Mid-Morning Look: May 28, 2026

Mid-Morning Look

Thursday, May 28, 2026

Just absolutely no quit in U.S. stock markets, getting another massive boost this morning after the market open following an Axios report that the U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran’s Nuclear program, but President Trump has yet to give it his final approval. U.S. officials said the deal terms were mostly agreed as of Tuesday, but both sides still needed to get approval from Senior leadership. The headlines boosted stock markets to new highs as oil prices slumped. Prior to the Iran news, headlines overnight included Iran targeted a U.S. air base in Kuwait on Thursday after the United States struck what Washington described as an Iranian drone operation near the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump rejected a reported compromise deal with Tehran. Prior to the Iran headlines, investors were digesting a busy night of earnings as names like SNOW helped rally the software sector and retailers BBY, CTRN, and KSS shares all jumped on results (BURL slipped). Drone stocks saw strength (AVAV, DPRO, KTOS, ONDS, UMAC) on a WSJ report that the Trump administration is pursuing funding deals with a group of drone companies. Crypto sector has been week as Bitcoin falls to 6-week lows around $73,200, down over 2.5% and Ethereum fell over -3.5% to below $2,000. Lastly, a very busy morning of economic data saw mostly in-line April PCE inflation data, weaker GDP, weaker new home sales and higher jobless claims, but wasn’t enough to move the needle for markets initially.

• Q1 U.S. GDP (second estimate) came in at a +1.6%, annual rate, below the +2.0% in the first estimate and +0.5% in the prior quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures: +1.4%, annual rate, vs. +1.6% in initial estimate and +1.9% prior. Corporate profits fell at a rate of 0.4%, compared to the 5.7% growth seen in Q4 2025. Personal Saving Rate drops to 2.6%, the lowest since June 2022.
• Weekly Jobless Claims climbed to 215,000 from 210,000 and vs consensus 211,000 as the 4-week moving average climbed to 209,000 from 202,750 prior week (previous 202,500); continued claims climbed to 1.786M from 1.771M prior week and vs. consensus 1.780M.
• Durable Goods orders increased $25.5B or 7.9% to $346.0B, well above consensus of 2.8%, while March numbers were revised to 1.3% from 0.8%. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 1.1% vs +0.4% consensus and prior month’s revised figure of 1.1%. New orders, excluding defense, increased 8.1% M/M following a -0.3% dip.
• April single-family home sales 622K, below consensus 665K; April single-family home sales -6.2%; April home sales Northeast -12.9%, Midwest -25.0%, south -9.8%, West +18.7%; April new home supply 9.4 months’ worth at current pace vs March 8.7 months; median sale price $422,500, +2.2% from April 2025 ($413,600).

• Computer Hardware/Components: DELL received a $9.69 billion contract from the Pentagon. The award is a firm-fixed-price blanket purchase agreement to streamline and consolidate software acquisition across the Pentagon, intelligence community and Coast Guard. HPQ shares slipped as beats revenue, profit estimates as AI PC and Windows 11 refresh boost demand; Q2 revenue rose 9% to $14.41B y/y, and above est $14.07B but narrowed FY26 EPS guidance to $2.90 to $3.10, compared with its prior estimates of $2.90 to $3.20. IBM said it has committed $5 billion to an initiative that will deploy engineers and AI tools ‌to help companies better secure open source software. The initiative, called ‌Project Lightwell, seeks to create a “clearinghouse” for open source security, establishing a model for managing ​risks across software supply chain.
• Aerospace: HEI reported 2Q EPS of $1.66 beat expectations by over 20% (Street $1.33) while EBITDA of $408M was similarly strong, coming in well above the Street’s $339M. Driving the better results was volumes and margins as the company saw sales rise 25% (+18% org) which was 9-10% better while op margins of 25.5% were a record high by 150bps. BKSY received a seven-figure, multi-year contract renewal to develop automated non-Earth imagery services as the program expands work into space domain awareness.

• BBY +11%; Q1 adj EPS $1.28 tops consensus $1.23 along with comp sales beat of +2% vs. est. +1% and forecasts Q2 sales above Wall Street expectations; maintains annual forecast of comparable sales in the range of a 1% decline to a 1% rise, with adjusted profit per share between $6.30 and $6.60.
• CTRN +10%; provided upbeat guide as sees Q1 revs $230.9M, vs. consensus $217.4M and prelim Q1 adjusted EBITDA $13.5M-$14M; raises FY26 outlook with comparable store sales growth now expected to be in the range of 8% to 10%, above previous outlook of 5% to 7%.
• DAVE +7%; will replace AMWD in the S&P SmallCap 600 effective prior to the opening of trading on Monday, June 1. S&P SmallCap 600 constituent MasterBrand Inc. (MBC) is acquiring American Woodmark.
• DLTR +15%; beat and raise as Q1 adj EPS $1.74 vs. est. $1.55; Q1 revs $4.975BB vs. est. $4.96B; Q1 comp store net sales growth of 3.5%; said expects 400 new store openings in FY26; guides FY26 EPS $6.7-$7.10, above prior view $6.50-$6.90 and backs year revs view of $20.5B-$20.7B, with comp sales +3%-4%.
• KSS +20%; maintained its annual targets after posting quarterly sales in line with estimates, as cost cut efforts start to pay off; said it continues to expect annual net sales to remain flat or decline up to 2%. It also sees annual earnings per share in the range of $1.00 to $1.60.
• MSFT +3%; after a report in The Information said Microsoft plans to unveil a coding model to boost the competitiveness of Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot, a coding assistant whose early lead in the Ai coding market was eroded by Cursor and Claude Code, according to someone with direct knowledge of the plans.
• NBIS +7%; after prominent AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner has backed the company as the Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund disclosed it owns 12.41 million Class A shares of Nebius on Wednesday, worth around $2.86 billion at Wednesday’s closing price of $208.37. That represents a 5.6% stake in the company.
• SNOW +32%; the big story today on results and partnership as raises annual product revenue forecast amid growing demand for AI-driven ‌workloads and cloud migrations; raised its product revenue forecast for fiscal 2027 to $5.84B, from $5.66B prior; also signed a five-year deal worth $6 billion with Amazon Web Services tied to AWS’ Graviton processors and AI infrastructure, as their partnership deepens around enterprise AI.

• BRZE -4%; shares fell as increased full-year guidance by more than the Q1 beat, which now implies ~22% growth in FY27 alongside expanding margins. Canaccord noted weakness in the stock appears more tied to elevated expectations and a strong run-up, rather than any deterioration in demand signals or commentary.
• BURL -8%; shares declined despite beat and raise quarter after shares rallied into the print; reported Q1 sales +14% y/y to $2.85B topping ests $2.8B and raised its FY sales forecast to grow 9%-11%, up from a previous view of up 8%-10%, and comp sales are expected to grow 2%-4%, up from a prior 1%-3% view.
• MSTR -5%; along with weakness in BMNR, IBIT, COIN and other crypto related names as Bitcoin falls -3.3% to 6-week lows below $73,000, and Ethereum fell over -4% to below $2,000
• PLAB -27%; posted a miss on the top and bottom line for Q2 as EPS $0.42 below the $0.54 est. and revs fell -0.5% y/y to $209.9M vs. the est. $216.6M saying certain design releases were delayed due to elevated fab utilization rates, extending new product launch timelines; guides Q3 revs $207M-$215M vs. est. $218.5M.