Shesa's Weekend Stock Market Updates - 4|12|26

Welcome to my weekend's update

After weeks of doldrum last week, the U.S. stock market had its strongest weekly gains since November, driven by relief over a fragile two-week ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran contingent on reopening the Strait of Hormuz). Over the weekend, negotiation went on between U.S and Iran in Islamabad headed by vice president JD Vance. The Oil prices which is key driver of the inflation fell from about $115 to $95. This brought some relief for the investors. Overall, last week marked a strong rebound, with the Nasdaq exiting correction territory. Markets remain sensitive to developments in the ceasefire and upcoming earnings season. Volatility could persist next week depending on geopolitical updates, economic data and Q1 earnings results. All the indexes were up handsomely, particularly Wednesday was huge.
  • S&P 500: Up 3.6% for the week, closing at 6,816.89
  • Dow Jones: Up 3%, closing at 47,916.57 
  • Nasdaq Composite: Up 4.7%, closing at 22,902.89 - the AI related stock were on fire
  • Sector moves: Technology, communication services, consumer discretionary, and industrials led gains; energy was the notable laggard as oil fell.
Key Economic news last week
  • The consumer price index (CPI/Inflation) rose 3.3% year over year in March 2026, up from 2.4% in February. It was in-line with Wall Street expectations but a huge jump in the inflation numbers.  Higher gas prices was one of the key factor.
  • The Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) came in line with the expectations 2.8 vs. 2.8 YoY, up 0.4% for February.
  • U.S. consumer sentiment plummeted to its lowest level on record, 47.6, down 10.7%, driven by the scare over energy prices and the economic impacts of the Iran conflict.
  • Q4 2025 final GDP was up 0.5% vs. 0.7% (missed).
  • ISM Services Mar: 54.0 vs. 55 expected.
Last week the semiconductor and AI related stocks were on fire. One question was asked in my WhatsApp group about CoreWeave (CRWV).
 
CoreWeave (CRWV): Expanded $21B multi-year AI cloud capacity deal with Meta through 2032, including NVIDIA Vera Rubin. Multi-year agreement with Anthropic for Claude AI models. This company has the largest backlogs of about $67 billion. Please note that NBIS has $46 billion and APLD has $16 billion backlogs. All these are good stocks but highly volatile. Possibly, NBIS is best of the lot but it went up sharply last week.

META: stock was on fire last week. It launched new AI module Muse Spark and had a $21 billion deal with CRWV boosting investors confidence. 

Applied Digital (APLD) Q3 Results on April 8:
Revenue: $126.6M vs $75.5M (68% beat), up 139% (from $52.9M).
EPS: $0.09 vs -$0.15 (huge beat).
My view: It was a strong quarter and company expect to ramp up in next year. 

Economic Report next week
Tue, 4/14: Producer Price Index (PPI)

Key Earnings next week
  • Mon, 10/13: GS
  • Tuesday, 10/14: JPM, C, WFC
  • Wednesday: BAC, MS
  • Thursday: NFLX
What to expect?
The Earnings season for Q1 will kick-off this week with most of the big banks and financial institutions reporting, followed by Netflix. Next week Tesla will report and other major tech companies will start reporting. But the major news is that U.S and Iran negotiation has failed. It was known that this negotiation was not going to work. Some news says China and Russia are behind it. Well, we may not in interested on politics but the key point is what comes next? But if Hormuz remains close then oil price may go up significantly and if that happens there will be higher inflation and that's not good for stock market. Hopefully, U.S would be able to open Hormuz and earnings goes well. If so, market may hit new highs.  Only time will tell. As I said in my update to WhatsApp group, probably it makes sense to reduce any short position and accumulate some good stocks slowly. As I said in my April blog, 90% of the long term stock return comes from less than 10% of the best days. So, we should't be out of the market. 

Stocks to watch
NVDA, TSLA, META, CRWV, NBIS, APLD, MU, AVGO, USO, GLD, UVIX




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