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The story of the week broke Sunday afternoon: Senator Thom Tillis ended his blockade of Kevin Warsh's Fed chair confirmation after the DOJ closed its criminal investigation of Jerome Powell. The Banking Committee vote is now scheduled for Wednesday — the same day the FOMC meets, almost certainly Powell's last as chair. A Trump-aligned Fed chair will inherit an institution staring down headline CPI at 3.29%, WTI oil at $94.82 with Brent above $105 per MENAFN reporting, and a Strait of Hormuz that remains effectively closed.
This is not the macro environment for a leadership pivot. It is the macro environment for paralysis. Per Reuters polling cited by Newsquawk, 56 of 103 economists now see no Fed move before September — a sharp reversal from late March, when nearly 70% expected at least one cut. The market has spent the week repricing not the path of cuts but the premise that cuts are coming at all. And yet the S&P 500 sits at $7,164, just 0.06% below its all-time high, while the Fear & Greed Index reads 33. Something has to give.
The S&P 500 at $7,164 is up 12.49% over the past month and 4.66% YTD, with the index 0.06% off its all-time high and RSI at 70.1. The bull case driving the rally — early hopes that US-Iran de-escalation would reopen the Strait of Hormuz — was running on fumes by Saturday. Per Bay News 9, Iran's foreign minister left Pakistan and Trump cancelled the planned envoy trip; per The Hill, Trump on Sunday flatly refused to send officials to Islamabad. Yet equities held. Q1 blended earnings growth is tracking 13.2% per the asset desk's read of consensus, and MAG7 reports from Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, and Amazon land this week.
The cross-asset tension here is loud. Per Trustnet, three fund managers note S&P 500 at record highs while bond markets, commodity curves, and real-economy data are pricing an unresolved energy crisis. The forward P/E at 21.79 with an equity risk premium of 4.46% leaves no margin for a hawkish Fed surprise.
Nasdaq-100 at $27,299 is up 18.01% over the past month and 40.48% over the past year, trading 12.05% above its 200-day EMA with RSI at 74.8. This is technically extended in the textbook sense. The forward P/E of 25.15 is priced for a continuation of the AI capex cycle, not for a Warsh-led Fed that may run policy tighter for longer.
Five of the Magnificent Seven report this week into a tape where the dispersion index is, per BigGo Finance, "at extreme" levels. The risk asymmetry is not subtle: a single soft AI capex guide from Microsoft or Alphabet on Wednesday meets a Fed meeting and PCE print the following day. VueFi's proprietary models track dozens of indicators specific to growth-equity rate sensitivity, and the Consensus weighs this earnings/policy stack differently than a top-down score suggests.
Russell 2000 proxy at $2,787, up 13.77% over the past month and 12.29% YTD — actually leading the S&P 500 on a year-to-date basis. RSI at 69.5 mirrors large-cap stretch. The catch: forward P/E of 27.27 on the institutional positive-earnings basis is rich, and the inclusive-basis figures floating in news commentary are, by methodology, much higher and not directly comparable.
The thesis-breaker is the Warsh confirmation timeline. Small caps have rallied on the residual hope of rate relief; if Wednesday's Banking Committee vote is paired with a Fed statement that scratches the door on cuts, the highest-duration corner of the equity market sells off first. The 200-day moving average — which IWM has held through this cycle per the asset desk — is the line.
EAFE proxy at $68.14, up 9.81% on the month and 29.96% over the past year, sits 3.42% off its 52-week peak. Forward P/E of 14.86 is a steep discount to the US. Per the Reuters poll FXStreet flagged, 84 of 85 economists see the ECB on hold this Thursday at 2%, but 44 of 85 now expect a hike to 2.25% by June — a sharp tightening shift from late March when only 38 of 60 expected any tightening at all.
That repricing is the story. The BoJ may signal a hawkish tilt toward a June hike per Newsquawk. Synchronized G7 holding patterns with hawkish whispers underneath is the textbook setup for a higher rate, weaker DXY world — which is exactly what international developed equities need.
EM proxy at $59.01, up 12.42% on the month and 31.51% over the past year, with forward P/E of just 11.52. The headline returns mask brutal dispersion: per Reuters reporting, Egypt's FY2025/26 GDP growth forecast was trimmed to 4.6% from 4.9% specifically on Iran-war energy costs. Pakistan, per IANS, is dealing with power outages and gas shortages as Hormuz disruption feeds through.
EM is split. Energy importers — most of Asia ex-China, much of LatAm — are wearing the oil tax. Energy exporters and the markets benefiting from supply-chain rerouting (India, per the Yahoo/AFP wire, has ramped Russian, African, and Venezuelan crude purchases to plug the Hormuz shortfall) are the relative winners. A flat aggregate index hides a violent rotation underneath.
TLT proxy at $86.71, down 0.39% on the week and trading below both its 50-day and 200-day EMAs. The 30-year yield at 4.92% is within 16 bp of its 1-year high of 5.08%. The MOVE Index at 67.70 says rate volatility has compressed — but the level itself is the punishment.
Three forces are pinning the long end. First, sticky core PCE at 2.97% with a Fed about to be chaired by a known hawk. Second, fiscal supply: per the asset desk, US public debt is approaching $39 trillion and foreign demand is uneven — China's Treasury holdings have moved from above $1.2T to $694B over the cycle. Third, the term premium has finally returned. Real 10Y yield at 1.92% is what restrictive looks like in real terms.
Long-duration Treasuries are the asset class with the worst risk-reward into a hawkish Fed leadership change paired with elevated CPI. The bond market knows it. The 30Y is telling you.
Bitcoin at $78,232, up 2.66% on the week but down 38.06% from its 52-week peak, with realized price at $54,162 and MVRV at 1.45. The asset desk flagged nine consecutive sessions of US spot ETF inflows totaling $2.12 billion through April 24, with BlackRock's IBIT leading. Long-term holders accumulated more than 303,000 BTC over the past 30 days. The structural bid is real.
Ethereum at $2,367 is the underperformer: up 0.92% on the week, but down 52.25% from its 52-week peak and 20.23% YTD. The ETH/BTC ratio at 0.03 is brutal. ETH ETF inflows of $169M (per the asset desk) helped, but XRP Ledger pulled $1.1B over 30 days versus Ethereum's $879M — institutional rotation inside crypto, not just into it. VueFi's proprietary models weight on-chain accumulation versus price action with more granularity than headline ETF flow numbers capture.
Gold at $4,724 fell 2.61% on the week and now trades 16.05% below its 52-week peak of $5,627. Silver at $75.76 dropped 5.99% on the week and sits 37.79% below its 52-week peak. The gold/silver ratio at 62.04 has barely budged.
Read that again. Gold and silver fell, hard, in a week where the Strait of Hormuz blockade deepened, US-Iran peace talks collapsed (per Bay News 9 on April 25), and Trump publicly refused to send envoys to Islamabad. The reason is the same reason TLT can't rally: real yields. Real 10Y at 1.92% is the highest real cost of carry for non-yielding assets in a decade-plus, and a Warsh Fed implies that real yield doesn't fall. UBP, per the asset desk, has lifted gold allocation in discretionary portfolios to 6% from 3%. Institutional bid is there. But $4,800 is acting as resistance, with RSI at 45.6 — gold has lost momentum even with the news flow it usually loves.
REIT proxy at $95.30, up 9.54% over the past month and 7.70% YTD, sitting just 1.81% off its 52-week high. P/FFO at 19.68 isn't cheap. The dividend yield spread to Treasuries is negative 60 bp — REITs yield less than the 10-year, an unusual configuration. Per the asset desk, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate has climbed back to 6.37% on Iran-driven funding costs, and existing-home sales fell 3.6% in March to 3.98M units with the median price at a record $408,800.
The bull case is the structural housing shortage — per the Council of Economic Advisers, single-family undersupply is now estimated above 10 million units. The bear case is that REITs are trading like a rate-cut play in a no-rate-cut world. The sector is essentially front-running a Fed pivot that the bond market is unwinding.
The single sharpest cross-asset contradiction this week: S&P 500 at a record high with VIX at 18.64, while gold sold off 2.61% and the 30-year yield sits within 16 bp of its 1-year peak. Equity is pricing soft landing. Bonds are pricing structural inflation. Gold is pricing real yields. They cannot all be right.
The resolver is Wednesday's Fed statement. If the FOMC nods toward Q3 cuts, equities can hold the highs and gold catches a bid. If the statement leans into "high oil, sticky core PCE, no urgency," the bond market is correct and the equity grind higher unwinds — possibly through a credit channel, with HY OAS at 2.86% leaving zero cushion.
A second, quieter divergence: Fear & Greed at 33 with the S&P at a record high. Sentiment indicators are flashing fear while price action prints euphoria. That is what late-cycle distribution looks like.
The Signal tells you what happened and why the cross-asset signals contradict. The Consensus tells you how to position when the Fed, the ECB, the BoJ, and five MAG7 earnings reports all hit in 96 hours. This week's Consensus includes proprietary scoring, rotation signals, and DCA guidance for all 11 assets covered above. See the Consensus →
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Bitcoin scored 7.1 — 4 of 4 models agree on Buy.
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