Week Ahead: Warsh Fed Hearing and Tesla Earnings Headline a Packed Five Days

Senate Banking questions Kevin Warsh for the Fed Chair job on Tuesday at 10:00 AM ET, with Senator Thom Tillis already threatening to block the nomination over the Justice Department’s investigation of Jerome Powell.

Kevin Warsh’s Fed Chair confirmation hearing and Tesla’s Q1 earnings anchor the week of April 20, the heaviest Fed-politics-and-earnings crosscurrent of 2026. Everything else on the calendar reads off those two events.

The Federal Open Market Committee is already in its pre-meeting blackout period, the self-imposed silence that runs from the second Saturday before a policy meeting through the Thursday after. That means no Fed speeches, no press interviews, and no new policy signal from any voting member until the April 28-29 decision lands. Warsh’s hearing is the only live Fed-adjacent moment of the week.

The Warsh Hearing: A Fed Chair Confirmation Under a Cloud

Warsh is a former Fed governor (he served on the Board from 2006 to 2011, and was in the room during the 2008 financial crisis response) who has spent the years since at the Hoover Institution writing about Fed independence, policy rules, and the size of the central bank’s balance sheet. He is expected to push for a smaller Fed footprint and a more rules-based approach to rate decisions.

The politics stacked on top make this hearing unusual. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina has said publicly he will vote against Warsh unless the Justice Department drops its investigation of outgoing Chair Jerome Powell. “This is about bedrock principle of Fed independence,” Tillis told CNBC in March. “I have no earthly idea what the market reaction would have been if suddenly the perception is that the Fed chair serves at the pleasure of the president.” Eleven Democrats on the committee have also asked for the hearing to be delayed.

Tesla, Boeing, IBM, Intel: The Heaviest Earnings Week of the Season

Q1 earnings season peaks this week. The calendar is front-loaded into Wednesday, which alone brings Tesla, Boeing, IBM, AT&T, Texas Instruments, ServiceNow, Lam Research, GE Vernova, CME Group, and Southwest Airlines.

Tesla reports after the close at 5:30 PM ET. Street consensus is near $0.37 EPS (earnings per share, the profit attributable to each outstanding share) on revenue around $22.7 billion, but the delivery number is already out and it was weak: 358,023 vehicles delivered against a consensus of 365,645, with roughly 50,000 excess vehicles built into inventory. The call will pivot to the three variables the stock is priced on: Robotaxi commercial launch timing, Full Self-Driving take rates, and Optimus unit economics.

Boeing reports Wednesday pre-market after delivering 143 commercial jets in Q1, beating Airbus for the first time in almost five years. IBM reports Wednesday after the close, with consensus of $1.82 EPS on $15.56 billion in revenue. Thursday brings Intel after the close, the first full quarter under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, with consensus effectively breakeven at around $0.01 EPS on $12.3 billion in revenue. The call will focus on 18A yields (Intel’s new leading-edge process node) and whether any 14A customers have committed. Lockheed Martin reports Thursday pre-market with a $194 billion backlog that investors want unpacked for deliverability.

A Light Data Week with One Very Loud Number

Macro releases are thin this week relative to the earnings volume. Tuesday brings March retail sales and pending home sales. Wednesday delivers March existing home sales at 10:00 AM, with consensus at 4.06 million, barely above the prior month’s nine-month low of 3.98 million. Thursday brings weekly jobless claims plus the S&P Global flash Purchasing Managers’ Indexes (PMIs, survey-based gauges where a reading above 50 signals expansion), with manufacturing consensus at 50.5. Friday closes with March durable goods orders and the final April University of Michigan consumer sentiment revision.

The Number That Matters: 47.6

That final sentiment number is the week’s hidden lede. The preliminary April reading came in at 47.6, the lowest print in the history of the series, which dates to 1978. For context, the prior record low was 50.0 in June 2022 at the peak of the post-pandemic inflation spike. A sentiment print in the 40s is consistent with consumers who are either already pulling back on spending or are about to. What makes the number matter is what it would take to move it: it is not a reaction to a single data point, it is a measure of how households feel about the next six months. A final revision that drifts lower would make it harder for the Fed to argue the consumer is stable ahead of its April 29 decision. A revision higher would be the first real green shoot since February.

Crypto, IPOs, and the Backdrop

Spot Bitcoin ETF flows just flipped positive year-to-date at +$2.3 billion after BlackRock’s IBIT pulled in $871 million in the prior week alone. The IPO calendar is quieter but not empty: six pricings are scheduled for Monday per Nasdaq, with the prior week’s Madison Air Solutions ($27), Aevex Defense Systems ($20), and Alamar Biosciences ($17) all pricing within or above range.

The Strait of Hormuz situation remains the swing factor for energy markets. Craig Johnson, Chief Market Technician at Piper Sandler, captured the setup in a recent note: “The equity market’s rapid 12-day transition from oversold to overbought masks a precarious macro reality, especially given the ongoing threat of crude oil above $90 per barrel.”

What to Watch

The Warsh hearing tone: Whether Tillis softens his opposition during the hearing, or whether other Republican senators echo his Fed-independence concern, is the single biggest binary risk on the week. A 10:00 AM Tuesday opening that signals the nomination is in trouble would move the dollar, rates, and gold immediately.

Tesla’s Robotaxi guidance: The delivery miss and inventory build are already priced in. What is not priced in is a firm commercial Robotaxi launch date. The last two calls pushed the timeline without a concrete date. A real date Wednesday night would be a material positive. Silence again would not be.

Flash PMI and the consumer read: Thursday’s flash manufacturing PMI at 50.5 consensus is the closest thing to a real-time read on tariff impact. A sub-50 print paired with a Friday UMich sentiment revision lower would make it harder for Warsh to lean hawkish in his hearing testimony Tuesday while the real economy softens.