April review: Things fall apart

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? — William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, November 1920.

March 2026 delivered a reckoning for equity investors on both sides of the Atlantic. A fierce re-pricing of inflation expectations — driven by sharply higher energy prices in the wake of the ongoing US-Israel-led conflict with Iran — combined with broader geopolitical uncertainty to produce one of the weakest monthly performances observed in the past five years for both US and European indices.

In the US, ten of eleven S&P 500 sectors finished in the red, with the benchmark declining 5.09% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting a steeper loss of 5.38%, a result ranking at the 3.3rd percentile of its five-year monthly return distribution. Energy was the sole sectoral exception, gaining 10.31% as crude prices surged. In Europe, losses were more acute: the Stoxx Europe 600 fell 8.00% and Germany's DAX dropped 10.30%, with Oil & Gas, up 14.55% m/o/m, the only one of 17 sectors to advance.

The damage, however, extended well beyond the energy complex itself. Supply disruptions and infrastructure destruction arising from the conflict in Iran carry consequences that do not remain contained within a single sector — they metastasize across industries through elevated input costs, margin compression, and a broad deterioration in risk appetite.

This report will analyse:

• S&P 500 earnings growth and estimates for Q1
• Sectoral revisions for Q1 and net profit margins
• Sector-specific monthly performance for US and European equities

Download the report