Goldman analyst Christine Cho has published her latest quarterly survey of 2,000 consumers for 1Q26, pointing to a softer restaurant environment. Muted demand backdrop suggests that the K-shaped economy continues to fester, with working-poor consumers still facing the greatest downward pressure.
Respondents expect their visits to limited-service restaurants (LSRs), restaurants where customers generally order and pay at a counter, kiosk, drive-thru, or app, such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Chipotle, CAVA, Sweetgreen, Panera, and others, to hold steady for the next three months, while casual dining still has some room for visit growth, though at a slower pace than in prior quarters.
The respondents under most pressure to spend on food away from home were among lower-income households, with roughly half of consumers earning under $70,000 saying they plan to dine out less.
Another key takeaway is the growing divide in perceptions of value. Fast food's "bang for the buck" has improved since 3Q25, while casual dining's value perception has deteriorated to the lowest level in Goldman's dataset.
Cho attributes the improvement in fast food partly to value menus, meal deals, and marketing tie-ins, which are boosting scores for value, quality, and willingness to pay more.
"Consumers still see grocery as better value," Cho noted.
Intention to spend was flat.
GS Brand Scores — Major fast food brands showing sequential improvement with stepped-up value focus
Exhibit 11: Summary of GS Restaurant Survey Scores - % change vs. 3Q25 Summary
Exhibit 12: Summary of GS Restaurant Survey Scores - YoY % change Summary
Cho then covered which restaurant stocks looked the strongest or weakest in the survey:
Stock callouts. QSR was a standout in the monthly dashboard, showing trends consistent with higher brand scores vs. 3Q25 for Burger King (+6.5%), Popeyes (+3.6%), and Tim Hortons (+1.7%) in our survey. DRI remains a casual dining outlier as accelerating NPS trends align with positive transaction growth and an increase in Olive Garden brand score vs. 3Q25. MCD and YUM are successfully pivoting toward value-led growth, contrasting deterioration in conversion and quality scores at SG and BLMN.
The S&P 500 Restaurants Sub-Industry Index has largely traded sideways since early 2025.
Our takeaway is that fast food's aggressive marketing of meal deals and other value offerings has clearly resonated with budget-conscious consumers amid K-shaped economy woes.
Professional subscribers can read "Deep-dive into 1Q26 restaurant survey" at our new Marketdesk.ai portal
Tyler Durden Thu, 04/23/2026 - 12:20Three weeks ago, when Bloomberg pointed out that Andurand was the best performing hedge fund in March thanks to its notorious levered long oil positioning (and really nothing else), we said they may want to refresh his exposure after the April 7 oil crash.
May want to F5 on Andurand after today's near record oil crash https://t.co/tlkgz3dXJa
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 8, 2026Three weeks later, they did: according to a report published this morning, Pierre Andurand’s largest "hedge fund" (and when it comes to Andurand, the word "hedging" is a catastrophic misnomer), plunged about 52% in the first half of April, wiping out all of its first quarter gains and then some made on bullish oil bets at the start of the Iran war.
His fund slumped this month through April 17 and is now down almost 37% for the year despite oil being substantially higher YTD. It comes after the Andurand Commodities Discretionary Enhanced fund delivered a 31% gain in March even as other hedge funds were caught off guard by the huge swings in commodities prices and inflation expectations unleashed by the war. Perhaps in the parallel universe inhabited by the ultra liberal trader, oil can somehow magically rise to infinity without demand destruction. Well... no.
Andurand trying to lever up his oil bets to 100x.The fund - which is basically a 5x levered bet on oil, and which refuses to ever consider the possibility its manager is wrong - has no set risk limits and regularly delivers both double digit gains and losses... though in fairness it has been more losses than gains.
Oil prices posted a record monthly rally in March, driving the firm’s gains, as war between the US and Iran throttled exports from the Persian Gulf and triggered the most severe supply disruption in history. Brent futures, an international benchmark, climbed to almost $120 a barrel on March 9. Yet instead of taking profits on the way down, Andurand appears to have doubled and tripled down. And that's how he wiped out more than half of his fund's AUM in 2 weeks.
It begs the question: which foolish prime broker generously gave Andurand the insane leverage to lose such a staggering amount of money in just two weeks?
Unlike Andurand, the Iranian chaos has been lucrative for oil trading houses that buy and sell physical cargoes of crude, driving outsize profits at firms including Vitol Group, Trafigura Group and Gunvor Group.
For Andurand, the setback in March was a reminder of how volatile commodity markets can be. The fund lost about 40% last year after making a 50% gain the previous year. Yet with the 37% drop in 2026, it is pretty clear that not a single investor in Andurand's hedge fund is even remotely close to ever breaking even on their catastrophic investment.
Tyler Durden Thu, 04/23/2026 - 12:15Authored by Stephen Katte via CoinTelegraph.com,
Two US congressional candidates and one sitting lawmaker have received fines and bans from Kalshi after they were found betting on the outcomes of their election races, as prediction market platforms crack down on insider trading.
Matt Klein, a sitting member of the Minnesota State Senate, was fined $539 for betting on his primary race in his bid for the US House of Representatives, which is set to take place in August. Ezekiel Enriquez, who ran for a US House seat in March, received a $784 penalty, according to Kalshi's notice of settlement.
Another case involved Mark Moran, a candidate in Virginia's US Senate race, who received a $6,229 penalty and was ordered to return any profits from his trades after allegedly refusing to cooperate with Kalshi to resolve the issue. All three were banned from the platform for five years.
Prediction markets, which let users trade contracts on the outcomes of future events, have faced growing scrutiny over insider trading and possible violations of gambling laws. Kalshi and Polymarket, the two largest platforms, have pledged to introduce stricter controls and crack down on unlawful activity.
Lawmakers offer reasons for insider tradesMoran said in a statement on X that he placed his wager to test Kalshi's procedures and see how the platform would respond to insider trading.
“YES, I did bet ~$100 on myself on Kalshi because I wanted to get caught,” he said, adding that he “wanted to see (1) if Kalshi would come after me and (2) what their path would be.”
Source: Mark Moran
Klein said in a statement that he placed the wager out of curiosity about how prediction markets worked, but later learned it violated platform rules.
“In compliance with their request, I paid a penalty and agreed to be suspended from the platform. That was the only wager I have ever made on a predictions market,” he added.
Klein is a co-sponsor of a bill in the Minnesota Legislature that aims to ban wagers on the outcomes of real-world events such as elections or policy decisions.
Cointelegraph was unable to reach Ezekiel Enriquez for comment.
Kalshi’s ongoing insider trading crackdownBobby DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement, said Tuesday these cases violated Kalshi's exchange rules but didn't warrant referral to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the Department of Justice for further investigation and prosecution.
“Regardless of the size of a trade, political candidates who can influence a market based on whether they stay in or out of a race violate our rules. No matter how small the size of the trade, any trade that is found to have violated our exchange rules will be punished,” he added.
The platform issued a $2,000 fine and a five-year ban in February to a former California gubernatorial contender for betting on his own candidacy last year.
Tyler Durden Thu, 04/23/2026 - 12:00