00:00 Speaker A

Joining me now, we've got markets reporter Josh Shafer, senior reporter Ali Kanal live from the Nasdaq and senior healthcare reporter Angeli Camlani. Josh, let's start with you. You're taking a closer look at the economic data out this morning. What do we know there? What have we seen?

00:16 Josh Shafer

Yeah, Brad, so you mentioned that first quarter GDP number again, that would be economic growth that ended back in March, right? So pretty backward looking at this point. That was revised lower from 0.2% decline to a 0.5% decline for that first quarter GDP. But I was also keeping a close eye on continuing claims this morning. So this is continuing people that file week after week for unemployment benefits. That ticked up to its highest level since November of 2021. So an interesting data point to keep watching there as more Americans continue to sort of struggle to find new jobs once they are out of a job.

00:53 Speaker A

And so, just a second more on this, especially considering we're hearing more about the Fed and how they're evaluating a lot of the economic data that's come out with some of the questioning that we've heard from Fed chair Powell, really looking at the quality of the data, but also how that's interpreted and who interprets it might be changing, at least at the chair position. What are we hearing about what President Trump is thinking through of who the next Fed chair might be?

01:18 Josh Shafer

Yeah, Brad. So it sounds like from that report from the Wall Street Journal that President Trump would be interested in perhaps eliminating, or sorry, nominating a new Fed chair earlier than chair Powell, than chair Powell's nomination or time at as the Fed chair being over. So that would be sort of an interesting move for markets, but I think your your move in futures right now is sort of telling you that maybe the market could look past that, right? We're showing the dollar, that has moved lower. But overall, stocks at this point not really impacted by that. And I would go back to the discussion from really two months ago now when there was discussion of perhaps Trump removing Powell. Strategists sort of argue that the key in that whole discussion is just investors want security in what is happening with the central bank, and knowing the central bank would be there to cut interest rates if something was going on in the economy, raise interest rates if they need to. They just want to know there's a stability factor there. And at least for this morning, these reports don't seem to really be testing that overall thesis for investors.