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Fed Chair Kevin Warsh? A busy week continued apace on Thursday, with investors spending the trading session digesting the first set of Big Tech earnings results from Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Tesla. Just as that session ended, Apple offered more earnings drama. If that weren’t enough, late this evening, the Senate and White House came to a spending agreement, seemingly ending the threat of another government shutdown. |
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And, a few minutes after that news, President Donald Trump said he would announce his new pick to chair the Federal Reserve tomorrow morning. “Just an outstanding person, and a person that won’t be too surprising to people,” Trump said about his still-secret nominee tonight from the premiere of a documentary about his wife. |
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Trump added: “A lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago. It’s going to be somebody that’s very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world, and I think it’s going to be a very good choice. |
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So much for a slow Friday. |
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My colleague Matt Peterson has more on what to expect here. |
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Trump’s comments tonight have prediction markets upping their bets on Warsh, who was once said to be a candidate for Fed chair before Trump nominated Jerome Powell in 2017. Warsh’s odds had surged to 85% on Polymarket as of 8 p.m. |
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As for today’s stock trading, the major indexes were deeply in the red this morning. An afternoon rally stemmed the losses, with the S&P 500 down just 0.1%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average managing to rise 56 points, or 0.1% |
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The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite still struggled, perhaps because of Microsoft’s earnings report, which sparked new fears about the returns from all that big spending on AI. Interestingly, investors cheered results from Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, which is also spending vast sums on AI. My colleague Martin Baccardax explains the divergence in reactions here: |
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Microsoft’s plotline is simply more convoluted than Meta’s. Capacity constraints kept it from meeting all of its client computing demand, and its longer-term plans to boost Copilot capabilities used up a larger chunk of the remainder |
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Shares of Apple were only modestly higher in late-trading tonight after the company easily beat Wall Street estimates and reported what it called its “best-ever quarter” for the iPhone. Its other product segments were less impressive, though. |
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Read all of our Apple earnings coverage here. |
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| - | Last | Chg% |
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↑ Dow Jones Industrial Average | 49,071.56 | +0.11% | ↓ S&P 500 Index | 6,969.01 | -0.13% | ↓ NASDAQ Composite Index | 23,685.12 | -0.72% |
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1/29/2026, 8:32:54 PM ET |
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The Hot Stock: Southwest Airlines +18.7%
The Biggest Loser: Las Vegas Sands -14.0% |
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Best Sector: Communication Services +2.9%
Worst Sector: Information Technology -1.9% |
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