Market Insights Recap — Week of April 20, 2026

Hello, I’m Steve Orr, Chief Investment Officer for Texas Capital’s Private Bank.

Jeez, I hope you’re not late to the party. New highs breaking out everywhere last week: Nasdaq, S&P 500, Brazil, Taiwan — even Israel. That’s pretty notable. Most of those Euro indexes are also in uptrends. You’d think the war just never happened. But the short answer for the last three weeks is that the fast money commodity traders, they’re all on the short side of stocks, and they were really long on oil. So, that ceasefire caught them off guard. And then a panic rally took hold.

Now, looking under the hood at the S&P and NYSE composite market’s roughly 4% move last week, advancing stocks briefly rose above 90%. So, almost every stock was participating to some degree in the rally. That’s a good sign. Also a good sign is the index’s 3% or more gain in each of the last three weeks. Now, that’s happened only two times in the S&P 500’s history. Now the chart pattern is a sharp V-shaped reversal. These have happened 19 times where the index was oversold down at the bottom of the V and now overbought up at the top. Well, what happened after those 19 times? Over the next week, kind of a mixed bag: Half of them are up and half of them were down. Three months later, 16 were up, only three down; and six months later, 17 up, only two down. Those are good odds because history does rhyme.

Overall, it’s still a rotational market. Some sectors are leading, others lagging. Now, we like to see 80% or more of the 500 stocks above their one-year trend line. We use the 200-day moving average for that trend line. Now, think back to 2024: The broad market was in gear, 75 to 85% of the S&P were above their 200-day moving average almost the entire year. What about small caps? They’re finally hitting new highs, also. Dow transports — shooting to the moon. Rails, trucks, airfreight — they’re all trading well. Now, that may be more of a comment on fuel surcharges helping their earnings than a booming economy. 

Well, we could get there if earnings season comes in as Wall Street expects. Over 90 S&P companies report this week. Some of the big names: General Electric, United Airlines, AT&T, Boeing, Tesla and Texas Instruments. We’re kind of waiting for the following week; that’s the news headline day. Circle April 29 on your calendar. That’s when Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon report — and it’s Fed Day. 

Speaking of the Fed: Futures markets, they’re starting to price a little odds that there’s going to be one rate cut late this year. We have our doubts; we think the Fed stays on hold. Strong weekly hiring data from ADP, all-time lows and jobless claims, improving new industrial orders means the economy is adjusting to coming shortages later in the year and doing well overall. Our indicator dashboard kept us fully invested and remains largely green. So, stay patient; ’til next time.