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THE RUNDOWN
Retail sales beat every forecast earlier this week. Then on Wednesday, Gallup released its April Economic Confidence Index, and it dropped 11 points in a single month to -38, the lowest reading since November 2023.
Spending is up. Confidence is down. Oil crossed $96 a barrel. And a new PwC study just showed that 74% of AI's economic gains are going to the same 20% of companies.
Let's get into it.
Quick Signals
Tesla beat Q1 estimates on both the top and bottom line. EPS came in at $0.41 versus $0.37 expected, with revenue around $22.4 billion. The real number: automotive gross margin hit 21.1%, up nearly 5 percentage points from a year ago. CFO Taneja raised 2026 capex guidance from $20 billion to $25 billion, almost entirely for AI compute infrastructure.
Oil surged past $96 a barrel this week as Iran peace talks showed signs of collapse. Brent crude topped $105 after reports that Iran's top negotiator resigned. The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, and the IEA has called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. American Airlines said surging fuel costs are now weighing on its full-year outlook.
Weekly jobless claims came in at 214,000, up slightly from 207,000 the prior week. The four-week moving average is holding near 210,000. Companies are complaining about the economy but not actually firing people.
IBM and ServiceNow both beat Q1 estimates, and both stocks dropped. IBM posted $1.91 EPS versus $1.81 expected with revenue up 6%, then fell 6.5% after hours. ServiceNow beat across every top-line metric but dropped 18% after the Iran war delayed several large enterprise deals in the Middle East.
Kevin Warsh told the Senate he won't be Trump's "sock puppet" at the Fed. At his confirmation hearing, the Fed Chair nominee said Trump never asked him to fix interest rate decisions. He outlined plans for what he calls "regime change" at the central bank and declined to commit to holding press conferences after every FOMC meeting.
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The Big Story
Economic confidence just crashed, even though spending didn't.
Gallup's April Economic Confidence Index dropped 11 points to -38, the steepest one-month decline in over a year and the lowest reading since November 2023.
47% of adults now describe economic conditions as "poor." 63% say it's a bad time to find a quality job.
Republican confidence, which had been propping up the overall number, fell 15 points in a single month, the largest drop of any political group. Independents sit at -46, down 11 from March.
The timing makes this interesting. The Census Bureau's March retail sales report, released earlier this week, showed consumers spent more than anyone expected, up 1.7% month over month, beating forecasts by a wide margin. The economy grew. The mood collapsed. Both things happened at the same time.
The driver is visible at every gas station. Brent crude has surged more than 55% since the Iran war began. Gas prices shape how people feel about everything else, including whether it's a good time to switch jobs or ask for a raise.
Here's the gap worth watching: consumers are still spending, employers are still hiring (214K claims this week, near historic lows), and most corporate earnings are beating. But the mood has decoupled from the data. When 63% of people think it's a bad time to find a job, fewer people look, even if the actual market would support a move.
Why it matters: The data says the economy is holding. The mood says people don't believe it. If you're planning a career move, the gap between those two things is your window. Less competition for the same number of openings.
Making Moves
74% of AI's economic gains are going to just 20% of companies.
PwC released its 2026 AI Performance Study this month, surveying 1,217 senior executives across 25 sectors. The headline: nearly three quarters of all AI-driven economic value is being captured by one-fifth of organizations. Everyone else is stuck in pilot mode.
The split isn't about which companies bought the most AI tools. The top 20% are nearly twice as likely to use AI in advanced ways, executing multiple tasks within guardrails, not running one-off experiments. And the single strongest predictor of AI-driven financial performance isn't efficiency. It's pursuing new revenue opportunities created by industry convergence.
That last point is the career signal. Companies using AI to cut costs are trimming headcount. Companies using AI to build new revenue streams are hiring for roles that didn't exist 18 months ago. Same technology, two completely different talent strategies.
Meanwhile, the training gap keeps widening. 87% of executives now use AI at work compared to 27% of frontline workers. Only 25% of workers receive any formal AI training from their employer. The people most bullish on AI are the same ones not training their teams to use it.
Why it matters: When you're evaluating a company to join, the question isn't "do they use AI." It's whether they're using it to build new things or just to cut old ones. The first group is hiring. The second group is shrinking.
Try This Out
The 5-minute AI maturity check for any company you're interviewing with.
Before your next interview, spend five minutes figuring out whether the company is in the 20% or the 80%. Open their careers page and investor relations (or Crunchbase for private companies) and look for three signals:
AI in the job titles, not just the job descriptions. If they're hiring "AI Product Managers" or "ML Platform Engineers," they're building. If AI only shows up as a paragraph about "leveraging cutting-edge technology," they're decorating.
Revenue language versus cost language. Read the last earnings call transcript (free on Seeking Alpha) or recent press releases. Search for "AI." Are they talking about new products, new markets, new revenue lines? Or is every mention tied to "efficiency," "streamlining," or "doing more with less"?
Training investments. Check their blog, Glassdoor reviews, or LinkedIn for mentions of internal AI training programs. Companies in the 20% invest in upskilling. Companies in the 80% assume people will figure it out on their own.
Two out of three signals pointing toward growth? That's a company worth targeting. Zero? You might be walking into the next restructuring.
Predict This
The Fed meets next week, April 28-29. What will the statement signal about rate cuts?
Hold rates, no signal on timing
Hold rates, hint at a June or July cut
Hold rates, push any cut language to 2027
Markets are pricing a 99.4% chance of no change. The real question is whether the statement language shifts at all given $96 oil, the Gallup confidence drop, and still-resilient consumer spending data.
Worth Reading
Natural GLP-1 discovered in joint fluid for the first time, potentially opening a new arthritis treatment using existing weight-loss drugs. (Lancet Rheumatology)
A 150-year-old geometry rule was just broken by two donut-shaped surfaces that look identical locally but are different globally. (ScienceDaily)
Ancient sandstorm evidence found on Mars, the first definitive proof of intense dust storms in Gale Crater over 3 billion years ago. (Geology)
