Palantir develops and provides software that enables customers from government agencies to commercial enterprises to integrate data for decision-making and operations at scale. The company initially provided its software to the U.S. intelligence services before broadening its customer base. 55% of company revenue is generated by its government segment and 45% from its commercial segment; 34% of revenue is generated outside the U.S. Palantir's class A shares trade publicly under the symbol PLTR. Palantir's super-voting class B and class F shares, held by insiders and founders, do not trade publicly. The company is effectively controlled by founders Alexander Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Peter Thiel through the super-voting class F shares that represent a 49.99% voting interest. Palantir was founded in 2003 and went public at $10 per share on September 30, 2020.

Stocks are up at midday on Thursday. President Trump announced that the U.S. and the UK have made an agreement on trade. Trade representatives from the U.S. and China are also slated to meet this weekend to work out trade terms. No surprise from the Fed yesterday. It left interest rates unchanged as expected. Chairman Powell says the Fed has a lack of clarity for the economy ahead. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note is 4.32%. Oil is at $59 per barrel.

In addition to the FOMC meeting and interest-rate decision (and Powell's presser), this is another big week for first-quarter EPS, with results from PLTR, CMI, AMD, ANET, MAR, DUK, NVO, UBER, DIS, ARM, APP, MELI, HUBS, DASH, SHOP, BUD, COP, MCK, and COIN (to name but a few). With almost 75% of S&P 500 companies having reported, 76% have beaten the analyst consensus on EPS and 62% have beaten on revenue. After a torrid nine-day surge, the major indices and many stocks are overbought for the short term, so it wouldn't be surprising to see some near-term consolidation. The five-day relative strength index (RSI) hit 84% on Friday and the five-day exponential moving average (EMA) was 1.7% above the 13-day EMA, the largest spread since November 2022 -- when the S&P 500 (SPX) was emerging from a bear market. We also saw these over-bought levels during the 2022 bear market and months before the actual bottom in October. Another potential reason for a possible market pause is that the major indices are in "no man's land." The SPX is sitting in between its 50-day and 200-day average and, unfortunately, so is the S&P 100, Nasdaq, and Nasdaq 100. As well, the majors are sitting at or slightly below the key 61.8% retracement of their corrections. Generally, a strong break above this retrace level sends the all-clear for indices to march back to prior highs and possibly to new highs. While the majors all have completed bullish ABC reversals, the targets based on the size of these patterns have been fulfilled. It looks like they are all working on much larger inverse head-and-shoulders patterns -- but more upside is needed. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)

The stock market has settled down over the past couple of days and volume has fallen sharply since we saw huge volume earlier this month. Fortunately, not all that trading was to the downside as there were a few accumulation days. During a correction phase and many times near "a low," volume hits very high levels. When the market starts a new uptrend, volume must increase but will never reach the levels during the decline -- especially when the downtrend had at least a tinge of panic. We have witnessed what is dreadfully called "a death cross" for the S&P 500 (SPX), the Nasdaq, and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) -- but just barely. The S&P 400 had such a cross on April 3 and the S&P 600 on March 18. The death cross is when the 50-day simple average crosses below the 200-day on an index, industry, sector, or individual stock. While there have been some massive SPX declines after a death cross (including 1930, 1937, 1940, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1981, 2000, 2002, 2007, and 2022), there also have been instances where the losses were less than 10% and other times when there was no loss at all. So we view the death cross as a possible warning, but with a good deal of "urban legend" baked in. We also have seen some other potentially worrisome crossovers in the SPX, with the 10-week crossing the 21-week exponential (EMA), and crosses involving the 10-week simple/40-week simple, the 16-week EMA/39-week EMA (very close), the 13-week EMA under both the 26-week and 40-week EMA, and the 26-week EMA close to cutting the 40-week for a double bearish cross-over. The SPX has not broken the very important support from the 50-month and the 200-week simple averages, which is between 4,665 and 4,690. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)