April Review: As good as it gets?

Horacio Coutino, multi-asset strategist

“I don’t care if you call it a recession or not, in this industry that’s a recession”
— Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan during Q1 earnings call, on 24th April.

President Trump's second term has seen an unexpected depreciation of the US dollar, defying the often-anticipated correlation with rising US interest rates. Investors sold the dollar throughout April due to unprecedented trade war uncertainty.

April witnessed a poor performance across global equity markets, with US indices generally underperforming their mean monthly performance. Six of the eleven S&P 500 sectors experienced negative returns. This contrasts with the Stoxx Europe 600, which also saw negative performance in most sectors but demonstrated resilience in its equal-weighted version, hinting at a more evenly distributed performance across European companies.

This report will analyze:

• S&P 500 earnings expectations for Q1.
• Sectoral earnings growth rates.
• The S&P 500 sectors’ net profit margins.
• Sector-specific monthly performance for US and European equities.

Download the report