News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

24 April 2026 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

The US-Iran tensions show no signs of easing while the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, although Trump extended the ceasefire, stating that the Iranian Government is fragmented. Israel and Lebanon have also agreed to extend their ceasefire.

The world economy is still in good shape, with several PMI figures around the world beating expectations, however there was notable weakness on the Continent. In no particular order, Japan (52.4), Australia (50.1), US (52.0) all showed expansion – leading to markets to think no rate cuts are now coming this year. Europe’s PMI was 48.6 (vs. 50.1 expected), a 17-month low. It was noted that some manufacturers had raised output ahead of rising tensions in the Middle East.

Kevin Warsh has his nomination hearing to become Fed Chair, maintaining his independence, saying that he wouldn’t be the President’s “sock puppet” and that “Fed independence means everything to me”, although could not answer whether Trump had lost to Biden in the election. He also suggested that he would like to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet, which in turn could lead to rates coming down (music to Trump’s ears!).

We mentioned jet fuel last week and we saw the first signs of the cracks in the system as Lufthansa cancelled 20,000 flights.

COMPANY NEWS

New Apples Please – as suspected CEO Tim Cook announced that, after 15 years, he will step down. John Ternus, Apple’s head of hardware, will start on September 1^st and Cook will become executive chairman. Elsewhere in tech land, shares in Meta and Microsoft both fell after announcing plans to cut 10% and 7% of their workforce.

Dealing with a large tech company? Marvell Technology shares rose after the company reported that the firm is helping Alphabet with two new AI chips.

UnitedHealth reported revenues and earnings ahead of expectations as the turnaround appears on track in a now more disciplined, margin-focused industry.

SAP’s results was a welcome relief after some rather soft software reports. The company reported 25% Cloud growth, which was a stable figure and quashed the deceleration rhetoric. Guidance was also good.

The reaction to the IBM results was interesting. Overall figures beat market expectations with cash flow also rising 13% over the year, however the shares fell 7% as software revenues only just met analyst expectations.

Rio Tinto are rocking, as are fellow miners Newmont.  Rio showed limited Middle East impact with copper and iron ore production ahead. Like a number of industries,  oil prices are putting upward pressure on costs. Newmont also had strong figures, send their shares up 8% due to the higher underlying cash flow from gold.

Siemens Energy missed their numbers slightly but still raised its outlook due to increased production capacity.

The initial Trump trade involved Tesla, who had mixed results. Revenue rose 16%, slightly missing expectations, and earnings beat estimates. Shares initially rose but finished the week 7% down. The current Trump trade involves Boeing and Intel. The latter’s shares rose over 20% as numbers were excellent and ahead of most analysts’ expectations. Led by Agentic AI growth in server processing units and better than feared stability in PCs. The gross margin was also 6.5% better than feared and guidance of 39% was excellent.

BUILD ACCORDING TO JACOBS

QXO CEO and Chair, Brad Jacobs has an enviable CV in the construction business in America having set up United Rentals, XPO Logistics and United Waste.

He made his latest move this week as QXO announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire insulation specialists, TopBuild for $17bn. Shareholders can elect to receive $505 cash per share or 20.2 shares of QXO per share of BLD, with a maximum of ~45% in cash.

His first company, United Rentals (equipment hire), also had a terrific print with results ahead of expectations, with revenue up 7% (3% better than the market expected) combined with a confident outlook of growth opportunities, particularly within large projects.

ANTHROPIC ADDITIONS

The AI company, Anthropic is now valued higher than its main competitor, OpenAI, rising to a $1trn valuation according to share sales on Forge Global, a financial platform that allows investors to acquire shares from private companies. The figure is considerably higher than the $380 billion that Anthropic was valued at during a funding round three months ago.

Amazon expanded its collaboration with Anthropic, with the latter securing up to 5GWs of current and future generations of Amazon’s Trainium chips to train and power their advanced AI models. Amazon is to invest $5n in Anthropic today and up to an additional $20bn in the future. Alphabet then responded by announcing an investment of $10bn, up to an additional $40bn.

Ahead of these announcements, Alphabet’s investment in Anthropic exceeded $3bn, and it owned roughly 14%.

THE WEEK AHEAD

The spotlight firmly is on central banks as the Federal Reserve meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, where rates are expected to remain on hold. Alongside that we get Q1 US GDP and core PCE inflation. In the UK we have the Bank of England policy decision on Thursday, with any change in tone likely to move markets even with no rate moves.

On the corporate side, it’s a big week for US tech, as many of the Mag7 report, with Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon on Wednesday and Apple following on Thursday. Closer to home we have BP and Barclays on Tuesday and a cluster of heavyweights later in the week including AstraZeneca, GSK and Lloyds.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1792: the United States experienced its first true stock market panic, centered in New York. As a result, surviving traders formalised rules among themselves by signing the Buttonwood Agreement, which laid the groundwork for what would become the New York Stock Exchange.

1999: the Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded its first-ever 1,000 point gain in a single month, a milestone that symbolised the late 1990s tech driven bull market.