Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and money.
The S&P five hundred just posted its best quarterly gain in nearly six years, adding fifteen percent through the first quarter of two thousand twenty six. That kind of momentum historically telegraphs continuation, and with AI-driven earnings still accelerating, bulls are pointing to that track record as a reason to stay long.
Speaking of artificial intelligence, one supercharged growth stock has now surged more than eleven hundred percent since its IPO, and a fresh stock split has Wall Street buzzing all over again. Split euphoria has a way of pulling retail money off the sidelines, and when you layer that on top of genuine earnings growth, the setup becomes harder for portfolio managers to ignore.
Meanwhile, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh made what he likely intended as an offhand remark, but markets heard something else entirely. The so-called debasement trade caught a bid for a session, with gold and hard assets ticking higher as traders parsed whether Warsh is signaling any tolerance for currency dilution. One comment, one day of movement, but it tells you how sensitively positioned this market remains to any hint of policy drift.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
