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This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how Intel stock soared more than 20% last Friday, eight months after the U.S. government took a 10 percent stake to prop up the firm. Try to get the famous “Intel Inside” jingle in there if you can. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now: News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Why most big tech stocks fell despite crushing Wal …

• Fed Chair refuses to exit stage left amid tensions

• Taylor Swift trademarks her voice amid AI threats

• Disney’s new CEO faces early political pressure

• Elon Musk and Sam Altman face off in court

• Poll of the day: The Kimmel amendment

• Poll of the day: The inside track!

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

$SPX ( ▼ 0.04% ) $DJI ( ▼ 0.57% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$GOOG ( ▼ 0.06% )  $AMZN ( ▲ 1.29% )  $MSFT ( ▼ 1.12% )  $META ( ▼ 0.33% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 1.84% )  $DIS ( ▼ 0.17% )  $ORCL ( ▼ 1.28% )  $CRWV ( ▲ 8.21% )  

Why most big tech stocks fell despite crushing Wall Street expectations…

The financial world collectively held its breath yesterday because four of the so-called "Magnificent 7" tech giants decided to drop their earnings reports on the same day. And sure, technically, there was also a Fed meeting happening. But who cares about monetary policy when Mark Zuckerberg is about to tell us how many billions he's lighting on fire for AI infrastructure?

Here's the beautiful irony of Big Tech earnings: All four companies beat Wall Street expectations on both revenue AND profit. You'd think that would mean champagne corks popping and stock prices moonlighting, right?

Wrong.

• Meta $META ( ▼ 0.33% ) crushed it with $56.31 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $10.44 (absolutely demolishing the expected $6.68). The reward? Shares dropped over 6% in after-hours trading. Because, apparently, announcing you're going to spend up to $145 billion on AI this year—a casual $10 billion more than previously planned—makes investors nervous. Who knew?

• Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.29% ) also beat expectations with $181.5 billion in sales and EPS of $2.78. Aaaand the stock was down 5%. Why? Their operating income guidance for next quarter was slightly below expectations. The audacity.

• Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 1.12% ) reported revenue up 18% and profit up 23%. The stock? Down about 2.5%. Because cloud growth only accelerated to 29%, and Azure only grew 40%. Pathetic, really.

• Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.05% ) was apparently the teacher's pet of the day, with shares actually climbing 4% after reporting a 22% revenue jump to nearly $110 billion. Though I'm sure investors will find something to complain about by the time you’re reading this the next morning.

The big elephant in the server room is AI spending. These companies are basically in an arms race to see who can throw the most money at the issue. Meanwhile, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai hopped on the earnings call to give Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 1.84% ) a shoutout, essentially saying, Google is going to be buying a LOT more of their chips. That’s great news for Nvidia, whose stock is somehow worth over $5 trillion again and whose earnings report in mid-May will probably cause cardiac events across Wall Street.

These companies are all printing money at rates that would make most countries jealous. Microsoft made $31.8 billion in profit in one quarter. Meta's net income was $26.77 billion. These are numbers that have lost all meaning to normal humans.

Still, in the twisted logic of the stock market, generating obscene profits while simultaneously promising to spend obscene amounts on AI apparently creates, let’s say…uncertainty.

The real winners here are the options traders (and also, the AI agent bot investors) who correctly predicted which direction these stocks would swing, post-earnings. Oh, and Apple $AAPL ( ▼ 0.2% ) reports today, so we get to do this all over again!

Quote of the Day

Fed Chair refuses to exit stage left amid tensions

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced he will continue serving as a Fed governor even after his term as chair concludes on May 15th. The decision comes amid an ongoing investigation into the central bank's headquarters renovation and escalating tensions with President Trump.

"My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve," Powell said during his post-meeting press conference.

Powell didn't shy away from addressing the elephant in the room: Trump's relentless criticism. He called the attacks "unprecedented in our 113-year history," warning they're "battering the institution and putting at risk" the Fed's ability to operate free from political influence.

While markets largely expected the Fed to hold rates steady, the real drama centered on Powell's future. With two years remaining on his governor seat, Powell's choice to stay temporarily blocks Trump from securing a majority on the seven-member Board of Governors.

As Kevin Warsh prepares for confirmation as the new chair, Powell promises to "keep a low profile" — but his presence will speak volumes.

Taylor Swift trademarks her voice amid AI threats

Just when you thought Taylor Swift had conquered everything, she's now taking on AI. Swift filed trademark applications Friday for two audio clips of her voice and an iconic Eras Tour image featuring her signature pink guitar and sequined look.

"Attempting to register a celebrity's spoken voice is a new use of trademark registration that has not been tested in court before," noted trademark attorney Josh Gerben, talking to CNN.

These filings could let her sue anyone using AI voices that sound like the registered clips.

"AI technologies now allow users to generate entirely new content that mimics an artist's voice without copying an existing recording, creating a gap that trademarks may help fill," Gerben explained.

With over 300 trademark applications already filed, Swift isn't playing games. She's building a legal fortress, one "Taylor’s Version” at a time.

Your move, robots.

Song of the Day: Niall Horan, ‘Little More Time’

Here’s a love letter to living in the moment, penned by a former One Direction star for whom that must be a bit of a challenge. I imagine 2014 was probably a lot more compelling in so many ways for you, personally, Niall, surely?

Disney’s new CEO faces early political pressure

Josh D'Amaro has been Disney's CEO for about six weeks. Now he’s facing a constitutional showdown with the President of the United States as the FCC challenges ABC's broadcast licenses over a joke about Melania Trump having “a glow like an expectant widow.”

“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel said (Donald Trump is 79; Melania Trump is 56). But after a gunman opened fire outside the dinner ballroom at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, Trump and his allies have, let’s say…recontextualized the joke as a call to violence.

“You know sometimes you wake up in the morning and the first lady puts out a statement demanding you be fired from your job? We’ve all been there, right?” Kimmel asked at the beginning of his monologue on Monday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

D'Amaro finds himself in a tricky situation, but the smart money seems to be on keeping Kimmel around. Disney's legal case is strong—Trump has been threatening these licenses for years. Still, ABC News staffers are watching nervously, fearing a chilling effect on editorial decisions. D'Amaro knows history is watching, too.

Still, the moral high ground is not exactly wide open. In March, President Trump tweeted “Good, I’m glad he’s dead” about the passing of former FBI director Robert Mueller. 🤷

Elon Musk and Sam Altman face off in court

Day two of tech's messiest divorce delivered exactly the courtroom drama we needed. Elon Musk took the stand in his ongoing legal showdown with OpenAI and Sam Altman, and the world's richest man didn't hold back on the existential hot takes.

"It could make us more prosperous, but it could also kill us all," Musk testified about AI's future. "We want to be in a Gene Roddenberry movie, like Star Trek, not so much a James Cameron movie, like Terminator."

Finally, a legal argument we can all understand. The origin story? Apparently, Google co-founder Larry Page called Musk "a speciesist for being pro-human," which honestly sounds like the most Silicon Valley insult ever uttered. That beef sparked Musk's mission to create OpenAI as a nonprofit counterweight, he said.

"I could have started it as a for-profit and I chose not to," Musk declared. "I chose to make it something for the benefit of all humanity."

The trial continues. Stock in OpenAI’s partners Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 1.28% ) and Coreweave $CRWV ( ▲ 8.21% ) fell 5% earlier this week after a report in the Wall Street Journal saying the AI developer missed sales and user targets, renewing concerns about overspending in the sector.

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Should you check your 401(k) today?

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No.

Poll of the day: The Kimmel amendment

Poll of the day: The inside track!

We asked: “Do you think the government has insider trading on sites like Polymarket under control?”

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Absolutely. I’m sure the same agencies that still require physical fax machines to process a change of address are definitely outsmarting anonymous whales using 256-bit encryption. (50)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Of course they do! Just like they have the national debt, the rising price of a dozen eggs, and the 'close door' button on elevators under total control. (86)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Control it? They’re probably the ones providing the liquidity. It isn't technically 'insider trading' if you just call it 'market-based policy research' and execute the trades from a burner phone in a congressional basement. (233)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Oh, they’re right on top of it. They’ll have a subcommittee formed, a blue-ribbon panel assigned, and a heavily redacted white paper published by 2034. (72)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I have 100% faith in their oversight. I also fully believe that the 'Internal Revenue Service' agent who called me from a blocked number and asked for payment in iTunes gift cards was completely legitimate. (71)
512 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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