Yesterday finished strong as the S&P closed up 0.50%. The Nasdaq added 0.8%. Leadership looked familiar. Nvidia gained 1.6% on the Meta deal. Amazon rose nearly 2% after Ackman increased his stake by 65%. The tape felt constructive but lacking breadth.

Those gains masked the tension underneath. The afternoon laid it out: falling yields did not rescue software. Rising oil did not kill equities. The index held while leadership kept shifting.

Overnight, futures went flat. The market stopped moving and started waiting.

Walmart (WMT) reports before the bell. Furner's first print as CEO. The company's first as a $1 trillion name. The moment Amazon officially surpasses Walmart as the largest retailer by annual revenue.

Consensus expects $0.73 EPS and $190 billion in revenue. Those numbers matter less than fiscal 2027 guidance.

Trade Implication:

If Walmart beats and guides strong, the rotation into defensives extends. XLP, XLV, and WMT keep absorbing outflows.

If guidance misses even slightly, the 45x multiple compresses fast. There is no cheap place left to hide. Watch guidance more than the quarter.

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The PM covered the Fed minutes. Patient. Cautious. No rush.

What matters this morning is what happened after. The 10-year fell to 4.03% despite the hawkish tone. That is a growth scare, not a rate-cut trade.

Retail sales stalled in December. Existing home sales sank to their lowest level since 2022. Consumer sentiment sits at 52.9. Yet spending continues. That tension between weak surveys and steady consumption rarely resolves quietly.

Weekly jobless claims arrive this morning. If they confirm softening, the bond rally deepens. PCE tomorrow is the real test.

Bonds are leaning toward slowdown. Equities are leaning toward resilience. That divergence cannot persist indefinitely.

Execution Bias:

TLT extends if data keeps softening. Rate-sensitive names like XLRE and IWM only follow if the slowdown stays shallow. A deeper downturn reprices earnings, not just yields.

The PM documented the damage in tech. Palo Alto beat and fell 6%. CrowdStrike, Oracle, Intuit, Salesforce all dropped.

What is new this morning: the pattern is jumping sectors.

La-Z-Boy beat earnings Wednesday and still dropped 7% on weak guidance. Same-store sales fell 4%. The quarter beat. The guide missed. The stock fell. That template is no longer confined to tech.

Palantir bucked it. Mizuho upgraded it to outperform. They expect revenue acceleration "at scale unlike anything else in software." Shares rose 3%. Cadence Design jumped 7% on a guide above consensus.

The split is clear. Infrastructure and design tools hold. Application-layer software does not.

Execution Bias:

Favor metered usage models over seat-based licensing. If Nvidia validates inference demand next week, infrastructure names pull further ahead.

David Einhorn just put the AI revenue stack under a microscope. His latest 13F shows zero exposure to the trade that dominates headlines. Instead, he added Graphic Packaging, Capri Holdings, Acadia Healthcare, Centene, and Global Payments.

His math is simple. For every dollar of AI revenue from companies that are still losing money, more than $8 is created upstream in the supply chain. The system only works if someone absorbs that imbalance. Even if AI adoption succeeds, the capital structure may not.

At the same time, Nvidia exited its entire stake in Arm and sold positions in Applied Digital, Recursion, and WeRide. Applied Digital dropped 7.6% on the filing. Nvidia is cleaning house ahead of its own earnings next Tuesday.

The smart money is not aligned on AI. That matters when the market is about to test the thesis.

Execution Bias:

Einhorn's portfolio is a roadmap for AI-skeptic positioning. If Nvidia disappoints next week, his trade accelerates. If Nvidia validates, it becomes a patience trade.

Crypto prices are sliding. Fear is everywhere. Retail is selling first and asking questions later.

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While the market bleeds, usage on this project is accelerating. Billions are flowing through its protocol because it solves a real problem, especially when volatility spikes.

Whales have noticed. They’re accumulating quietly while sentiment collapses.

This altcoin is still priced like the market hasn’t caught on.

See why we believe this could be the top crypto to own before the recovery

© 2026 Boardwalk Flock LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2382 Camino Vida Roble, Suite I Carlsbad, CA 92011, United States. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Readers acknowledge that the authors are not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical, or professional advice. The reader agrees that under no circumstances Boardwalk Flock, LLC is responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, which are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. Results may not be typical and may vary from person to person. Making money trading digital currencies takes time and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk.

Bank of America data shows capital flowing into consumer staples at the fastest pace on record. XLP has returned 15.2% year-to-date. XLK has lost 4%.

The last time XLP gained more than 1% for two consecutive days while XLK fell more than 1% on both was 2000. The divergence peaked just before the dot-com unwind.

Walmart and Costco now make up nearly 29% of XLP's total weight. Anyone who bought XLP for safety is running single-name risk at 45x earnings.

Walmart and Target are headed in opposite directions under new CEOs. Furner walks into a company up 22% in a year. Target's Fiddelke inherits a stock down 34%. Same consumer. The market is paying 45x for one and punishing the other.

Execution Bias:

If Walmart guides light, the whole defensive rotation gets re-examined. XLP holders who think they own a diversified basket are riding two mega-cap names at peak valuation. That is a position, not a hedge.

Today is Walmart. Tomorrow is PCE and Q4 GDP. Next Tuesday is Nvidia.

They are not separate events. Walmart sets the consumer story. PCE and GDP reset the growth-versus-inflation story. Nvidia resolves the AI spending story.

If all three validate the current thesis, 7,000 comes back into view. If two crack, the 6,800 to 7,000 band stops looking like consolidation and starts looking like distribution.

Weekly jobless claims arrive alongside Walmart this morning. Pending home sales follow. Tomorrow's calendar adds the Q4 GDP advance estimate and final February Michigan consumer sentiment. The data calendar just got heavier than anyone expected for a single week.

Geopolitics remains in the background. The PM covered Iran and Geneva in detail. Nothing changed overnight. Oil held above $65 but did not escalate. The premium is priced but not expanding.

What is new: Japan committed $36 billion as its first trade-deal payment to Washington. That buys time on tariffs but signals how much leverage the White House holds over trade partners.

The ECB faces a leadership question. Reports say Lagarde may leave before her term ends. UK inflation eased, opening the door for a BOE cut next month.

The Fed is holding. The BOE may cut. The ECB faces uncertainty. That divergence does not stay contained. It moves through the dollar and into multinational earnings.

Investor Signal:

If PCE prints hot tomorrow, rate-cut pricing compresses. The 65 basis points currently priced drops to 50 or less. That reprices XLRE and IWM first.

If PCE confirms disinflation, bonds rally further and the growth scare deepens. Model both paths before Friday.

Wall Street expects a beat. Consensus sits at $0.73 EPS and $190 billion in revenue. UBS models up to $0.80.

E-commerce growth ran near 28% last quarter. Walmart Connect ad revenue surged 30%. Same-store comps likely landed near 4.5%.

The quarter will look strong. The question is what comes next.

DA Davidson called it the "Triple A" story: Alternative business, AI/Agentic commerce, and Automation. Walmart signed deals with Google Gemini and OpenAI ChatGPT this year, embedding its checkout into AI chatbots. Furner called agent-led commerce "the next great evolution in retail."

But Evercore and DA Davidson both flagged that fiscal 2027 guidance could land 3% to 5% below consensus. Walmart has a history of guiding low and beating later. The market knows the playbook. But last February, that same setup triggered a 6.5% sell-off.

The difference is the price. Walmart now trades at 45x forward earnings. Closer to Costco's peak than to Walmart's own history.

Seventy-five percent of recent share gains came from households earning over $100,000. That is a trade-down signal. If the economy weakens, that dynamic accelerates and Walmart wins share. If the economy steadies and those households move back to premium brands, growth slows but the 45x multiple stays.

Edge Setup:

If Walmart beats and guides in line, the value rotation extends. WMT, COST, and XLP lead.

If guidance misses by more than 3%, the 45x compresses and sympathy selling hits the full defensive group. Watch the call for tariff impact and Furner's tone on forward spending. That matters more than any number today.

Economic Data: Weekly Jobless Claims, Balance of Trade, Philly Fed Manufacturing Index, Retail and Wholesale Inventories, Pending Home Sales

Fed Speakers: Bostic, Bowman, Kashkari

Earnings: Walmart (WMT), Southern Co (SO), Newmont (NEM), Constellation Energy (CEG), Quanta Services (PWR), Copart (CPRT), Consolidated Edison (ED), Targa Resources (TRGP)

Overnight: Nikkei +0.57%, Shanghai -1.26%,  FTSE 100 -0.74%, DAX -0.71%

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Walmart's print decides whether the flight to quality was smart or just crowded.

For three weeks, money left software and went to staples. That trade built a $1 trillion Walmart and sent the software ETF into a bear market.

Capital is now flowing into staples at the fastest pace on record. The last time this divergence appeared was 2000.

If Walmart validates today, the next test is Nvidia on Tuesday. The biggest AI hardware name reports into a market that just punished every software name in the stack.

If Nvidia validates too, the market faces a strange split. AI is crushing software value and also justifying $200 billion in hardware spending. Hardware spending continues to expand while software multiples compress. The infrastructure is being funded as if monetization is inevitable. 

Applications are being repriced as if margin pressure is structural. Both cannot be correct forever. Either software margins stabilize and recover, or hardware excitement runs into slower monetization. That tension defines the next move.

PCE tomorrow sits between them. The next 72 hours do not just test names. They test whether the market's working thesis holds together.