*****************************************************************************

*                       FIEND'S SUPERBEAR MARKET REPORT                     *

*                                 April 24, 2026                            *

*                                                                           *

*                       e-mail: fiendbear@fiendbear.com                     *

*                    web address: http://www.fiendbear.com                  *

*****************************************************************************

Fiend Commentary
================

Calm Tape, Live Wire

Thursday was quieter on the surface, but not in a way that should make anyone comfortable.

Stocks tried to steady themselves. Oil did not. Crude stayed high enough to keep the inflation problem alive, and that is the real issue now. A market can live with a short shock. It has a much harder time with a lingering one.

That is why the current setup feels so precarious. Investors are still acting as if some version of a ceasefire will eventually hold, shipping through the Strait will normalize, and oil will drift back down before it does real damage. Maybe that is exactly what happens. But the tape is starting to suggest the market is no longer fully convinced.

Even after the recent pullback from the panic highs, Brent is still trading around the low-$100 area and U.S. crude in the mid-to-high $90s. That is not normal. That is still a meaningful inflationary shock, especially if it hangs around into May. The longer prices stay there, the more likely it is that this starts showing up in freight, food, fuel, and inflation expectations in a way that no “temporary” label can hide.

And that is the awkward part for Wall Street: the economic backdrop was already softening before the war started driving energy prices higher.

The market keeps hoping that weaker growth will eventually bring rate cuts back into play. But high oil complicates that story. If inflation starts climbing again because energy stays elevated, the Fed cannot ride to the rescue cleanly. It may want to. Markets may beg it to. But if inflation is moving the wrong way, “easy money” becomes harder to justify.

That is why this market feels split in two.

On one side:

  • stocks keep trying to hold up,
  • volatility is lower than you might expect,
  • and investors still buy dips.

On the other side:

  • oil won’t normalize,
  • the dollar keeps attracting periodic safe-haven flows,
  • and bonds still aren’t pricing the sort of easy path that would make equities truly comfortable.

The next catalyst may not be another war headline at all. It may be the economic reports coming up. Once oil has been high for long enough, the market eventually has to stop trading hope and start trading evidence.

If those reports show weaker growth and firmer inflation at the same time, then the market’s “we’ll just get cuts later” assumption gets much harder to maintain.

That’s the real risk for Friday and into next week:
not that something spectacular happens,
but that the slow realization starts to spread that this may not be a short interruption at all.

Because if oil is still high a few weeks from now, it stops being a headline and starts becoming a condition.

                                                                                          

 

Weekly Market Summary Page
[Return to the Fiend's SuperBear Page]