Weekly Recap — Week of April 13–17, 2026
Stocks posted their best week since May 2025 as an Israel-Iran ceasefire and a reopened Strait of Hormuz collapsed the war premium and sent oil down nearly 9%.
Week at a glance
Risk assets ripped. An Israel–Iran ceasefire and Iran's declaration that the Strait of Hormuz was "completely open" pulled the war premium out of oil and flooded it back into equities.
- S&P 500: +4.5% to 7,126.06 — best week since May 2025, third straight weekly gain, three record closes
- Nasdaq Composite: closed at 24,468, extending its winning streak to 13 sessions — longest since 1992
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: +3.2%, its strongest week since June
- Russell 2000: +2.1% Friday to a fresh all-time high of 2,776.90, leading on the reflation leg
The Nasdaq 100 notched a new record alongside the composite, and breadth was unusually clean — every major index closed green every session.
VIX
The VIX ended Friday at 17.94, down roughly four handles on the week after peaking in the low-20s during the March Iran spike. The term structure re-steepened into contango, front-month futures cheapened, and dealer hedges came off. None of that is outright complacent — 18 is middle-of-the-road — but it is a clear vote that the tail risk that dominated March is now being priced as a policy problem, not a market one.
Sector scorecard
Ten of 11 GICS sectors finished higher. Energy was the lone loser as crude collapsed.
Leaders
- XLK — Technology caught the biggest bid as risk-on flows rotated back to the mega-cap winners that had been shelved during the March de-risking.
- XLC — Communication Services rode META and GOOGL higher into next week's prints.
- XLY — Consumer Discretionary benefited from both falling gas prices and the TSLA run-up into earnings.
Laggards
- XLE — Energy was the only red sector as WTI fell to $83.13 and Brent to $90.62, roughly 9% lower on the week.
- XLP — Staples lagged on the rotation out of defensives.
- XLU — Utilities underperformed as yields held a 4.2% handle at the long end.
Single-stock stories
NFLX −9% after hours. Netflix posted Q1 revenue of $12.25B (+16% YoY) and EPS of $1.23, both ahead of consensus, but Q2 guidance came in soft at +13% revenue growth and the stock was sold aggressively in the after-market. The company also disclosed that co-founder Reed Hastings will leave the board when his term expires in June. Management held the $50.7B–$51.7B full-year range.
RVMD +37%. Revolution Medicines' phase 3 pancreatic cancer trial for daraxonrasib hit: median overall survival of 13.2 months on the daily pill versus 6.7 months on chemo. The readout reset the stock's ceiling overnight and dragged the KRAS-inhibitor cohort higher with it.
GS −2%. Goldman Sachs kicked off bank earnings with Q1 profit of $5.63B ($17.55 EPS vs. $16.47 expected) and a top-line beat, but shares sold off on mixed trading-desk commentary and a cautious tone on the IPO pipeline. JPM, C, WFC, MS, and BAC all reported alongside; tape was mixed but financials as a group closed the week higher.
LEG +9% on M&A. Leggett & Platt agreed to be acquired by Somnigroup International, the latest in a string of mid-cap industrial takeouts.
Macro & policy
March CPI printed hot at 3.3% YoY (0.9% MoM), up from 2.4% — but almost the entire beat came from a 21.2% jump in gasoline prices tied to the Iran shock. Core CPI was tame at 0.2% MoM and 2.6% YoY, one tenth below forecast. Fed speakers uniformly framed the headline as a one-off. Rate futures continue to price essentially no cuts through year-end.
Rates: 2-year closed at 3.71%, 10-year at 4.26%, 30-year at 4.88%. The curve bear-steepened slightly as the growth scare faded.
Dollar: DXY rebounded from a six-week low on stronger data — jobless claims fell more than expected and the April Philly Fed survey jumped to a 15-month high.
Commodities: Oil −9% on the ceasefire; gold gave back some of its March safe-haven bid as real yields firmed.
Week ahead
Earnings
- TSLA — Wednesday after the bell. Margins and the pace of FSD rollout will dominate the tape.
- VZ — Tuesday morning, the telco read-through ahead of T.
- IBM — Wednesday after the bell, watched for any AI-services color into next week's mega-cap prints.
Economic data
- Retail sales — Thursday. The March print will test whether the gas-price spike ate into discretionary spend.
- FOMC minutes — Wednesday. Markets will parse for any hawkish dissent that was not in the dot plot.
- Initial jobless claims — Thursday. Last print was 219k; another sub-220k read keeps the soft-landing narrative intact.
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