Earnings And Guidance Must Reflect The Market’s Strength

*Analyzing the markets with Richie Naso, a Wall Street veteran of over 40 years and former member of the NYSE.

• DJIA 52-wk: +26.33% | YTD: +2.88% | Wkly: +3.19%
• S&P 500 52-wk: +34.89% | YTD: +4.10% | Wkly: +4.54%
• NASDAQ 52-wk: +50.24% | YTD: +5.28% | Wkly: +6.84%
• iShares Tech-Software Sector ETF 52-wk: -1.47% | YTD: -19.50% | Wkly: +13.94%

Russell 2000: Up roughly +5.5% to +5.6% on the week. Late week: buyers stepped in, pushing higher into the close.

Note: 10-year yield drives small caps (Russell 2000).

All figures Markets Close : Friday 17th April, 2026.

Wall Street extended gains Friday afternoon as easing tensions in the Middle East improved investor sentiment, though uncertainty around key shipping routes remained.

Iranian authorities announced that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open to commercial traffic for the duration of the Lebanon ceasefire, a move aimed at stabilizing global trade flows.

Despite the announcement, President Donald Trump said U.S. naval restrictions on Iranian ports will remain in place, creating a mixed outlook for maritime activity in the region. The conflicting signals have left traders focused on how quickly shipping conditions can normalize.

Prediction market participants are increasingly weighing the timeline for a full recovery in transit through the critical waterway, reflecting cautious optimism alongside lingering geopolitical risk.

Three ETFs With Yields Above 5%

Key Points

• Investors looking for an actively managed fund should check out Voya International High Dividend Low Volatility Portfolio.
• The Global X SuperDividend ETF has returned 9.5% so far this year, according to Morningstar. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
• First Trust Dow Jones Global Select Dividend Index Fund is another strong option.

It’s harder and harder to find U.S. stock-focused mutual funds that boast generous dividend yields. Fortunately, there are a handful of foreign and emerging markets funds that still offer payouts of 5% or more.

With the U.S. stock market dominated by growth-focused technology companies, the yield of the S&P 500 has shrunk to just 1.2%, its lowest levels since the early ’90s-era dot-com bubble. The good news: it’s relatively easy to find yields two to three times that level among developed and emerging markets stocks.

For most of 2026, overseas stocks have also outperformed. Shares of European and Asian companies were hit hard following the U.S. attack on Iran in late February, reflecting those regions’ lack of domestic energy reserves. But they’ve snapped back on news of the tentative ceasefire. All in all, the MSCI EAFE index of developed country stocks is up 5.5% year to date, compared with a decline of 0.3% for the S&P 500. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Some dividend funds are doing even better. The Global X SuperDividend ETF, an index fund targeting the 100 highest-yielding companies around the world, has returned 9.5% so far this year, according to Morningstar. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

While a third of the fund’s holdings are domestic U.S. stocks, it also has big investments in Brazil, Britain, Norway, and Bermuda. Top holdings include Thaifoods Group, which distributes poultry and other foodstuffs in Thailand, and Brazilian energy companies PetroReconcavo and Petrobras.

The fund’s dividend yield is an enticing 9.2%. But investors need to be wary — it is not necessarily a long-term holding. While the fund’s year-to-date performance is impressive, it has proved volatile in the past. Over the past decade its average annual return is just 0.9%, ranking it at the very bottom — the 100th percentile — in its Morningstar category over the period. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Investors looking for an actively managed fund should check out the Voya International High Dividend Low Volatility Portfolio. The fund, which describes itself as a “fundamentally guided, quantitative-selection driven strategy,” has returned 8.3% so far this year. Top holdings include blue chips like HSBC, Roche, and Shell. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Its 7.3% yield is slightly lower than Global X SuperDividend’s. But its long-term performance is far better. The fund has posted average annual returns of 9.2% over the past decade, finishing more or less in the middle of the pack for its Morningstar category. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

The First Trust Dow Jones Global Select Dividend Index ETF is another strong option. The fund is up 8.4% this year. Top holdings include Hyundai Elevator; Spanish telecom operator Telefónica; and oil and gas conglomerate OMV. The fund boasts a 5.4% yield and a 10-year average annual return of 10%. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

The AI Trade Is Back. The Same Old Problems Are Back Too.

The artificial-intelligence trade came roaring back to life this week, with the Nasdaq Composite closing at a fresh high on Thursday, marking 12 straight days of gains. Underneath the optimism, however, are some of the same concerns about circular finance that plagued the stocks at the start of the year.

Those are valid concerns ahead of a flurry of Big Tech earnings reports due out next week, including Google parent Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Apple. Investors had gotten antsy about eye-watering AI bills, and they’re eager for any hint that massive spending is slowing — or at least evidence that companies are seeing returns on all that money.

They’re right to be concerned, says a group of Morgan Stanley analysts led by Todd Castagno. While Big Tech companies have deep pockets, they don’t have infinite money, and most of their AI obligations are off-balance-sheet and opaque, since accounting rules often allow them to defer registering liabilities until triggers like delivery or lease commencements.

“The lack of disclosure and contractual complexity of these arrangements makes it difficult for investors to interpret true economic leverage versus that reported on balance sheet,” Castagno’s team writes. “The circularity of the AI ecosystem further complicates adequate analysis.”

The stakes are undoubtedly high. Purchase obligations from hyperscalers and Nvidia have topped $640 billion, more than doubling in the past year and up six times in the past five years. Commitments are up relative to cash flow too, with Meta’s at approximately 1.7 times forward operating cash flow, and Oracle’s more than seven times.

The upshot is that AI commitments are becoming “more frequent, larger, and more complex,” the Morgan Stanley team notes, and regular investors have less ability to “assess companies’ total potential leverage, which is rising much faster than balance sheet leverage.”

Everything works well as long as there are no hiccups. Even so, it’s hard to ignore how intertwined these companies are. Nvidia and hyperscalers like Google promise to rent space in data centers from suppliers, who then secure loans to build those centers from banks and private-credit lenders, who are reassured by Big Tech’s creditworthiness.

“As of the latest disclosures, hyperscalers have $82 billion of finance lease liabilities and $175 billion of operating lease liabilities on their balance sheets, but they have also committed to $675 billion of lease payments to leases that have not started and will remain off-balance-sheet until they begin,” Castagno’s team writes.

Tech companies aren’t doing anything wrong or illegal — it’s perfectly fine for many of these obligations to remain off-balance-sheet, but the numbers might rightfully make some investors nervous, especially when these bills aren’t theoretical, but highly likely.

All of this is already an adjustment for tech shareholders, who until a few years ago were invested in some of the world’s biggest and most reliable free-cash-flow generators; today those same companies aren’t exactly penny-pinching, but they are taking on increasing debt.

With AI back in the driver’s seat, these pitfalls may come back into focus too.

Roughly 90 S&P 500 index companies are set to report earnings this week. The stock market just ripped and now needs earnings to justify it. If the market digests this news flow and holds up, the path higher is real. If not, you get a sharp, tradable pullback.

With the Strait of Hormuz also in focus, any geopolitical flare-up that pushes oil higher could quickly pressure equities and add another layer of volatility to the tape.

– Richie

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