Market Beats | US Housing Market Diverges: Entry-Level Buyers “Sit Tight”; Intel Shares Set for All-Time High as AI Turnaround Validates Strategy; $6 Billion Park Avenue Project at Risk as Citadel Clashes with NYC Mayor; Amazon and Meta Strike Multibillion-Dollar Deal for Custom Graviton Chips; P&G Beats Estimates on Robust Sales; Google to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic, Anchoring the Future of Claude; DOJ Ends Fed Renovation Probe

—— US Housing Market Diverges: Entry-Level Buyers “Sit Tight”; Intel Shares Set for All-Time High as AI Turnaround Validates Strategy; $6 Billion Park Avenue Project at Risk as Citadel Clashes with NYC Mayor; Amazon and Meta Strike Multibillion-Dollar Deal for Custom Graviton Chips; P&G Beats Estimates on Robust Sales; Google to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic, Anchoring the Future of Claude; DOJ Ends Fed Renovation Probe

1. US Housing Market Diverges: Entry-Level Buyers “Sit Tight”

The U.S. housing market is slipping deeper into a state of dysfunction as the traditional spring buying season fails to ignite. While a 43% surplus of sellers over buyers would typically signal a golden opportunity for house hunters, high borrowing costs and “war-driven” economic jitters have paralyzed middle-class consumers. Pending home sales dropped 1.1% compared to an already weak March 2025, with a record 13.4% of contracts being canceled last month as buyers pull back in the face of rising risks.

Beyond the Iran conflict, the rapid integration of AI is fueling job security anxieties, leading over a third of American workers to delay major purchases. According to Redfin’s chief economist Daryl Fairweather, the fear of unemployment is now a greater deterrent than initial affordability constraints.

This has created a stark divide: while luxury buyers—less sensitive to inflation—continue to close deals in affluent hubs, entry-level buyers like those in the Austin area are seeing their budgets slashed by up to $100,000, forcing them back into the rental market to wait out the volatility.

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2. Intel Shares Set for All-Time High as AI Turnaround Validates Strategy

Intel’s resurgence is being hailed as a defining moment for the storied chipmaker, with its market valuation nearing a historic peak not seen since the dot-com era. The better-than-expected revenue guidance reflects a fundamental shift in the company’s operational efficiency and its growing role in the global AI hardware supply chain. CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took the helm to steer a turnaround, has successfully pivoted the company toward AI-centric manufacturing and secure chip production for both commercial and military needs.

The financial windfall extends to the US public sector as well. The federal government’s strategic investment through a specialized military chip program has seen its $8.9 billion stake balloon to over $37 billion on paper. While a portion of these shares remains in escrow pending further funding milestones, the overall trajectory validates the administration’s efforts to reshore critical semiconductor manufacturing.

As major tech firms begin directing massive orders to Intel’s refreshed foundry services, the company is positioning itself as a primary beneficiary of the multi-billion dollar build-out of autonomous and agentic AI clusters.

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3. $6 Billion Park Avenue Project at Risk as Citadel Clashes with NYC Mayor

The brewing conflict between New York City’s democratic socialist mayor and its wealthiest resident has escalated into a high-stakes real estate standoff. Citadel’s $6 billion headquarters at 350 Park Avenue, envisioned as a crown jewel for the city’s post-pandemic recovery, is now a leverage point in a bitter political fight over tax policy. Mayor Mamdani’s “Tax the Rich” platform has targeted Ken Griffin’s record-breaking $238 million penthouse as the face of economic inequity, sparking a fierce response from Citadel leadership who argue that the billionaire’s contributions to the city are being ignored by a “disdainful” political class.

For Vornado and the broader real estate industry, the stakes couldn’t be higher. If Citadel follows through on its veiled threat to pull out, it would leave a massive hole in the Manhattan office market and potentially trigger a wider exodus of financial firms. This clash highlights the deepening rift in New York’s “K-shaped” recovery, where progressive fiscal policies intended to achieve social equity are running headlong into the strategic interests of the city’s largest tax contributors.

The outcome of this dispute will likely signal whether New York remains the undisputed capital of global finance or if the billionaire class will begin looking toward more “tax-friendly” horizons.

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4. Amazon and Meta Strike Multibillion-Dollar Deal for Custom Graviton Chips

The multibillion-dollar alliance between Amazon and Meta underscores a critical shift in the AI infrastructure landscape: the rising importance of general-purpose CPUs in managing large-scale inference workloads. While Nvidia’s H100s remain the gold standard for training, Meta’s massive fleet of Graviton processors will handle the complex logic and reasoning tasks required to serve AI responses to billions of users. As Nafea Bshara noted, “GPUs are useless without CPUs next to them,” highlighting the symbiotic relationship between specialized accelerators and high-performance central processing units.

For Amazon, this deal validates its decade-long investment in Annapurna Labs. Once used exclusively in its own AWS data centers, Amazon is now pivoting toward selling its custom silicon as a commercial product to rival tech giants.

This competitive diversification is mirrored by Meta, which is simultaneously scaling its internal MTIA chip project while striking deals across the “Big Tech” spectrum—including Google’s TPU and AMD’s Instinct lines—to ensure no single bottleneck can stall its aggressive AI roadmap.

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5. P&G Beats Estimates on Robust Sales

Procter & Gamble kicked off the consumer staples earnings season with a strong beat, signaling that its “superiority” strategy—focusing on high-performance formulations—is effectively countering inflationary pressures. Organic sales growth of 3% was driven by a healthy balance of price and volume, suggesting that consumers are still willing to pay a premium for household essentials despite a volatile economic backdrop. Following the report, P&G shares surged as much as 4.6% in Friday morning trading.

Despite the sales momentum, the macro environment remains a significant threat to margins. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has sent oil prices upward, a critical input for P&G’s manufacturing and logistics. The company’s warning of a potential $1 billion cost spike for the upcoming fiscal year highlights the fragile nature of the current recovery.

As the first major household-goods player to report, P&G’s dual narrative of operational strength versus geopolitical risk sets a cautionary tone for the rest of the industry as they navigate the fallout from the Strait of Hormuz closure and fluctuating energy costs.

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6. Google to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic, Anchoring the Future of Claude

The $40 billion roadmap between Google and Anthropic marks a pivotal consolidation in the AI sector, as computing capacity becomes the ultimate currency of power. By securing 5 gigawatts of power through Google Cloud and Broadcom-designed infrastructure, Anthropic is insulating its Claude models from the global GPU shortage. For Google, this investment serves a dual purpose: it secures a massive, long-term customer for its custom TPU silicon while ensuring that one of its primary rivals remains deeply integrated into the Google Cloud ecosystem.

This deal follows a record-breaking month for Anthropic, which also secured billions from Amazon to fuel the expansion of Claude Code. The startup is now at the center of a “proxy war” between cloud titans, with both Alphabet and Amazon vying for the title of Anthropic’s preferred infrastructure partner.

As the demand for agentic AI grows, the scarcity of both energy and specialized chips is forcing even the most successful startups to trade equity for guaranteed access to the data centers that make high-speed reasoning possible.

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7. DOJ Ends Fed Renovation Probe

The Department of Justice’s decision to drop its investigation into the Federal Reserve’s headquarters renovation marks a pivotal shift in the central bank’s leadership transition. By handing the inquiry over to the Fed’s Office of Inspector General, the DOJ has effectively removed a significant political and legal cloud hanging over Kevin Warsh’s confirmation process. Warsh, known for his more dovish leanings compared to the current hawkish consensus, is widely expected to prioritize growth and potential rate cuts—a prospect that immediately resonated with bond markets.

The market’s reaction underscores the high stakes of the Fed’s “Warsh pivot.” The decline in short-dated Treasury yields reflects a growing bet among institutional investors that the upcoming leadership change will usher in a period of monetary easing to support the administration’s economic agenda.

While US Attorney Jeanine Pirro maintained a stern tone regarding future accountability, the immediate removal of the DOJ from the process is being interpreted by Washington insiders as a “green light” for the Senate to proceed with Warsh’s confirmation hearings without the distraction of an active criminal probe.

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