eli terminal
Morning Report · Pre-Open
Monday April 27, 2026  •  6:00 AM ET  •  Powell’s Last Week

IRGC Boarded Two Ships

Brent ran 9.1% in five sessions to $107.36. Cleveland Fed’s daily CPI nowcast hit 5.62% Friday. The 10-year held 4.31%. Eight trading sessions to Powell’s last FOMC.

CLEV CPI 5.62% 3mo high  ·  10Y 4.31%  ·  TIP 111.80 92% rng  ·  BRENT 100.90 +9.1% 5d  ·  WTI 95.81 +8.0% 5d  ·  SMH 506.48 +7.5% 5d  ·  KRE 68.89 −1.2% 5d  ·  NIKKEI 60,537 3mo high  ·  VIX 19.23 +0.5pt
Cleveland Fed daily CPI nowcast — 3 months
Cleveland Fed CPI nowcast climbing from 2.41 percent on February 6 to 5.62 percent on April 24, sitting at the high end of its three-month range

Daily real-time CPI estimate. 2.41% February 6 → 5.62% April 24. The model has historically beat consensus surveys.

5.62%. The Cleveland Fed’s daily CPI nowcast printed 5.62% on April 24, the highest reading in the three-month series. The same model started February 6 at 2.41%. The 10-year yield is 4.31%, mid-range; TIPS sit at 92.5% of their three-month range; the 30-year is 4.65%. The rates desk has not moved with the model.

$107.36. Brent printed $107.36 intraday on April 23, then closed Friday at $100.90. The April 22 low was $92.29 — a $15 range across two sessions. The forward curve sits in -26.1% backwardation through April 2027, steeper than -21.8% on April 21. Iran’s IRGC boarded two container ships near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend; WTI jumped to $96, Brent topped $107.

Powell’s last meeting

3.50–3.75%. Powell holds his final FOMC press conference Wednesday at 2:30 PM ET. Headline CPI printed 3.3% in March; energy was up 12.5% year-over-year. Markets price a 100% probability of a hold. April is not a projections meeting, so no dot plot — every word in the statement carries more interpretive weight than usual.

31% to 97%. The prediction-market contract on Warsh confirmed-by-May-15 was 31% on April 21 and 97% Sunday. Tillis dropped his blockade Sunday after the DOJ ended its Powell renovation probe Friday. Banking Committee vote Wednesday, full Senate after. Powell’s term expires mid-May; Warsh inherits the cycle.

Five-day sector dispersion — semis vs regional banks
SMH semiconductor ETF up 7.5 percent over five sessions while KRE regional bank ETF down 1.2 percent over the same window, both starting from the same April 22 close

SMH 470.95 → 506.48 (+7.5%, ~3σ). KRE 69.74 → 68.89 (−1.2%, at floor). 8.7pp gap inside the same five-day tape.

The equity tell

+7.5% vs −1.2%. The semiconductor ETF SMH ran +7.5% over five sessions through Friday — a three-sigma move. Regional banks (KRE) printed −1.2%, at 9.6% of their five-day range. Utilities rallied +2.2%, biotech fell −3.2%, regional banks at the floor. Inside the same tape, the AI-capex narrative paid SMH while front-end rate persistence pinned KRE.

93–96%. Five mega-caps report between Wednesday and Thursday. Prediction markets price each at 93–96% probability of beating earnings. Microsoft consensus expects $4.04 EPS / $81.4B revenue / Azure +28% YoY. Alphabet $2.83 / $107B / cloud growth. Meta $7.51 / $55.5B / +31% YoY top-line. The market does not differentiate by setup; the contracts are uniform.

September 1. Tim Cook becomes Executive Chairman; John Ternus becomes Apple CEO effective September 1, 2026. The succession was announced last week. AAPL traded at 72% of its three-month range over that window — the announcement landed in a recovery, not a crash. The deepest Apple-specific prediction market (“Cook leaves before July”) held at 4% throughout, correctly pricing the September date.

TIP ETF — inflation-protected Treasuries, 3 months
TIP ETF rising from 110.39 to 111.80 over three months, sitting at 92.5 percent of the range, indicating real-yield compression as breakeven inflation expectations rise faster than nominal yields

110.39 → 111.80 over 3 months. 92.5% of range. Nominal 10-year held flat — the bid is in real yields.

Eight days

Eight trading sessions. FOMC Wednesday. Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon Wednesday. Apple Thursday. Q1 GDP Thursday. March PCE Thursday. April NFP Friday. May 13 brings the official April CPI release. Six sequential data events across nine trading days, with the Cleveland nowcast running daily underneath.

40% / $776K. The deepest macro contract on the prediction-market page is “Fed cuts zero times in 2026,” sitting at 40% on $776K of volume. The companion contract priced 0% probability of a cut at this Wednesday’s meeting. “Unemployment reaches 5.5% in 2026” trades $184K at 22%. Mag7 earnings beat probabilities cluster at 93–96%. The deepest prediction surface this morning is identity questions — who, whether — not how-much.

The Cleveland nowcast is the daily question Powell answers Wednesday without saying its name. If the model prints near 5.62% on May 13, the 0-cuts-2026 contract at 40% looks underpriced and the TIP rally has more left. If energy mean-reverts, the −26% Brent backwardation goes with it.
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eli terminal · April 27, 2026 · numbers-first commentary