By William Power
Fund investors can thank the big tech stocks for getting the second quarter off to a better start than the first.
Powered by gains in Nvidia and Google parent Alphabet, the stock market in April logged its best month since 2020, shaking off declines in the first quarter when the war in Iran started. That in turn, powered the average U.S.-stock mutual fund or exchange-traded fund to a total return of 10.3% for April, according to statistics from LSEG.
U.S. funds are now up 6.8% for 2026 so far.
"The tech sector is back," says Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial. "After a 115-day hiatus from new highs, the sector has finally reached record-high territory." The gains from the biggest stocks -- so called megacaps like Nvidia -- are "echoing the rotation back into big tech in April 2025," Turnquist says.
It's earnings season on Wall Street, and profits at major U.S. companies -- not just the giant techs -- have thrilled many investors.
After the war outbreak rattled markets, "April has brought a sense of relative stability and renewed confidence," says Saira Malik, chief investment officer at Nuveen, citing cease-fire optimism and resilient corporate earnings. "Unlike some market rallies, this one is being driven not by valuations or even by geopolitical relief, but by earnings, " she says.
International-stock funds were up an average 6.9% in the month, and are now up 6.6% for 2026 so far.
Bond funds rose as well. Funds focused on investment-grade debt (the most common type of fixed-income fund) posted a total return of 0.2% for April an are up 0.1% so far this year, according to the LSEG data.
FINANCIAL FLASHBACK
A look back at Wall Street Journal news from this month in history
-- 130 YEARS AGO: The First Dow Is Published
This month marks the 130th anniversary of the original Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. But now it's so different from when it made its debut that it would be almost unrecognizable to its creators.
The average -- invented by journalist Charles Dow, co-founder of Dow Jones, which seven years earlier started publishing The Wall Street Journal -- was designed to reflect the economic health of the U.S. If the economy was doing well, investors would see that reflected in a rising index. And of course it works vice versa.
On its debut on May 26, 1896, the Dow -- calculated once a day by pen and pencil -- closed at 40.94. By this past February, it had added more than 50,000 points to that.
The Dow originally tracked just 12 stocks (it didn't expand to its present-day size of 30 until 1928). The names of those dozen companies are likely to be largely unrecognizable to most investors -- aside from General Electric.
The other 11 original components besides GE: American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, Laclede Gas, National Lead, utility holding company North American, Tennessee Coal & Iron, U.S. Leather and U.S. Rubber.
Lineup changes began shortly after the launch, and none of the original 12 stocks are still in the Dow, which is now published by S&P Dow Jones Indices. Component stocks continue to be changed in line with changes in the U.S. economy.
Currently, big tech companies have a significant share of the industrial average, including Apple, International Business Machines, Cisco, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon.com and Salesforce. Those components demonstrate how far the U.S. economy has changed over the past 13 decades. "We've always thought of 'industrials' as meaning more than manufacturing," said the Journal's managing editor, Paul Steiger, in 1997 .
-- 40 YEARS AGO: " Dow Jones Industrials Plunge a Record 41.91 Points Amid Worries Over Interest Rates and the Economy"
-- 30 YEARS AGO: "Saks Appeal: Retailer's IPO Gets the Glances, but Long-Term Doubts Are in Fashion Too"
--By Simon Constable
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 03, 2026 11:32 ET (15:32 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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