Allow us this one pun: President Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve chair can’t be wishy…Warshy.

Kevin Warsh, formerly the youngest Fed Board of Governors member at 35 in 2006, is on track to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve after Jerome Powell’s term comes to an end in May.

If confirmed by the Senate, Warsh will have to engage in a delicate dance as chair, navigating persistent and public calls from President Trump to lower benchmark interest rates while buttressing the Federal Reserve’s historic independence.

“He’s going to try to thread the needle of respecting President Trump’s wishes and at the same time respecting institutional processes,” Dennis Lockhart, who served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta from 2007 to 2017 and has worked with Warsh, told the New York Times. “Believe me, that’s going to be quite the tap dance. It’s going to be Fred Astaire as central bank chair.”

No funny business. If his proverbial tap dancing abilities are up to snuff, Warsh’s term shouldn’t usher in any huge surprises or challenges for CFOs, experts told CFO Brew. 

“Typically, what [CFOs] want is: They want stability in terms of the level of rates and shapes of curves, and they want policies that are supportive of their activity,” Padhraic Garvey, regional head of research, Americas, at ING, told us. “We’re not sitting here thinking about, ‘Oh, my word, we’ve got this hawkish central banker coming in who is going to jack rates up to the sky.’ It’s actually the other direction, which should be comforting.”

Keep reading.—NP

Investments in technology that will supposedly change existence itself apparently ain’t cheap.

Meta recently reported plans for up to $135 billion in capex this year, far exceeding the $72.2 billion it spent in 2025. Not to be outdone, Google parent company Alphabet said its capex budget could reach $185 billion, more than double the $91.4 billion it allocated last year. But then Amazon, coming in from the top rope, said it expected its capital expenditures to reach $200 billion, compared with $128.3 billion in 2025. Make no mistake, these mega capex budgets are a consequence of the AI arms race.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said during the company’s earnings call last Wednesday that “we are seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board,” adding that its great capex expectations come from the need “to meet customer demand and capitalize on the growing opportunities ahead of us.”

Keep reading.—AZ

You’ve probably heard of the 60/40 portfolio, in which steady bonds act as a hedge for volatile stocks.

But over the past few years, rather than offsetting one another, stocks and bonds have been working in tandem to climb higher together. Now, that very interconnectedness is posing a huge risk to the bond market, according to Bank of America strategist Eleanor Xiao.

In a recent research note, Xiao pointed out that the stock market’s returns since 2021 have propelled equities to new heights. As stocks soar, their share of a 60/40 portfolio often grows out of proportion, forcing funds to automatically rebalance in order to keep their allocations steady. To do so, funds will sell stocks and use the proceeds to buy more bonds—providing a nice, consistent boost to the bond market over the last half decade.

Xiao estimates that for every $10 trillion in a diversified portfolio, investors (on average) sold $37 billion worth of stocks every month, while buying $37 billion worth of bonds. That broke down into $19 billion in treasury bonds, $9 billion in corporate bonds, and another $9 billion in mortgage bonds. This rebalancing propelled some serious demand: Roughly 14% of all new Treasury issuance and 22% of new investment-grade corporate bond issuance came from mechanical rebalancing.

This year, however, will be different…

Keep reading on Brew Markets.—LB

As more companies embrace co-CEO structures, CFOs are learning how to manage two bosses at once. Finance leaders share how dual leadership affects decision-making, communication, and collaboration at the top.