Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• This earnings season, top execs are reversing guidance.

• How a soon-to-launch crypto equity ETF looks to be different.

• It’s shaping up to be another down week for stocks. Here’s what’s on the calendar. 

Guidance reversal

As the global trade war rages on, US companies navigating earnings season are being cautious to avoid forward-looking statements. 

We’ve already seen Delta Airlines pull its 2025 guidance, with executives saying tariff policy  “uncertainty” makes future projections challenging. CarMax also withdrew its long-term growth timeline. 

“Why put a target out there that’s really speculative, not knowing exactly where this environment is going to go?” CarMax CEO and president Bill Nash said on the company’s earnings call earlier this month. 

United Airlines executives took a different approach, opting on their earnings call to provide investors with two vastly different profit forecasts. On the high end — should conditions remain “stable” — adjusted earnings per share could be as high as $13.50. On the low end — if the US economy enters a recession — EPS could dip to $7. 

President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff policies may not be directly reflected in Q1 earnings. But we know that companies and consumers have changed their behavior in the past few months in anticipation of a global trade shift. 

US retail sales were up 1.4% in March, with big-ticket items like cars leading the way — a sign consumers were looking to lock in prices ahead of tariffs going into effect. The US ISM manufacturing inventories index also rose last month, signaling companies may have been stockpiling goods and supplies before import prices go up. 

The first of the so-called Magnificent 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla) are scheduled to report earnings this week. Tesla kicks things off tomorrow, and Alphabet’s call is slated for Thursday. 

Tesla will be particularly interesting to watch — because of CEO Elon Musk’s ties to the White House and because tariffs are expected to impact the electric vehicle company. 

Despite Tesla ramping up its domestic supply chain in recent years and assembling its cars in the US, the company relies heavily on foreign imports (especially from China). On Tesla’s Q4 2024 earnings call, CFO Vaibhav Taneja said tariffs are expected to have an impact on the company’s “business and profitability.” 

For Alphabet, investors will be waiting to hear how executives are thinking about global macroeconomic conditions. Business spending is expected to decrease with tariffs, leading to a smaller global ad market. Retail ads represent almost a quarter of Google’s ad revenue, analysts from Oppenheimer estimate. 

Alphabet in February said it would invest $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 — spending that would help build out its AI offerings and data center infrastructure. The company has not yet adjusted this figure, but we will be listening on Thursday.

We’ve written before about how we’ll be watching quarterly cost accruals this earnings season. This is not a market that will reward outperformance on earnings, so we could see companies intentionally increase reported expenses to “save” any extra earnings for later this year. 

Coming up, Meta and Microsoft are scheduled to report on April 30. Results for the rest of the Mag 7 are slated for May.

— Casey Wagner

Markets Don’t Build. Builders Do.

Permissionless IV isn’t about momentum trades or macro predictions — it's about what’s already being shipped by the people rewriting crypto’s foundation.

Infra. DeFi. Consumer apps. Modular design.
This is where the next cycle gets built.

Hear from:

• Hayden Adams (Uniswap) on what it takes to build at scale.

• Jesse Pollak (Base) on bringing crypto to millions — without compromising what matters.

• Kain Warwick (Infinex) on where DeFi goes next.

• Mert Mumtaz (Helius) on what real infra looks like under pressure.

📅 June 24–26 | Brooklyn, NY

The likely nearer-term parameters for bitcoin, according to Ledn’s John Glover.

Bitcoin was hovering around $87,000 Monday afternoon — up about 4% from a week ago. Still, Glover said in a Monday email we could test the $73,000 level again and ultimately complete the five-wave pattern at a price around $136,000. 

Remember we chatted with him about Elliot Wave Theory last month? A close below $73,000 could mean a rapid move toward $62,500, Glover added. 

As you may recall, financial advisers in a January Bitwise/VettaFi survey said equity ETFs were their top choice for gaining crypto exposure in 2025. 

And, more recently, 10T Holdings founder Dan Tapiero said on stage at the Digital Asset Summit that people will always like investing in companies with cash flows, a balance sheet, a board of directors, etc.

VanEck’s Onchain Economy ETF (NODE) — set to launch next month — looks to be different from the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), for example — or even its own Digital Transformation ETF (DAPP).

DAPP holds 20 names. Strategy is the top holding, representing nearly 11% of the portfolio. If you add bitcoin miners to the MSTR position, that’s where a majority of the fund’s assets are allocated.

While MSTR has driven gains, most miners have not offered great “across-the-cycle returns,” noted VanEck digital assets research head Matthew Sigel. He’s set to manage NODE.

With a target launch date of May 14, NODE plans to instead look for opportunities across a broader universe of more than 130 companies. Here’s how it labels them in the prospectus:

The fact NODE will focus less on the volatile mining space (filled with bankruptcies and the like) means that “maybe long-term allocators would be more willing to hold this one over a multi-year horizon,” Sigel told me.

He didn’t want to name possible top holdings. But Sigel mentioned the opportunity in “downstream and midstream energy companies” tied to BTC mining that offer a different volatility/beta to bitcoin than the pure-play miners.   

He added: “There are a number of Web2 companies globally that have been more forward-thinking about adopting stablecoins and digital assets more broadly. And we’re focused not only on the revenue opportunity directly, but also on how crypto rails can improve the cost structure of many traditional companies.”

There’s also the fact that more crypto companies (and those wading into the space) are expected to go public (eToro, Circle, etc.).

Sigel said: “We count more than $10 billion of IPOs in the pipeline that should make for interesting hunting ground over the next year for active equity investors.” 

— Ben Strack

Happy Monday! Earnings season continues after a shortened trading week left US stocks in the red. Investors will have several Fed speakers and key economic data reports to digest in the coming days. 

Here’s what we’re watching: 

• Fed presidents Patrick Harker (Philly), Neel Kashkari (Minneapolis) and Tom Barkin (Richmond) are each slated to deliver remarks tomorrow, followed by Fed Governor Christopher Waller on Wednesday. Analysts from Goldman Sachs and Morningstar are still calling for three rate cuts in 2025, and the majority of traders polled by Reuters said the same. Still, the Fed has given no indication it will step in to save markets anytime soon. 

• Also on Wednesday we’ll get April’s flash services and manufacturing PMI reports, both of which are expected to show a decline from March. The flash services PMI last month rose to a three-month high of 54.3 and is expected to drop to 53 this month. The manufacturing index, on the other hand, has been on the decline since February and is projected to come in just under 50 for April — signaling a contraction in the sector. 

• March’s durable goods report, considered a leading indicator, will be released Thursday. Orders are expected to come in 1.4% higher than the prior month, which would indicate that businesses have been looking to frontrun tariffs and beef up inventories.

— Casey Wagner

• Strategy last week bought 6,556 BTC for about $556 million (~$84,785 per bitcoin). The company continues to extend its big lead over all other corporate holders of the asset, now owning 538,200 BTC.

• US spot bitcoin ETFs posted nearly flat flows in last week’s four days of trading. Still, the category’s net inflows of $107 million on April 17 was the largest total since April 2.

• Meanwhile, investor capital has continued to trickle out of US ether ETFs, Farside Investors data shows. ETH’s price stood below $1,580 shortly after 2 pm ET Monday.

• One reader responded to our “favorite drink” Forward Guidance email prompt with the following: “A Matcha latte with unsweetened walnut milk. I know... very California.” We applaud their attention to detail and self-awareness.