Editor’s Note: Former tech executive and angel investor Jeff Brown — picked Bitcoin before it jumped as high as 52,400%, Tesla before it jumped as high as 2,150%, and Nvidia before it jumped as high as 32,000%. Today, he’ll show you how to claim a stake in Elon Musk’s upcoming IPO — BEFORE the company goes public. Click here to see the details or read more below.

Dear Reader,

Elon Musk just did something… and nobody noticed.

While the world watched NASA's Artemis mission circle the moon…

Elon Musk’s team launched its own rocket into space.

A move that was critical to what could be the biggest IPO in history.

Everyone was looking the other way.

And yet, I believe that anyone who understands what just went into orbit has a shot at turning $500 into a life-changing payout.

Click here to see the SpaceX story that no one is talking about

We have so much to look forward to,

Jeff Brown
Founder & CEO, Brownstone Research

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

A war, an energy shock, a divided Fed, and a 10% monthly gain. Here's how that actually makes sense.

April was a genuinely strange month to be watching markets. The Iran war was still running. Oil prices hit four-year highs. The Fed was publicly divided. Inflation was still above 3%. By almost every macro headline, it was an uncomfortable environment.

And yet the S&P 500 posted its best monthly gain since November 2020, returning over 10% for the month and closing April at record highs near 7,209. The Nasdaq had its best month since April 2020. These aren't modest moves. They're the kind of numbers that make people do a double take.

So what actually happened?

The short answer is that corporate earnings overwhelmed everything else. With 63% of S&P 500 companies having reported Q1 results by the end of April, blended earnings growth came in at 27.1%, well above what analysts had expected heading into the season. That's the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth. Companies weren't just surviving a difficult environment. A lot of them were thriving in it.

This is the part that catches people off guard. Markets are forward-looking. They don't just react to how things feel today. They price in what companies are actually earning and what that implies about the months ahead. When earnings come in significantly above expectations, it shifts the math on what stocks are worth, and capital moves accordingly.

The sectors doing the heaviest lifting were financials, communication services, and technology. Bank trading desks cleaned up on volatility. Tech companies benefited from AI-driven capital spending that kept accelerating even as macro conditions stayed messy. Goldman Sachs estimates that AI-related investment will drive roughly 40% of S&P 500 earnings growth this year, with the largest cloud companies planning to spend around $670 billion on infrastructure in 2026 alone.

There's also a timing element worth understanding. The S&P 500 had already sold off sharply when the Iran war began in late February. By the time April rolled around, a lot of the war-related fear was already priced in. As earnings started beating expectations and a temporary ceasefire took hold in early April, the market snapped back hard from oversold levels. The rebound wasn't markets ignoring bad news. It was markets adjusting to news that turned out to be less catastrophic than initially feared.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

March 1968: Central banks ran out of gold. The London market shut down. Gold surged 2,329%.

March 1980: The COMEX hit a delivery wall. Silver miners like Silverado ran 3,989%.

May 29, 2026: We are seeing the exact same "Vault Drain" signals today.

The "Registered" gold inventory is down 25% while prices are at record highs.

This has never happened before.

On May 29th, the music stops for the paper gold cartel.

If you are holding ETFs, you are holding a "parking ticket" for a car that has already been stolen.

I've found one stock—a company sitting on more gold than France and Italy combined—that acts as the ultimate escape hatch.

See the Historical Pattern and my #1 Pick here »

The April rally is a good reminder of how markets actually work versus how they feel from the outside. Geopolitical noise, elevated energy prices, and a divided central bank all created a backdrop that felt genuinely uncertain. But underneath that backdrop, companies were generating real profits at a pace that exceeded expectations by a wide margin. Markets responded to the profits, not the headlines.

That doesn't mean the macro risks have disappeared. Oil prices are still elevated. Inflation is still above target. The Fed is still on hold with no cuts in sight. All of those conditions remain in place. What April showed is that strong earnings can absorb a lot of macro pressure before it shows up in stock prices.

When markets climb through a wall of worry, it usually means the underlying fundamentals are stronger than the headlines suggest. That's what April showed. A record-setting monthly gain didn't happen because investors decided to ignore the bad news. It happened because the earnings picture was strong enough to outweigh it. Understanding that dynamic is what separates the signal from the noise in a month like this one.

Until next time,
The Navigator