Thursday, April 25th, 2024 Pre-market futures are plummeting at this hour. We began the early trading session down anyway, based on earnings disappointments from Meta (NASDAQ: META) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) after yesterday's close. This morning, Dow component Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) is down more than -6% on its Q1 revenue miss. Beyond Q1 earnings results, we also have lots of economic data, much of which came up short of expectations. The first print on Q1 Gross Domestic Production came in well below estimates. Headline +1.6% missed the 2.2% anticipated, and less than half of Q4 2023's final +3.4%. The last time we saw GDP this low was back in Q2 of 2022, when we saw a negative -0.6%. Consumption came in half a percentage-point below expectations: +2.5% versus +3.0%. The Price Index (the full PCE report is out tomorrow morning), meanwhile, was higher: +3.1% versus +3.0% — the highest since Q3 '23's +3.3% and nearly double the +1.6% the previous quarter. Can you say "stagflation"? Initial Jobless Claims, meanwhile, stayed uncommonly well-behaved: 207K, below ...