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News of the day for April 29, 2026

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq pulled back from record highs on Tuesday.
Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Stock futures are little changed as investors prepare for a Federal Reserve decision on interest rates and a flurry of earnings reports from major tech companies; oil prices continue rising as another round of peace talks with Iran remains uncertain; the Fed's rate decision will be released this afternoon, followed by a press conference from Chair Jerome Powell; Big Tech is set to dominate earnings headlines today, with results from Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta all coming after the closing bell; and Robinhood shares are tumbling after the online exchange missed revenue and profit estimates. Here's what you need to know today.

Stock Futures Are Little Changed After Tuesday Slump

Stock futures are holding steady Wednesday as investors brace for a packed day of news from the Fed and some of the world's largest tech companies (more on both below). Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 were both hovering near unchanged recently, while those linked to the tech-heavy Nasdaq tacked on 0.3%. The major indexes each finished lower yesterday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq pulling back from record highs set Monday. Crude oil futures were up more than 3% amid uncertainty about the Iran war (read more below), while gold futures slipped 0.6% to $4,580 per ounce. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which affects interest rates on consumer loans, ticked higher to 4.36%, near its highest level in a month. Bitcoin was trading at $77,600, up from yesterday's low point of about $75,600.

WTI Futures Top $100 Again As Iran Talks Appear to Be On Hold

Oil prices are rising once again as the days without many updates on potential Iran peace talks continue to add up. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, were up 3.1% at $103 recently. There have been hopes that talks between the U.S. and Iran could take place soon, and reports have suggested there has been at least one proposal from Iran this week, without much interest from U.S. officials. Mediators in Pakistan expect to receive a new proposal from Iran in the next few days, CNN reported. Oil markets got another surprise Tuesday, when the United Arab Emirates announced plans to leave OPEC, the international oil producing cartel that helps set global prices. As oil prices continue to surge, prices at the pump in the U.S. are at their highest levels in nearly four years. The average price of a gallon of gas hit $4.23 this morning, according to AAA.

Fed Decision, Likely Last Powell Press Conference Set for This Afternoon

The Federal Open Market Committee is set to make a decision on interest rates today, with an announcement expected at 2 p.m. ET and a press conference with Fed Chair Jerome Powell a half hour later. The meeting is likely to be Powell's last as Fed Chair, as his term ends next month and his replacement, Kevin Warsh, is in the midst of the Senate confirmation process. While the Fed isn't expected to adjust its benchmark rate today, investors are eager to hear what Powell has to see about the health of the economy, particularly in light of the Iran war. The Fed's dual mandate of keeping inflation low and employment high is being threatened by the war. Soaring oil and gas prices drive inflation across the economy, which could lead to a slowdown in hiring.

Big Tech Earnings On Deck After the Closing Bell

Today is arguably the biggest day of the earnings season, with reports due after the closing bell from Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN). The companies are largely expected to post solid results, with investors and analysts eager for updates on the companies' AI spending plans, which have drawn scrutiny from market participants in recent quarters. Traders are pricing in the likelihood of big moves in the stock prices of the tech giants following the reports. Investors have set a high bar for the results, which could either propel the broader market to new highs or slow a recent rally that has been fueled by tech sector gains.

Robinhood Stock Slides on Weak Results

Shares of Robinhood (HOOD) are plunging after the online stock broker and cryptocurrency exchange's first-quarter results fell short of estimates. Last night, Robinhood reported earnings of 37 cents per share on $1.07 billion in revenue, each just below the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha. Analysts had said ahead of the report that Robinhood is well-positioned for the long term as it continues to introduce new products and diversify its offerings to attract new customers, but also said lackluster revenue and asset growth could pressure the stock in the near term. Robinhood shares were down 11% in recent premarket trading.

Experts have assumed homes have gotten more expensive because too few have been built. But what if it's something else?
Credit: J Studios / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• A San Francisco Fed analysis suggests home prices may be rising more from higher incomes than from a lack of housing supply.
• Wealthier buyers are helping push prices higher, which can make homes less affordable even in markets where supply has grown.
• That means building more homes alone may not lower prices as much as expected, shifting focus toward income gaps and demand.

An analysis by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco challenges the common assumption that homes have gotten more expensive because too few have been built.

The analysis, published earlier this month, showed that cities across the country have built housing faster than their populations have grown. Home prices, meanwhile, tend to rise alongside incomes. Indeed, the housing supply grew faster than the population, even in expensive markets like San Francisco.

In other words, rising incomes, not a shortage of housing, could be fueling the soaring cost of houses.

The research by a team led by Schuyler Louie, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, could reframe the debate over what's causing the housing affordability crisis—and how to fix it.

With rent and homeownership costs soaring relative to typical incomes, politicians from both major parties are looking for ways to bring those costs down. But the problem may have less to do with too few homes being built and more to do with high-income earners bidding up prices out of reach of everyone else.

What This Means For The Economy

The research implies that income inequality, not a housing shortage, is the reason homes have become unaffordable for many Americans in recent years.

"House price growth may simply reflect growth in housing demand, driven in part by growth in average income, such that questions of housing affordability may primarily be about differences in income growth at the top of the distribution relative to the middle," the researchers wrote.

So far, efforts have focused on increasing supply to bring costs down since today's high housing costs are partly the result of restricting supply. Groups like the National Association of Realtors and other housing advocates contend that restrictive local zoning laws, opposition to new developments, and other factors have, over the last few decades, caused a massive housing shortage.

Ending that shortage could improve housing affordability, the logic goes. For example, the Housing for the 21st Century Act, introduced last year and advancing through Congress with bipartisan support, aims to cut red tape and fund new construction.

But if Louie is correct, those solutions could be off the mark.

He argues that the affordability crisis won't be solved by building more homes alone. The deeper issue, he wrote, is "the relative distribution of economic growth across income levels"—in short, who's gaining income and where. If high earners are driving up prices in certain markets, adding supply won't help the workers being priced out.

That shift matters for policy. Bills like the Housing for the 21st Century Act focus on clearing the way for new construction. But if the research holds, a more effective target might be the labor market itself—and the growing gap between what top earners and everyone else can afford to pay for a home.

Alphabet reports earnings alongside several of its big tech peers on Wednesday.
Credit: Matthias Balk / picture alliance / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Expectations are rising ahead of Google parent Alphabet's earnings report on Wednesday.
• Recent wins for Google's AI models and growing chip business have helped power shares to record highs this year.

Google parent Alphabet could face an increasingly difficult bar to clear to impress investors with its quarterly results tomorrow.

Expectations are rising ahead of what analysts are projecting could be a blockbuster report from the tech giant, after a series of new partnerships and wins for its AI models that have boosted enthusiasm for the shares, amid a broader tech rally and improving sentiment around the AI industry.

Shares of Alphabet (GOOGL) have rallied to record highs in recent weeks, with the shares up 11% since the start of the year compared to a 4% rise for the S&P 500. Among the the Magnificent Seven, it trails only Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN), which are up about 14% and 13%, respectively. Amazon is also due to release its earnings Wednesday, while Nvidia is set to report next month.

Why This Matters to Investors

Earnings from Alphabet and several other tech giants this week could provide the catalyst for the AI trade to keep rallying, or pull back if the results don't meet investors' growing expectations.

Alphabet is now seen reporting revenue of $107.02 billion for the first quarter, a figure that has climbed in the days leading up to the report, and would represent a nearly 19% rise from a year ago. Its earnings per share are projected to fall 3 cents to $2.73 amid growing AI spending.

Analysts have said they will be watching closely for indications that demand is improving for Google's Gemini AI products, along with growth in the company's advertising revenue and Google Cloud's computing services.

Alphabet shares were little changed Tuesday, on a day when several AI-related stocks slipped following a report that OpenAI missed some revenue and user growth targets.

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will release results after the closing bell

Investor anticipation is running high ahead of the flurry of Big Tech earnings reports.
Credit: Getty Images

Four of America's most valuable companies are set to report earnings after the closing bell Wednesday, in what could potentially be the biggest event of this earnings season.

The lineup includes results from "Magnificent Seven" members Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL), and traders anticipate big moves in the companies' share prices following the releases. Apple (AAPL), another member of the group of major tech companies, is scheduled to report its results on Thursday.

Here's what investors should expect from each of the companies that are due to report Wednesday shortly after 4:00 p.m. ET.

Alphabet

For Google parent Alphabet, Wednesday's report could be an opportunity for the stock to extend a recent rally fueled by a slew of deals, wins for Google's Gemini and improving sentiment about AI demand. Based on recent options pricing, traders expect Alphabet's stock could swing up to 5% by Friday's close, which could either take the stock to another record or pull it back to its levels a week ago. Alphabet shares, which hit a record high on Monday, have gained nearly 12% since the start of the year, outpacing the S&P 500 index's 4% rise.

Amazon

Amazon's stock is expected to move nearly 7% by the end of the week, which on the upside would take it above the records set just last week. Several Wall Street firms, including JPMorgan and Bank of America, said they're expecting strong results from the e-commerce and cloud giant on gains in its Amazon Web Services, thanks to booming AI demand. Amazon shares have risen 12.5% so far in 2026.

Meta

The Facebook and Instagram parent's stock is seen swinging as much as 6.5% by the end of the week, which could have the shares approaching the peak of the rally that followed the company's earnings report in January. Meta, as with the other big tech firms reporting earnings this week, will likely face questions about its massive AI spending plans, though it's already shown some early success in translating its AI investments to gains in its ad business. Meta shares have gained 25% over the past month amid a big rally in tech stocks, though are only slightly in positive territory for the year.

Microsoft

Current options pricing suggests traders expect Microsoft stock could move as much as 6.5% in either direction by the end of that week, which could send the stock to its highest point since Microsoft's last earnings report in late January, before worries about the company's AI spending and exposure to OpenAI sent shares tumbling. Microsoft shares have shed 11% of their value since the start of the year despite posting big gains over the past month.

Take a Number: A Striking Figure In Economic News Today

Credit: Investopedia / Elizabeth Guevara

Key Takeaways

• Gasoline prices are squeezing the budgets of people with lower incomes.
• The Iran war has driven up oil prices, pushing up gas prices by more than $1 a gallon since March.
• U.S. consumers used their tax refunds to cover higher costs, but the gas crunch may force spending cutbacks as early as May, according to one analysis.

Call them the ten-percenters: as of March, just over 10% of U.S. households were spending 10% or more of their incomes on gasoline.

That's according to the Bank of America Institute, which studied the bank's own deposit data to see how much customers were spending to pay for gasoline that's shot up in price since the Iran war began Feb. 28. The share of households devoting 10% or more of their budgets to gas was up from 8% the same month in 2025, and was the most since 2022, when nearly 15% of households were in that position.

The data underscore the serious impact of the Iran war on household budgets, especially for those with less wiggle room to absorb higher pump prices. With the crucial Strait of Hormuz still closed to shipping because of the war, crude oil prices have continued to rise and gas prices along with them.

As of Tuesday, a gallon of regular gasoline averaged $4.18 a gallon, up from $2.98 before the war, according to AAA. The energy crunch has strained finances and threatens to push prices of other products as higher transportation costs get passed down the supply chain.

What This Means For The Economy

Higher gasoline prices threaten the ability of American consumers to keep spending, especially those with lower incomes, who will have to cut their budgets somewhere to afford pricier fuel.

"Higher gasoline prices are stretching household budgets, with the greatest impact on lower-income consumers," BofA Institute researchers led by Senior Economist David Michael Tinsley wrote.

Better-off households are still feeling the financial pinch, albeit not as severely. A median-earning family with two vehicles is shelling out an extra $70 a month for gas, equivalent to 1% of their income, according to an analysis this week by the Brookings Institution think tank.

With so much extra cash now going toward gasoline, economists are wondering whether and when consumers will start cutting back on other purchases. That would be bad news for the health of the economy, since 68% of GDP comes from consumer spending.

So far, there's little evidence of that happening: the onset of the Iran war coincided with tax season, and many households have used their refunds to offset the higher prices, economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a commentary this week. But with tax season over, that could soon change.

"It’s likely that consumers will continue broadly to maintain their discretionary spending into April, despite still-elevated gas prices," they wrote. "But this support will fade rapidly in May, as the normal filing deadline passed on April 15."

J.P. Morgan returned to the top slot it held in 2024 after dropping seven spots last year.
Credit: Emanuele Cremaschi / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• JPMorgan Chase reclaimed the top spot on LinkedIn's 2026 U.S. Top Companies list.
• LinkedIn's ranking rules out companies that have recently laid off more than 10% of their workforce.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reclaimed the top spot Tuesday on LinkedIn's annual ranking of the best U.S. workplaces for career growth, the list's 10th edition.

LinkedIn scores companies in eight categories, including promotion rates, skills growth, attrition and gender diversity, drawn from its own platform data on how employees move and grow. It disqualifies any firm that cut more than 10% of its workforce in the prior year. That filter has greater salience in 2026: more than 92,000 tech jobs have been eliminated industrywide so far this year, on top of almost 125,000 in 2025.

LinkedIn says all 50 companies on its list are hiring, with more than 100,000 open roles combined, down from 129,000 for last year's top 50.

JPMorgan Reclaims No. 1, Microsoft Joins the Top 5

JPMorgan held the top spot in 2024, fell to No. 8 last year, and now returns to No. 1. A LinkedIn spokesperson said JPMorgan's investment in workforce AI training stood out, with the bank putting AI into the daily work of 300,000 employees rather than confining it to a separate training track. CEO Jamie Dimon said in February that 150,000 employees use the bank's internal large language model every week.

Microsoft's No. 3 ranking results from a change in LinkedIn's criteria. Until this year, LinkedIn excluded its parent company, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT), and its subsidiaries, given the conflict of interest. The 2026 list includes Microsoft but excludes LinkedIn and its employees from Microsoft's score, as well as Deloitte, because the firm audits Microsoft.

The only other new company among the top 10 is Bank of America (BAC), which moved up from No. 11 last year.

Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon.com (AMZN), and Apple (AAPL) have appeared in every list since the ranking launched in 2016. Alphabet ranked No. 1 last year.

Why This Matters To You

All 50 companies on LinkedIn's list are hiring, according to LinkedIn, but the open roles cluster around a small number of the largest U.S. employers. If you're targeting them, AI fluency is now a baseline expectation at every hiring level.

The AI Upskilling Push

Spending on employee retraining helped many companies onto the list. Amazon has committed $2.5 billion to its Future Ready 2030 program, which expands education and skills training companywide. Alphabet offers free AI certification courses through Google. JPMorgan's "AI Made Easy" program has trained thousands of employees on prompt engineering and generative AI applications.

A LinkedIn spokesperson said the platform's Top Companies see almost twice the rate of "boomerang" employees—workers who leave and later return—compared with other companies tracked on the platform. That's "a clear sign that the skills and experience people build there create a pull that endures even after they leave," the spokesperson said.

Several top-ranked firms have also led the AI layoff wave. Microsoft cut more than 15,000 jobs in 2025 and offered voluntary buyouts to about 7% of its U.S. workforce this month. Amazon has eliminated about 30,000 corporate roles since October 2025, about 10% of its corporate and tech workforce.

All three remain on the list because their cuts fell just under the 10% disqualification threshold.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (pictured) declared "code red" at the start-up last year in response to intense competition.
Credit: Daniel Heuer / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• OpenAI's growth has reportedly fallen short of the company's forecasts in recent months, raising concerns about the unprofitable start-up's centrality to the burgeoning AI economy.
• OpenAI has reportedly committed to spend $600 billion on computing capacity by the end of the decade; those commitments could be at risk unless growth reaccelerates or investors come to the rescue.

The sustainability of AI spending was in question Tuesday. The reason? Reports of slowing growth at OpenAI, the start-up that’s helped fuel the AI trade with its promise to spend hundreds of billions in the coming years.

OpenAI reportedly missed internal revenue and user forecasts in recent months, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The company expected to end 2025 with 1 billion weekly active users, a milestone it has yet to reach four months into 2026. ChatGPT also reportedly missed its 2025 revenue target and monthly targets earlier this year.

OpenAI’s slowing growth has reportedly led CFO Sarah Friar to question whether the company will be able to pay for the computing contracts it’s signed with cloud providers like Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN). The company reportedly expects to spend about $600 billion on computing through 2030. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Some experts suggest not reading too much into the latest news, but the Journal's report has shaken investor confidence in the AI picks-and-shovels rally, which depends on contracts like OpenAI’s. Shares of Oracle, which burst onto the AI data center scene last year when it inked a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, were down nearly 4% in recent trading. Memory stocks like Sandisk (SNDK), chipmakers like Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO), as well as AI-adjacent stocks like gas turbine maker GE Vernova (GEV), were also lower on Tuesday as investors waited for a raft of big tech earnings coming later this week.

Why This Matters

Since releasing ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has since become one of the most valuable companies in the world and a key driver of the stock market's AI rally. But its slowing growth raises questions about whether it and competitors can continue to burn through cash without a clearer idea of what the AI economy will look like.

If revenue growth slows, OpenAI could be forced to increase its reliance on lenders and investors to pay for its contracted services. The company last month raised $122 billion at an $850 billion valuation, the largest funding round ever—though it’s expected to burn through all of that cash, and possibly more, in the next three years before turning cash flow positive in 2029 or 2030.

“We believe that recent concerns around OpenAI are overblown with the company having enough capital to fulfill its compute capacity needs over at least the next three years,” wrote Wedbush analysts, citing the recent fundraising round, on Tuesday. Wedbush expects the company’s IPO, which could happen before the end of the year, “will provide sufficient liquidity for its commitments in the long-term.”

OpenAI’s slowdown comes as competition between AI labs intensifies. According to the Journal, OpenAI has struggled with defection rates among ChatGPT subscribers. CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” late last year, instructing OpenAI employees to prioritize work on ChatGPT, its flagship product, to fend off competition from Google’s Gemini, which began receiving rave reviews in the fall.

This year, competition has heated up with rival start-up Anthropic, whose Claude coding agent and latest model, Mythos, have respectively astounded and scared experts with their capabilities. Anthropic’s annualized revenue surpassed OpenAI’s last month, growing to $30 billion from $9 billion at the end of last year.

Wall Street has at times bristled at the thicket of partnerships that have made OpenAI a linchpin of the burgeoning AI economy. In September, OpenAI and Nvidia announced a deal for OpenAI to deploy Nvidia’s most advanced chips in exchange for a $100 billion investment. Just weeks later, OpenAI inked a deal with Nvidia competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that gave it the right to acquire a large stake in its supplier. Some market watchers fear OpenAI’s web of deals make the unprofitable start-up a relatively weak but essential link in the AI data center boom.

Others urge skepticism about bearish theories. “Investors shouldn't mistake a revenue miss for a verdict on AI. The long-term thesis is intact,” said Joseph Alagna, Founding Partner at Buttonwood Funds. “What this moment is telling us is that the path to monetization is more measured than the capital markets priced in. That's not a reason to exit, it's a reason to be selective.”

Five Magnificent 7 companies are set to report their latest quarterly results this week.
Credit: Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Tech stocks have been hot lately, which could mean high expectations for their results, outlooks and spending plans when a slew of major reports land later this week.
• One expert, though, says big tech firms may not need to show AI leading to substantial revenue growth, rather than just cost savings and product improvements, until next year.

Tech stocks have been easy money all month. Now investors want to see hard proof that returns on big tech spending are coming.

Broad market indexes including the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have rallied in April as investors have bid up the U.S.'s biggest technology companies. Those moves have built anticipation for the big tech earnings show-and-tell this week, with reports due Wednesday from Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META), and Microsoft (MSFT), then Apple (AAPL) a day later.

Investors have backed off tech shares a bit today, but expectations for this quarter's earnings are running hot. The Q1 blended net profit margin—a combination of results and estimates—of 13.4%, if realized, would be the highest on record since FactSet started tracking the metric, the organization's John Butters recently noted. And if markets deem the tech majors' earnings reports due this week "good enough," experts say, U.S. stocks could continue climbing.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

Which way the war in Iran and monetary policy will swing remains an open question, making good results from major technology companies all the more important to investors.

The "key" this week is whether the companies that have spent hundreds of billions of dollars building their AI capabilities have enough to show for it, said Saira Malik, chief investment officer at Nuveen, on CNBC Tuesday.

"The easy money has been made in this rally," said Malik, so the question now is whether the results are "going to be good enough for markets."

There may be less risk for a "sell the news" situation around tech earnings now because not all investors have been buying the rumor. Despite the rally of the past few weeks, flows and portfolio allocations suggest that some investors were "skeptical of the bounce," leaving "room for bullish capitulation" that could drive prices even higher, according to Barclays U.S. equity strategy team led by Venu Krishna.

At least one industry expert says that tech majors won't have to "show the goods" until the end of the year as investors start to look to 2027,—but the goods will mean revenue growth, not just cost cutting and working large language models into products.

"We have seen some big cost saving use-cases, right? I don't like to see people get fired, but tech fired 80,000 people last quarter," Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, told CNBC on Tuesday. "If you get a company like Apple, they're really going to have to be successful not just putting AI on Siri, on your phone, but they have to come up with some standalone AI products that generate a lot of revenue."

Some prediction-markets watchers have expressed concerns about insider activity.
Credit: Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• The Justice Department last week said an American soldier used classified information to reap profits of over $400,000 on a Polymarket wager linked to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the latest development to raise questions about insider activity on the platforms.
• Kalshi has touted a continuing crackdown on insider activity that has included fining and suspending congressional candidates it said placed bets on contracts tied to their own campaigns.

An American soldier has been charged with using classified information to win big on prediction markets, wagers that raised eyebrows when they were made —and which are now focusing attention on the markets themselves.

It remains to be seen whether prediction markets—the burgeoning venues that let folks make simple, often binary bets on events that run the gamut from sports and awards shows to central bank policy, corporate earnings and elections—will face a of reckoning in response to revelations suggesting that people profited, or attempted to, by improperly using "inside" information to bet on Maduro's capture and other events. Those revelations have raised questions about the integrity of the markets and those who trade in them, but also issues of national security and social mores.

But government officials and companies—including the markets operators themselves—have weighed in lately, intensifying scrutiny from media organizations, market participants and others; arresting suspected parties; dispensing charges and fines; and, in some cases, banning users.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

People using, or attempting to use, confidential information for personal gain, can put prediction markets at odds with authorities and regulators.

The Justice Department last week said the soldier, who allegedly used classified information related to the timing of the U.S. military operation to capture Maduro in Venezuela on a Polymarket wager, won more than $400,000 doing so. The soldier "participated in the planning and execution" of the effort, the government said.

“Prediction markets are not a haven for using misappropriated confidential or classified information for personal gain,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.

And Kalshi recently said it suspended and fined three congressional candidates—from Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia—for trading on event contracts tied to their own campaigns.

Shayne Coplan, founder and chief of Polymarket, after the Venezuela charges were filed said he was "grateful" that the government "acknowledged Polymarket's cooperation." Kalshi said all three cases of "political insider trading" were flagged thanks to its "newly released safeguards." Polymarket did not respond to Investopedia's request for further comment in time for publication, while Kalshi referred to its previous statement about the three political cases.

The U.S. venues operated by Kalshi and Polymarket are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has started the process of setting new rules and guardrails for them. But if bad actors can circumvent safeguards to access restricted sites like Polymarket's international venue, and big potential payouts are driving people to attempt to manipulate outcomes—like taking a hair dryer to a weather sensor, with authorities in France investigating possible tampering tied to a temperature-related bet— the markets' issues may be a challenge to effectively address.

Several states have prohibited their employees from using nonpublic information to trade, as have some hedge funds and other financial institutions.

At least one shop that wants to launch prediction markets ETFs is chalking up the latest developments to industry growing pains. Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, in a recent interview with Investopedia likened the latest events to the early days of cryptocurrency, though he sees prediction markets as starting with a stronger regulatory foundation.

"What we're seeing is those markets maturing in front of our eyes," Hougan said.

Gas station attendant Wojak Atur pumps gas for a customer at the Empire Gas Station in East Hampton , New York, on April 27.
Credit: James Carbone / Newsday RM via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• An index measuring consumer confidence ticked up in April but remained low enough to warn of a recession risk.
• The Conference Board's index improved slightly when a ceasefire in the Iran war raised stock prices.
• Measures of consumer confidence have signaled pessimism, raising concerns among economists about household spending in the coming months.

The mood of consumers grew a little less dismal in April as the ceasefire in the Iran war raised hopes the conflict's economic disruptions would subside.

That's according to the Consumer Confidence Index, which edged up slightly to 92.8 from 92.2 in March, reaching its highest level since December, the Conference Board, an economic research think tank, said Tuesday. That was higher than forecasters' expectations, who called for the index to fall to 89.

The survey was conducted April 1–22, capturing the ceasefire announcement earlier in the month and the subsequent surge in stock prices. Still, the index remained low by historic standards, with a sub-index measuring future expectations below 80, a level that usually signals a recession on the horizon.

The index is based on a survey of 3,000 U.S. adults, who answer questions about their expectations for inflation, their own spending plans, and their assessment of the job market and other aspects of the economy and their own finances.

Economists view consumer confidence measures as a significant, although imperfect, indicator of how willing and able people are to spend money. It's an important consideration for the trajectory of the economy, since consumer spending accounts for most economic growth as measured by the Gross Domestic Product.

Consumer confidence measures have been flashing warning signs that people are in a pessimistic mood, and the uptick in April did little to change that trend. Economists cited surging gas prices as a result of the Iran war's disruption to oil supplies as a major factor behind the discontent.

What This Means For The Economy

Consumers don't necessarily cut back on spending when confidence is low, but economists are keeping an eye on the continued foul mood of the public and whether it will lead to reduced spending.

"People are clearly still worried about the war in Iran and high gas prices —and how long those high prices will stick around," Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a commentary. "The Conference Board keeps pointing out that Americans over 35 are growing more pessimistic and their index shows especially strong declines for Gen X and Baby Boomers. This is important to monitor as Baby Boomers are now spending their wealth and how they feel will be critical for the economy.”

The increase in the index was driven by improvement in consumers' assessments of how easy it was to get a job, a downtick in inflation expectations, and an increase in the percentage of people who thought stocks would be higher in a year.

The Conference Board's survey painted a different picture of consumer attitudes than the other major survey measuring consumer optimism, the University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment, which fell to its lowest level in the 70-year history of the poll in April. The two surveys ask different questions and are calculated differently, leading to them emphasizing different aspects of people's attitudes toward the economy.

"The design of the UofM survey makes it much more sensitive to changes in inflation than the Conference Board’s survey, which is more closely tied to developments in the labor market," Richard de Chazal, macro analyst at William Blair Equity Research, wrote in a commentary. "Hence, the divergence clearly shows exactly what is bothering consumers at the moment."