Chapter 1: What is the market update for April 22, 2026?
Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, April 22nd.
In today's episode, we'll tell you why SpaceX is buying an AI coding startup for $60 billion. We'll also tell you the latest deal that Palantir signed with the U.S. government. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much larger tax refunds are this year compared to last year. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.
Stocks were back in the red on Tuesday with the S&P and Nasdaq both falling around 0.6% as the Iran situation heated back up again. Markets actually opened up higher yesterday, but then headlines started dropping about Vice President J.D. Vance's trip to Pakistan for peace talks. being delayed.
Now, the ceasefire was set to expire today, but then shortly after the market closed yesterday, President Trump posted that he was extending the ceasefire indefinitely, but he was also maintaining the US naval blockade of Iranian ports until Iran came back with a real proposal. So the good news is the ceasefire is still active. The bad news is the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
The US Navy won't let any Iranian ships through while Iran's Navy won't let any other ships through. In fact, Iran's Navy said they seized two ships yesterday trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz. So the situation isn't getting any better, which is why oil prices are starting to move higher again. Brent crude is hovering around $100 a barrel while WTI is back above $90 a barrel.
So we'll see where the market goes from here. I think for the most part, though, investors have decided that corporate earnings matter more right now than geopolitics. So far, earnings have come in strong. I mean, it's still early, but about 82% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings have beat. So that's a good early signal of what's to come. Now, zooming out, let's talk about cash.
Kevin Warsh, that's the guy who President Trump nominated to be the next Fed chair. He had his confirmation hearing yesterday on Capitol Hill and he got grilled by senators. The worry with Warsh is that he will do whatever President Trump tells him to do when it comes to interest rates instead of keeping the Fed independent.
Warsh pushed back on that saying that he'd be an independent actor and that Trump has never asked him to commit to any particular rate cut decision. But then when he was pressed on whether he agreed with Trump's call to lower rates to around 1%, he kind of dodged the question. So we'll see what ends up happening there.
The other wrinkle here is that Republican Senator Tom Tillis is actually blocking Walsh's confirmation until the DOJ drops its investigation into Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell's term as Fed chair expires on May 15th. So there's a real chance that Walsh might not be confirmed before then. And then Jerome Powell would continue to serve as Fed chair until Walsh does eventually get confirmed.
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Chapter 2: How does geopolitical tension affect oil prices?
And the problem is that XAI's chatbot Grok has fallen behind competitors like Anthropix Cloud and OpenAI's Codex, especially when it comes to coding. So acquiring Cursor could help them level up in that category. And for Cursor, I mean, this deal would give them access to XAI's computing infrastructure, which is something they've said has been holding back their growth.
You know, training AI models takes a ton of computing power, and Cursor just didn't have enough on their own. So yeah, I guess this deal makes sense for both sides. And the bigger picture here is the upcoming SpaceX IPO. They're expected to go public sometime this summer with a valuation north of $1 trillion, maybe even $2 trillion.
So by getting the rights to acquire Cursor, SpaceX can now make the case to investors that they're not just a rockets and Starlink company, they're a full-blown AI company. And companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are trading at very high multiples right now. So yeah, very interesting development here from SpaceX. We'll see how it all plays out. I just can't wait for the IPO, man.
It's going to be crazy. Let's shift gears and talk about Palantir. Palantir just landed a $300 million contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA plans to use Palantir's technology to help manage farmland and monitor risk to the food supply chain. There are a lot of problems right now. The trade war with China disrupted soybean markets last year.
Gas prices from the Iran conflict are driving up fertilizer and shipping costs. So the USDA is turning to Palantir to help manage all of these risks. Palantir is kind of known for working with the defense and military side of the government, but this deal could prove that their tech can also work with agriculture and maybe other industries.
Palantir's stock is up around 4% at the time of this recording, but if you zoom out, those shares have dropped around 10% in 2026. There are still critics out there who think the company is way overvalued. Palantir reports earnings on May 4th, so we should get a snapshot of how the company is doing in a couple weeks. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.
Boeing shares are rising this morning after the company reported better than expected Q1 earnings. Revenues jumped 14% to $22.2 billion, and Boeing narrowed its losses to just $7 million in the quarter, down from $31 million a year ago. Wall Street was expecting a much bigger loss, so that was a nice surprise. The big story here is deliveries.
Boeing delivered 143 commercial planes in the quarter, which was up 10% from last year. The company's now building the 737 MAX planes at a rate of 42 a month, which is a solid progress from where they were after the Alaska Airlines door plug disaster two years ago. Now, it's not all good news though.
Boeing still burned through $1.4 billion in cash this quarter, and the company is still technically unprofitable, but margins are improving and the trajectory is starting to turn around. Shares of Boeing are up around 4% this morning. And if you zoom out, the stock has gone up 40% over the last 12 months. Now, on the flip side, shares of Vertiv are down despite the company beating Q1 earnings.
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