Hey Snackers,
If you’re unemployed, job seekers in Arlington, Texas, might have an easier time finding work than job seekers in Arlington, Virginia. New data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week revealed that the Washington, DC-Arlington-Alexandria region lost the most jobs of any US metro area, while Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington gained the most jobs. See the full list of the cities that lost or gained the most jobs last year.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both closed at record highs on Friday, while the Russell 2000 also rose, closing just shy of its record.
🧠 Trivia time… Take our Snacks Seven Quiz. Here’s the first question:
What is the fastest-growing sandwich chain in the US?
Intel’s blockbuster results charge chip trade
Intel shares had one of their best days in stock market history Friday, as the market priced in a successful turnaround for the iconic American chipmaker after it delivered a giant earnings beat and above-expectations guidance that caught most of Wall Street flat-footed after the bell Thursday.
Intel soared 23.6% on Friday, making it the stock’s best day since October 29, 1987, and the company’s fifth-best day out of its 50-plus years in the stock market.
Unlike that previous high-water mark, which was part of a broad-based recovery from a steep market crash, Intel’s outperformance Friday was all about the company’s own results…
And its promise of future returns. The real driver of the ebullient reaction was its forecast for revenue of between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion in Q2, leaps above the $13 billion average expected by analysts.
The market has been waiting for a sign that CEO Lip-Bu Tan is reversing years of decline and successfully tapping into the massive demand created by the AI build-out. And on Thursday, he delivered.
Not only did Intel’s report please an array of analysts, it also added fuel to the rally that semiconductor stocks saw last week, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, the basis for SOXX, continuing to build on an unprecedented tear and closing up for the 18th day in a row.
Intel’s results lifted fellow CPU makers Arm and AMD, as booming data center demand means more appetite for processors across the board.
The semiconductor rally is so ferocious that even Qualcomm — the worst-performing member of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index this year — got to join the party.
And well, well, well, what do we have here: the MVP of AI, Nvidia, snapped its longest stretch without a record close since the AI boom kicked off.
The Takeaway
While Tan should rightfully take a moment to celebrate, the company is not out of the weeds yet.
While the AI build-out is clearly consuming more CPUs — processors that act as the “brains” of servers, which sit inside the “head node” of server racks organizing activity done by other chips, like Nvidia’s GPUs — Intel isn’t the only company that makes them.
And as we charted, Intel has posted for years, and is still posting, huge losses in the contract chip manufacturing business — known as a foundry — that it has tried to establish as a US-based competitor to industry leaders TSMC and Samsung Electronics.
Despite a challenging quarter, crypto markets showed signs of stabilization in March
March was a month of stabilization for crypto as the total digital asset market cap closed the month at ~$2.35 trillion, up 2% from the end of February.1
Bitcoin returned 3.3%, Ethereum returned 8.9%,2 and US Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw ~$1.32 billion in net inflows in March1 — reversing a trend of outflows that ran from November 2025 through February.
Meanwhile, the SEC approved Nasdaq's proposal to facilitate the tokenization of certain equities, and the US Department of Labor proposed expanding digital asset access in 401(k) plans.
Dive deeper into crypto insights with the latest Monthly Digital Asset Market Update from Nasdaq.
Stories we’re obsessed with
DeepSeek, no freak: DeepSeek dropped its new V4 series of open-source models, which have closed the gap with rival models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI in coding performance, though the Chinese AI lab admits it still trails state-of-the-art competitors in reasoning by three to six months. Unlike the startup’s first debut, which roiled the AI trade, markets seemed to give a Bart Simpson “meh” to the news.
Up in smoke: Last week, it seemed like the US weed industry finally got what it wanted with the Department of Justice’s order to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. So why did pot stocks plunge? The same thing happened in December following President Trump’s executive order expediting this reclassification, in fact. There are a few reasons, including the breadth of the actual change, banking and lending barriers, and a surprisingly tricky tax regime.
Amazon wants to be your doctor and your pharmacy
Sherwood News sat down with John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy, to chat about GLP-1s, price transparency, and his plans to do what seems impossible: making the healthcare system convenient.
Snacks Shots
🎵 Music: Justin Bieber has seen a surge of renewed interest since his performance at Coachella, which has sent his streams spiking. The numbers have surprised onlookers, with markets* pricing in a 15% chance he finishes the month of April as the top artist on Spotify — not bad for someone who entered the month with an incredibly remote shot of topping the charts.
🏛️ Fed: Following the news that Trump’s DOJ is dropping an investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, the chances that Kevin Warsh, his nominee to become the next chair, is confirmed before May 15 shot up Friday from a 31% chance to an 85% chance. Even some GOP allies in the Senate were seriously uncomfortable with the nature of that investigation, and had threatened to withhold support.
*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.
What Else We’re Snackin’
How do you stop teens from smoking? The UK is trying a lifetime ban
Alphabet is reportedly planning to pour up to $40 billion into Anthropic, just days after Amazon announced plans to deepen its own stake in the Claude developer
Bitcoin ETFs have hauled in more than $2 billion over eight days, with one analyst saying the path to $80,000 looks clear in the near term
Tesla has officially begun Cybercab production, with videos showing the gold autonomous vehicles driving themselves off the assembly line in Austin
Meta signed a deal to use Amazon’s Graviton chips as the social media giant continues its shopping spree for AI silicon
TSMC surged after Taiwan relaxed a long-standing rule that capped actively managed funds at 10% in a single stock, clearing a major hurdle for local money managers
Snack Fact of the Day
SpaceX thinks its total addressable market is a whopping $28.5 trillion.
This week
Premarket earnings: Verizon and Domino’s. Postmarket earnings: Cadence Design Systems
Premarket earnings: Coca-Cola, General Motors, Corning, BitMine Immersion Technologies, UPS, Galaxy Digital, and JetBlue. Postmarket earnings: Robinhood**, Seagate Technology, Starbucks, Visa, Bloom Energy, Booking, T-Mobile, Mondelez, Enphase Energy, Edison International, Caesars Entertainment, Waste Management, Teradyne, and Fair Isaac
**Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.
Premarket earnings: Bloom Energy, AbbVie, Wingstop, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Yum! Brands, Biogen, Lemonade, Brinker, Etsy, SoFi, and Avis. Federal Reserve interest rate decision at 2 p.m. ET. Postmarket earnings: Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ford, Chipotle, KLA Corp, Carvana, MGM, Qualcomm, and eBay
Premarket earnings: Wayfair, Crocs, Blue Owl, Merck, Eli Lilly, Royal Caribbean, Mastercard, Altria, Molson Coors, Caterpillar, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Critical Metals. Advance reading of Q1 GDP, PCE inflation data for March due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. Postmarket earnings: Apple, Clorox, Rivian, Roblox, Reddit, Western Digital, First Solar, Riot Holdings, and Sandisk
Premarket earnings: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Moderna, and Cboe
Advertiser’s Disclosure
1 Source: Nasdaq, Monthly Digital Asset Market Update: March 2026.
2 Based on the Nasdaq Bitcoin Settlement Price™ Index (NQBTCS™) and Nasdaq Ethereum Settlement Price™ Index (NQETHS™), returned 3.3% and 8.9%, respectively. Source: Nasdaq, Monthly Digital Asset Market Update: March 2026.