- In today’s CEO Daily: Alena Botros talks to Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on leading during the LA wildfires.
- The big story: The Fed vs Trump.
- The markets: Moving up.
- Analyst notes from Apollo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Convera.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. It’s a hard time to be the chief executive of a real estate company. Home prices and rents soared throughout the pandemic, and mortgage rates followed once the Federal Reserve began its quantitative tightening. The pandemic is over and the central bank has begun to loosen its monetary policy, but home prices, rents, and mortgage rates are still high.
So the housing world is at a standstill. For the second straight year, existing home sales have fallen to their lowest level in almost three decades. That means not a lot of people are buying or selling homes. On top of it all, wildfires recently tore through Los Angeles decimating neighborhoods and thousands of structures. “Redfin has been through the wringer,” Glenn Kelman, its chief executive of almost 20 years told me.
One of his real estate agents lost her home to the fires, all the while clients are calling her because they are worried about their homes. Not to mention, the wildfires ignited a discussion on the role real estate services companies play in preventing price gouging. It’s illegal, but that hasn’t stopped some landlords from doing it. So Kelman has a lot going on, more than usual, it seems. But how he handles it when disaster strikes can be telling, and sometimes that means having the emotional conversations.
“People think you’re a saint just for picking up the telephone,” he said. “So I worry that I have to have some novel words of wisdom or comfort, and mostly what I do is, I just call and the other person starts talking, and I listen for a long time, and it does my heart good. It does the other person good.”
Those types of conversations sometimes end with the employee asking if the company will stand by them in times of slower home sales, when their incomes take a hit. It might sound like an emotional question, but it’s a financial one, Kelman explained. Redfin has decided to do that, but “it can’t be a blank check,” he said. — Alena Botros
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, Linkedin.
More news below.
TOP NEWS
The Fed vs Trump: The U.S. Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision today. President Trump has been vocal about wanting the rate lowered but Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is unlikely to grant him that wish. The 30-Day Fed Funds futures market shows a 99.5% probability that rates will stay at 4.25-4.5%. Investors will be watching any commentary from Powell closely — and that outlook will likely move markets. Previously, markets priced-in two more cuts of 0.25% this year. But some analysts think that the strong economy coupled with an inflationary tariff regime may tempt the Fed to raise rates later this year. Watch for: Trump criticizing Powell for not doing what he wants.
DeepSeek or DeepSteal? Open AI says DeepSeek may have stolen its model. That might explain how the Chinese company was able to build its competitor AI so quickly. But wait — DeepSeek may not have needed to purloin the OpenAI model because Meta made its Llama model open-source years ago precisely to encourage this kind of fast improvement in the field.
All federal workers offered a buyout. Employees were told: "1) Select ‘Reply’ to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account other than your .gov or .mil account will not be accepted. 2)Type the word ‘Resign’ into the body of this reply email. Hit ‘Send.’” The email was a lot like the one Elon Musk sent employees of Twitter when he took over.
No more under-age transition surgery on the taxpayer’s dime: President Trump has ended federal funding for children’s gender-transition care.
Another young banker has died. “Carter McIntosch, a 28-year-old associate in Jefferies' telecoms media and technology (TMT) investment banking team, has passed away,” according to Sarah Butcher. It’s a third recent death of a young person in finance in 12 months, amid talk of long hours and overwork.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for intelligence chief, is a member of Hindu sect called “the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries,” according to the WSJ. The group is “a cult that demands total loyalty,” the paper says. A Gabbard spox called the report “Hinduphobic smears and other lies."
From Fortune
Fortune 500 Power Move
U.S. Bancorp (No. 107) announced that Gunjan Kedia will succeed CEO Andy Cecere, effective April 15. Kedia currently serves as the bank’s President. Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
This year’s most admired companies
Fortune’s 2025 Most Admired Companies list, a ranking of companies most revered by their competitors, published this morning. See who topped the list in different industries here.
More effects and insights from DeepSeek
Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle and Leo Schwartz investigate how the explosive emergence of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek could upend the AI-hungry venture capital scene. Plus, AT&T CEO John Stankey warned in an earnings call that more incidents like the DeepSeek shakeup could be on the horizon.
GM reports earnings, acknowledges EV uncertainty
With the American EV market holding their breath for more potential resistance from President Trump, GM CEO Mary Barra noted that the automaker would produce more gas vehicles if demand for EVs is low. Otherwise, the automaker reported a 9% increase in revenue in 2024.
The markets
- Chipmakers rebounded. Nvidia climbed 9% yesterday, clawing back much of its losses from the day before. … Dutch chipmaker ASML reported strong results, and investors concluded that Monday’s DeepSeek selloff was not, in fact, the end of the world: The major U.S. stock indexes were broadly up by 1% or more yesterday. … U.S. futures are moving upward this morning, pre-opening bell.
From the analysts
- Goldman Sachs on the Fed outlook: “... the market-implied odds of rate hikes are too high; markets risk exaggerating the inflation impact of the new administration’s policies and forgetting the lesson of the Fed’s 2019 ‘insurance cuts,’” per David Mericle.
- Convera on the dollar: “After its worst weekly decline in months last week on softer tariff talk, the stage looks set for a dollar rebound after Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated he will push for new universal tariffs on US imports to start at 2.5% and gradually rise,” says George Vessey.
- Apollo on inflation: “The share of companies planning to raise prices remains elevated and has started to trend higher … Combined with the recent jump in ISM services prices paid, … this points to upside risks to inflation going forward,” according to Torsten Sløk.
- Bank of America on consumer cash: “One of our favorite metrics is the ratio of liquid household assets to total liabilities. We define liquid assets as checking and saving account balances, and money market mutual fund shares. This ratio is well above pre-Covid levels, and has started to tick up again in the last few quarters. This means households have a strong buffer of safe assets to withstand a potential decline in the value of their riskier assets.”
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
A top Starbucks analyst went on a stealthy mission to test the company’s vibe shift and saw three signs of tactical changes by Lila MacLellan
How Elon Musk built an AI moat around Tesla impervious to DeepSeek’s ‘Sputnik moment’ by Christiaan Hetzner
Trump’s order to freeze federal grants threatens Medicaid, student loans: What we know so far by Alicia Adamczyk
The Fed sent stocks spiraling after its last meeting, and now the central bank is expected to leave interest rates untouched on Wednesday by Alena Botros
LVMH reports muted sales amid hope that the luxury downturn might finally be ending by Prarthana Prakash
Billionaire Binance founder ‘CZ’ jumps back into crypto with $16 million investment in token airdrop service Sign by Catherine McGrath
This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
