Weekly Market Commentary: Equities Rise, Boosted by Earnings

Sunflower Bank Weekly Market Commentary: April 27, 2026

Each week, our Wealth Management team analyzes the U.S. stock market and bond market activity and news of the previous week, summarizing their findings into a weekly market update report. The key points of this week's commentary, "Equities Rise, Boosted by Earnings," include:

• Equity markets posted modest gain last week as strong earnings from chip companies pushed stocks higher. The S&P 500 Index rose +0.6% and the Russell 2000 gained +0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 was the best performing major domestic Index last week, increasing +2.4%.
• Equities gained despite crude oil prices increasing more than +10% last week. Little progress has been made towards reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and daily traffic remains near zero.
• Focusing on earnings, blockbuster reports from semiconductor companies Texas Instruments (+19%) and Intel (+24%) drove increases across the semiconductor space. Both Texas Instruments and Intel noted robust, and better than expected, demand from the data center space.
• Overall, first quarter 2026 earnings season is off to a strong start. Almost one third of S&P 500 Index constituents have reported earnings to date, with more than 80% beating analyst estimates. According to Factset, analysts are now expecting EPS for companies in the Index to grow +15.1% year-over-year, up from +13.1% at the start of the reporting season.

  
  

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