A Lot Can Change in 15 Days.

When Trump addressed the nation on April 1 and said stock prices would go right back up, that definitely got our attention. Love him or hate him, he seems to have called it as the market has ripped higher through the middle of April.

The Nasdaq has now clawed back over 10%, and many of the names we follow have moved sharply higher alongside it. AMD has pushed into new highs. Micron has snapped back. Meta caught a tailwind from its Muse Spark release. Even Microsoft has rallied hard. The Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund, XLK, is sitting just off all-time highs and the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, SMH, is now up 21% year to date?! A significant and quick pivot from the tone Q1 was setting for 2026.

So was the March pullback just our annually scheduled market correction? We’re trying not to pattern map but its looking A LOT like last year. If that’s the case, what comes next?

There is still significant risk out there. The war and oil remain concerns, and the affordability crisis at home continues to put the Federal Reserve in a difficult spot. Consumers are still feeling pressure, layoffs are abundant and the housing market it is frozen solid. But markets are forward-looking, and when investors get even a slight sense that the worst is over, they tend to move on quickly.

That seems to be what we are seeing now. The market may not be declaring that every problem is solved, but it is showing some underlying confidence that the Iran-related drawdown is mostly in the rearview.

We now head into earnings season which will do a lot to determine whether the rebound has real legs. Early signals from ASML and TSMC were bullish, which only adds to the sense that the market still wants to lean into the AI and semiconductor buildout story.

As the rest of earnings season rolls in, investors will get a much better sense of whether corporate results can support the optimism that has rushed back into the market.