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OVERVIEW

Peaks, Pullbacks & Geopolitical Jitters

US financial markets experienced a highly volatile, headline-driven week marked by a record-breaking rally followed by a sharp reality check. Equities pushed to all-time highs midweek on the back of strong corporate earnings, but gains quickly eroded toward the weekend as escalating Middle East tensions and concerns over the software sector cooled investor appetite.

Both the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq touched fresh all-time records on Wednesday, fueled by strong corporate earnings and AI infrastructure demand. By Thursday and early Friday, markets turned in choppy, negative trading.

The Numbers That Matter

Market levels reflected high geopolitical anxiety and a distinct risk-off shift as trading concluded for the week. Geopolitical flare-ups pushed energy prices sharply higher, simultaneously acting as a drag on global equities and feeding concerns over sticky inflation.

UPCOMING HYPERSCALER EARNINGS

April 29: AI's ROI Moment of Truth

Next week is arguably the most important single week of this earnings season. All four hyperscalers — Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon — report on April 29, and the market's patience with AI capital expenditure is about to be tested in a very real way.

ServiceNow's disappointing print this week was the opening act. The question investors need to ask heading into next week is simple: is AI spend actually converting into revenue and returns?

What to watch for in each report:

• Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 2.13% ) — Azure AI growth rate and Copilot adoption signals

• Alphabet $GOOG ( ▲ 1.35% ) — Google Cloud momentum and Search AI monetization

• Meta $META ( ▲ 2.41% ) — Ad revenue efficiency gains attributed to AI infrastructure

• Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 3.49% ) — AWS margins and the payoff timeline on its $100B+ capex commitment

The bigger picture:

• Forward earnings expectations are already elevated, with the S&P 500 trading at 21x forward P/E

• Any guidance disappointment will be amplified in this environment

• One weak print from the group could reshape the AI narrative for the rest of 2026

The hype cycle demanded belief. Earnings season will demand proof.

These Nuclear Stocks Are Delivering Real Cash Flow

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THIS WEEK’S ECONOMIC CALENDAR 📅

The data behind the headlines

Value over volume dominates this week's data. Recent economic prints reflect a tug-of-war between accelerating factory floor momentum and persistent geopolitical frictions in the Middle East.

• April 21: China Loan Prime Rate (LPR) Decisions

  • The People's Bank of China held both the 1-year and 5-year loan prime rates unchanged at 3.0% and 3.5% respectively, pausing on monetary easing after an earlier spike in GDP growth and producer prices gave them near-term breathing room.

• April 23: S&P Flash U.S. Manufacturing PMI

  • The S&P Global index jumped to 54.0 against a 52.5 consensus estimate, clocking a multi-year high as manufacturing output surged—though some of this was chalked up to businesses "panic buying" and stockpiling to build safety nets against war-driven shipping delays.

• April 23: Initial Jobless Claims

  • Claims came in slightly higher than the consensus estimate at 214,000, but overall levels still suggest that the underlying labor market remains structurally tight.

• April 24: Japan Core Inflation Data

  • Japan’s core inflation accelerated slightly to 1.8%, keeping pressure on the Bank of Japan's rate-hike calculus as the market weighs a weak yen and geopolitical energy shocks.

🚨 Broad Dashboard Outlook

• Fed Meetings: There was no Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest rate decision this week. The next scheduled FOMC meeting is set for April 28–29.

• CPI (Inflation): Major U.S. inflation data was not on the docket for this window; markets are actively monitoring the incoming PMI output charge hikes, which spiked to their sharpest rate since mid-2022 due to supply chain distress.

• Earnings: Corporate earnings season is currently in full gear, with notable tech and blue-chip heavyweights releasing first-quarter financials.

• Options Expiry: A heavy options expiration cleared standard market flows last Friday, April 17, making this week a battle of pure data versus geopolitical headlines.

WHAT’S UP IN SPACE?

The SpaceX IPO: What Investors Need to Know Now 🚀

The most anticipated IPO in years is coming — and smart money is already positioning. SpaceX is expected to debut later in 2026, and it could rank among the largest IPOs in stock market history.

Here's what that means for your portfolio:

Why It Matters

• Index inclusion post-IPO will force passive funds to buy SpaceX stock automatically

• Broader capital flows are already rotating into the space sector in anticipation

• The feedback loop has started — waiting until IPO day may mean missing the setup

How Investors Are Getting Exposure Today

• NASA ETF — SpaceX is ~10% of holdings, trading near NAV with no premium

• XOVR ETF — SpaceX is the top holding at ~11%, though with less buzz

• DXYZ & VCX — both offer exposure but have traded at steep, risky premiums to NAV

The Key Risk to Watch Valuations across the space sector are already elevated. Many pure-play space firms remain unprofitable. The IPO could mark the peak of enthusiasm rather than the beginning.

The opportunity is real — but so is the timing risk.

BETWEEN THE LINES

What Getty Realty's Earnings Call Quietly Revealed

Getty Realty $GTY ( ▼ 0.92% ) doesn't make headlines the way a Tesla or Amazon does. It owns gas stations, car washes, and auto service centers. But buried inside this week's Q1 2026 earnings call was a line that deserves a second read.

CEO Christopher Constant, describing why his investment pipeline is accelerating, noted that businesses are turning to sale-leasebacks as a complement to their other capital sources (debt and equity). That's a significant shift in framing. Here's why it matters:

What a sale-leaseback actually is: A company sells its real estate to Getty, pockets the cash, then leases the property back and keeps operating. It's monetizing an asset without losing it.

What it used to mean: Distress. A last resort when credit dried up.

What it apparently means now: A rational, proactive financing choice — even for growing businesses.

That reframe is the tell. When operators across convenience retail and auto services voluntarily trade future real estate upside for liquidity today, they're signaling something about the cost and accessibility of conventional capital.

Businesses aren't selling their real estate because money is cheap — they're selling it because cheap money is harder to find than it looks.

How to position for it

If operators are quietly shoring up liquidity and locking in decade-long lease obligations, the smart money isn't chasing growth — it's rotating toward stability. The same credit tightening that's driving the sale-leaseback boom tends to punish cyclicals and reward companies that sell things people can't stop buying: groceries, prescriptions, electricity.

That's the exact logic behind the Surmount’s Recession Resistant strategy — an automated portfolio built for precisely this kind of environment.

It focuses on defensive stocks across consumer staples, healthcare, utilities, and essential retail: companies with reliable cash flows and strong fundamentals that have historically held up when the economy softens and credit gets scarce.

• Consumer staples — demand doesn't disappear when belts tighten

• Healthcare & utilities — non-negotiable spending, recession or not

• Essential retail — the trade-down consumer still has to buy something

When a normally mundane REIT earnings call starts revealing cracks in how businesses are accessing capital, that's not the moment to be fully exposed to rate-sensitive growth names. It's the moment to make sure your portfolio has a floor.

VIEW FROM THE HELM

Scott Welch (Certuity CIO)🎙️

Scott Welch, Chief Investment Officer at Certuity, emphasizes that investors must refocus on core economic drivers.

As market-moving geopolitical headlines begin to stabilize, Welch warns that the temporary relief rallies simply bring equities back to their elevated baseline. He argues that sustainable market growth will rely strictly on classic fiscal metrics rather than sentiment.

🎯 Why This Quote Hits Home:

This assessment by Welch is so critical and timely because it shifts the investor perspective to 6 important domains:

• Valuations: The market was not cheap before the recent volatility, and current stock prices remain historically high.

• Earnings Potential: Corporate bottom lines must expand significantly to justify the current stock premiums.

• Inflation: Persistent price pressures remain the primary threat to long-term equity returns.

• The Economy: Broader GDP health will determine if consumer demand can support corporate growth.

• Labor Markets: Low unemployment is keeping consumer spending alive but risks fueling the inflation fire.

• Fed Policy: Central bank interest rate decisions are the ultimate anchor for borrowing costs and equity discounting.

🗳️ Reader Poll: The Vibe Check

BOTTOM LINE

When the Ceiling Becomes the Floor

Markets this week offered a masterclass in how quickly the narrative can shift. One day, all-time highs and AI euphoria; the next, geopolitical anxiety and sector-wide caution. The throughline? Volatility is no longer the exception — it's the operating environment.

What this week made clear is that the fundamental drivers of this market remain intact: corporate earnings are largely holding up, AI infrastructure demand continues to draw capital, and investors haven't lost their appetite for risk — they've just become more selective about when and where they deploy it. The pullback wasn't a rejection of the bull case; it was a reminder that even strong trends breathe.

The bigger picture is one of a market navigating a genuine tug-of-war — between robust economic data and geopolitical overhang, between rate expectations and earnings reality, between momentum and mean reversion. That tension isn't going away anytime soon, and weeks like this one are likely to become more common, not less.

For investors, the challenge isn't identifying the right thesis — most people know what they believe about where markets are headed. The harder part is executing on that thesis consistently, without letting a Thursday selloff or a Friday headline derail a well-reasoned position. In an environment this reactive, the traders who tend to come out ahead are often the ones who've taken their emotions out of the equation entirely — leaning on disciplined, rules-based execution through tools like Surmount AI's automated strategies to stay the course when the noise gets loudest.

Stay grounded, stay systematic, and see you next week,

— Surmount Markets