April's Best Month Since 2020.

Saturday April 25 set the table. Trump cancelled the Iran negotiations and crude opened the week with the Hormuz risk premium back in the contract. WTI ran from the high $90s to $103 by Tuesday. Brent crossed $114 Wednesday morning, the highest level of this rally. The OIL VIX held above 70 most of the week. By Friday the contract had pulled back near $101 as positioning re-rated.

Big tech earnings landed Wednesday after the close. Alphabet beat cleanly with cloud revenue growing 63% year over year. Microsoft cloud beat but the AI segment came in soft. Meta raised its 2026 AI capex guide and gave back roughly nine percent. Amazon reported AWS growing 28% year over year, the fastest pace in three years, and still gave back about three percent on the capex commitment funding the next leg. Apple closed the reporting cycle Thursday after the bell with $111.2 billion in revenue, services at $31 billion, and an iPhone March-quarter record. The stock climbed.

For the week:

Nothing changed.

THOR Index Rotation entered the week holding the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 at near equal weight with cash under one percent. It exited the week the same way.

THOR Low Volatility entered the week running seven sectors at roughly fourteen percent each: Technology, Utilities, Real Estate, Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, Materials, and Financials. It exited with the same seven at the same weights. Energy, Consumer Staples, and Healthcare stayed at zero.

Combined equity exposure across both systems sits at roughly 99%, identical to last Sunday. No flips through Trump's Iran cancellation, $114 Brent, the Microsoft and Meta gap, the Amazon capex reaction, or Apple's cycle-closing beat.

The story of the week is what the system didn't do.

Saturday's Iran headline rebuilt the supply-side oil premium overnight. Crude ran from $96 to a $114 high on Brent Wednesday morning. The OIL VIX held above 70. Energy stayed at zero. The trend that matters here is durable directional price, not event-driven supply shocks, and a second consecutive week of geopolitical-spike-then-fade is exactly the dynamic the system filters out. Two more weeks of that pattern in the rear view, and the position read still hasn't changed.

Wednesday's earnings split was the binary moment of the cycle. Microsoft and Meta both gapped lower after the close. Together with Apple and Amazon, the four reporters carry roughly 35% of the Nasdaq 100 by weight. The Nasdaq is the heavier of the two index positions in Index Rotation. Technology is the largest single position in Low Volatility. The lineup ran fully exposed into the reports. Alphabet's cloud strength and Apple's services record carried more weight than Meta's nine percent gap or Amazon's three percent fade. The trend at the highs held, and the system held with it.

The capex bill is now $725 billion across the four hyperscalers for 2026, up roughly 77% from 2024. That number is the spine of the current positioning. Technology captures the chip half. Utilities captures the megawatt half. Real Estate captures the data-center building half. Industrials captures the steel-and-concrete half. The four heaviest active positions in Low Volatility are arranged around the same secular spend.

Financials sit in the middle of the seven at 13.7%. The 2s10s curve at roughly +50 basis points is the cleanest macro setup in the lineup. Bank earnings cleared without drama in March. Credit spreads stay tight. Net interest income gets a tailwind that doesn't depend on the long end falling. Real Estate runs the same rate setup with less cushion. The 10-year at 4.37% is the offsetting headwind on cap rates. Data center demand is what keeps the sector active.

What stayed out: Healthcare, Consumer Staples, Energy. Three sectors haven't confirmed the trend. Healthcare and Staples have been outside since March. Energy hasn't cleared at any point in this run. Three weeks of supply-driven crude rallies and pullbacks have not changed that. Eventually the trend either confirms or it doesn't. The system is built to wait either way.

Both systems are near fully deployed, the same posture carried into and out of the week. Combined equity exposure is approximately 99%, the highest of this run. Seven sectors active in Low Volatility, two indexes near equal weight in Index Rotation, cash under three percent across both. The macro backdrop reinforces the bullish read: April was a strong month for US equities, the Nasdaq 100 set a fresh all-time high, the S&P 500 sits near one, and VIX closed Friday near 17. Against that, the Hormuz situation keeps repricing crude weekly, the 10-year at 4.37% remains a structural headwind for the rate-sensitive parts of the lineup, and a $725 billion capex bill is now the load-bearing assumption under the heaviest sector exposures. The gauge reads broadly bullish with the position sized accordingly. The cushion from here is in the sector mix, not the cash level.

THOR Index Rotation — as of 5/1/26

Two indexes at near equal weight, cash under one percent. The Nasdaq holds the heavier of the two index weights into next week's continuing earnings calendar. The Dow stays out. Its industrial-and-trade-exposed composition kept it lagging through the Hormuz weeks.

THOR Low Volatility — as of 5/1/26

Seven sectors active at roughly equal weight. Technology leads with the cleanest earnings confirmation in the lineup. Utilities is the second-order play on data center electricity demand. Industrials, Real Estate, and Financials each carry their own piece of the same capex story. Energy, Consumer Staples, and Healthcare have not confirmed the trend.

Podcast: Bill Birmingham, head of investments at REX Shares, joined this week's Behind the Ticker to walk through DRNZ, the first pure-play drone ETF on the market. Birmingham covers why existing defense ETFs have been failing investors trying to get drone exposure, why the counter-drone market may be the bigger long-term opportunity, and what the FAA's pending BVLOS rulemaking unlocks for industrial use cases that are technically ready but operationally stuck. Listen on Spotify

Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon capex spending to hit $725 billion in 2026, up 77% from last year — Tom's Hardware, April 30
Compiles the Q1 2026 earnings data into the headline number underpinning this week's mega-cap action: $725 billion in 2026 capex from the four hyperscalers, up 77% from 2024. The relevant figure for any portfolio with weight in technology, utilities, real estate, or industrials.

Microsoft, Meta, and Google just announced billions more in AI spending — and only one got punished — Fortune, April 29
Frames the Wednesday-night split through what the market actually rewarded and what it didn't. Alphabet's cloud growth and Microsoft's mixed AI numbers landed differently, and Meta's gap had less to do with the quarter than with the capex guide.

Apple reports Q2 2026 earnings: $111.2 billion in revenue, up 17% — 9to5Mac, April 30
Records on iPhone, services, and capital returns, with services at $31 billion. Apple closed the mega-cap reporting cycle and did it cleanly. Worth reading for the segment-level numbers behind the headline beat.

Brad Roth / CIO, THOR Financial Technologies

This content reflects the opinions, analyses, and research of THOR Financial Technologies as of the date published. It is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and should not be relied upon as the basis for any investment decision. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results, and all investments involve risk. For more information, please go to: thorft.com