare for a drawn-out blockade and new strikes were being planned by the Pentagon. The focus shifted to the Federal Reserve in the afternoon. The S&P managed to close essentially flat while the Russell 2000 fell 0.6%. Semis bounced after selling off Tuesday on the WSJ’s OpenAI story.

Yesterday's Fed meeting was presumably, Chair Powell’s las in his current role and it will go down in history as the Clash meeting. As expected, rates were left unchanged but the big question heading into the meeting was “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”. This was answered early on as Chair Powell said he’d keep a low profile as he stayed on as Governor in order see through the legal proceedings and help preserve the institution’s independence. Lyrics of the 1980’s classic are ,“If I go there will be trouble, and if I stay, it will be double” we’ll see if this puts him in more hot water with the administration. The other reason this will go down as the Clash meeting is that there were 4 dissenters. Stephen Miran remained the lone inhabitant of Rate Cut Avenue. However, three members wanted to alter the statement by removing the “easing bias” and instead balance it with commentary that the next move rate move is just as likely to be a hike as a cut. This once again highlights the varying opinions on the Board and some believe this served as a shot across the bow for presumably the incoming Chair, Kevin Warsh, whose nomination advanced through the Senate Banking Committee yesterday.