Q1 2026 Wrapped! Markets, Money & Good News

The first quarter of 2026 is officially in the books! In this episode, Austin and Josh kick off a new quarterly series breaking down what actually happened in the markets, what drove the volatility, and what it all means for your financial plan going forward. They also share what clients are asking right now, why short-term uncertainty shouldn’t derail long-term goals, and even highlight a few pieces of good news from around the world!

Watch the video version, read show notes, and transcript at thewealthmindsetshow.com/s2e35

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Transcript

You're listening to The Wealth Mindset Show, where Hixon Zuercher Capital Management's team of finance professionals, portfolio managers, and a life coach come together to tackle complex topics in finance and retirement planning so you don't have to. From investment strategies and wealth management to tax planning, retirement income, and aligning your money with your values and purpose, The Wealth Mindset Show offers the tools to thrive.

Austin Wilson:

All right. Hey, hey, welcome to the Wealth Mindset Show where the Hixon's are for team. We'll have conversations on managing wealth, navigating retirement and making smart decisions for a secure, meaningful future. I'm Austin Wilson, Chief Investment Officer at Hixon Zuercher Capital Management.

Josh Robb:

I'm Josh Robb, Director of Wealth Management at Hixon Zuercher Capital Management. And as we kind of are heading into a new quarter, that's kind of what we're going to be talking about today, the last quarter. What's going on in your life? Anything new? Anything changes?

[0:51] - Life Updates: Rain, Baseball, & Baton

Austin Wilson:

Well, we got a lot of rain recently.

Josh Robb:

Got a lot of rain.

Austin Wilson:

So we're dealing with old house rain stuff, which is always fun, but got my yard going again. It's always good to get out there and green it up a little bit. Kids really like being outside on the swing set.

Josh Robb:

That's so nice. When you can be outside-

Austin Wilson:

When the weather's warm.

Josh Robb:

... Fresh air.

Austin Wilson:

So our three-year-old specifically is just like, "Mommy, daddy, can I go outside and play?" We're like, "Yes, please. Yes-

Josh Robb:

Please do.

Austin Wilson:

... Go outside." So that's going well. And yeah, the kids are just keeping us busy. We're about to start Miracle League Baseball.

Josh Robb:

That's always fun.

Austin Wilson:

At the Miracle Park for Juliana here actually in a couple of weeks. So we're excited about that.

Josh Robb:

They do a good job there.

Austin Wilson:

They do a great job. It's such a cool program that they have going on there. And then our middle one's doing baton lessons.

Josh Robb:

Ooh, there you go.

Austin Wilson:

She's going to be in the Memorial Day parade.

Josh Robb:

There it is.

Austin Wilson:

Which how do you wrangle? She's not the youngest. She's three. There's people smaller and how are you going to wrangle three year olds-

Josh Robb:

They just follow the crowd, right?

Austin Wilson:

In a parade?

Josh Robb:

Just follow the crowd. They're just going to follow the flow.

Austin Wilson:

Somebody like, "I'm not going to put a chair and watch her." I'd have to reel her in the whole way. I don't know.

Josh Robb:

That's fun.

Austin Wilson:

That's going good. What about you?

Josh Robb:

Well, weather gets nice. We got a lot of kids in our neighborhood. We're at the end of a cul-de-sac. And so historically, that cul-de-sac turns into a kickball, whiffle ball area-

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

... Because you can be at the bottom cul-site, hit outward and you're pretty much at their area. A lot of the younger kids, they're not going to be sending it far enough down to do much damage to anything. And they're using wiffle balls or kickballs.

The problem is, I'm coming home from work, a bunch of kids in the road. They got to move all the bases every time I drive. So somebody, one of the adults, and I think there's a great idea, spray-painted home plate first, second, third, and pinchers mount.

Austin Wilson:

That's a really good idea.

Josh Robb:

Not super bright, just like a gray, but it's there.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

And it's there. So kids can leave. Cars comes through, they run back out, starting the game. They don't have to reset all the bases.

Austin Wilson:

That's good thinking.

Josh Robb:

And it's fun. I mean, there's 15 kids running around out there and sometimes the dads get out there, get involved. It's fun. Sliding

Austin Wilson:

Sliding in to home.

Josh Robb:

Don't slide on the cement in the blacktop. That is no good. But they have a good time. And I like that it's right there. Keep an eye on the kids. They're having fun. I love this season.

Austin Wilson:

It'll even pick up speed more as we get ... I mean, weather's just now turning.

Josh Robb:

Yeah, you get a couple good days and some bad days.

Austin Wilson:

Summer is going to be crazy for y'all. So that'll be a lot of fun. So today we're actually starting a new series.

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

And this new series is something we're hopefully going to do most quarters where we look back at, hey, what happened during the last quarter? Because guess what? We just finished up Q1.

Josh Robb:

Yep.

Austin Wilson:

The first quarter's in the books now.

Josh Robb:

Of 2026.

Austin Wilson:

Of 2026. So we're going to say, "Hey, what happened in the first quarter of 2026?"

Josh Robb:

And we've done this with the year, but never kind of broke it down for a quarter.

Austin Wilson:

Quarterly, because-

Josh Robb:

If you look at a year, a lot happens and we only hit a couple things.

Austin Wilson:

But if you look in a quarter, you can kind of get a little bit more in depth of what happened. So yeah, this is what we're going to be doing. And we can also give you some insight and some tips maybe of what we're going to be looking at going forward from here. So let's start with the markets, right? That's what we look at. So talk about how did the markets do in the first quarter?

[3:57] - Q1 Market & Investment Recap 

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

Well, it was a challenging one and we're going to get to why. The Dow Jones Industrial Average down 3.85%, S&P 500 down 4.5, 4%, small cap stocks down slightly 0.14%. The NASDAQs, I think more tech oriented down 6.94%. International stocks outside the US up 0.34% and bonds were up 0.16%.

Josh Robb:

So what you see is that the Dow being the most value and conservative of the US-

Austin Wilson:

Three major US.

Josh Robb:

... Was down just under four, S&P four and a half, and then the NASDAQ down about seven. And so you're seeing that trend, that growth, the tech side is what was experiencing more of that volatility this first quarter.

[4:45] - What Actually Drove Markets?

Austin Wilson:

Yeah, and the question would be why?

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

So why would tech have been underperforming the broader markets, underperforming stocks outside the US?

Josh Robb:

And not just why tech, but what did you see going on in general? There was some shifts and some changes.

Austin Wilson:

So what made tech underperform is what broader happened. So in Q1, it was actually, if you think about what happened earlier in the quarter, we're all hung up on Iran, which we're going to talk about. Iran didn't start till end of February. So you actually had two full months where some rotation was already occurring.

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

And that rotation was some of these high-flying tech stocks from the last couple years, specifically the really large ones, started to lag. And a lot of that was due to, yeah, expectations were very, very high. Valuations were relatively elevated. And obviously we still have yet to see any real earnings come through from AI, which is what all these stock prices have popped up on.

Josh Robb:

They ran out of things to price in until they could see actual results.

Austin Wilson:

So they're like, let's wait and see. And really they didn't do awful, awful. There was just, they underperformed the rest of the market and the rest of the market played a bit of catch up. The value side of the market played a bit of catch up and it had lagged very badly for quite some time now.

Josh Robb:

Small caps.

Austin Wilson:

Small caps and mid-caps outperformed. Real estate outperformed. All the defensive sectors, utilities outperformed, these sort of things. Tech just decided it was negative, but it was not like down 7% in the first couple months. It was down a little bit. And some of those mega caps pulled back a decent bit. So why did it continue is a different story. So at the end of February, so again, this was already kind of occurring. At the end of February, the US decided, Iran has nuclear capabilities. We don't want them to have that. We actually talked about this a while back and they really haven't done anything about it. We don't want them to have that.

We're going to bomb them and make them not do this. So we started a conflict with Iran and with the intent of eliminating their possibility to have this, which Iran's not great typically. They have a lot of state sponsored terrorism and not good leadership and they make some poor choices in who they support all this other stuff. So they're not our good friends to begin with, but we've tolerated a lot over the years because they are really critical for what?

Josh Robb:

Oil.

Austin Wilson:

Oil, right? They control the supply. They do some oil production quite a bit on their own, but they're also very key in oil movement around the world. The Strait of Hormuz is right off their coast, and that is really where about

25% of the world's oil traffic goes through, and so they can kind of control that. So they're very, very important to that. So we decided we're going to try and force them into giving up their nuclear capabilities and force some change there. And what did this do? Well, it sent oil through the roof, which is not surprising because of how much of the world's oil supply.

Josh Robb:

That was a surprise.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

And it's just continued to shoot up and shoot up and shoot up really through the end of March. We're talking oil was up 50, 60% in a month.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

Which is really year to date because it really didn't move much before that. But what that did is it sent inflation expectations higher because, well, guess what? If oil's higher, then gas prices are higher. And you've probably all seen gas prices. They were up to about $4 a gallon here around here. They've pulled back maybe just slightly, but they're still right under $4 a gallon. They were $4 per gallon nationwide, which was a huge increase from where we were at the beginning of the year. We were also fighting at the same time. Naturally at this time of year, gas prices go up a little bit anyway into summer.

Austin Wilson:

Yes. They switched to that summer blend and demand and hand goes up.

Josh Robb:

So we were already fighting that was probably going to be happening anyway, but this is really what caused gas graces to go up. And as gas prices and these prices of goods goes up because everything that flows through that, inflation goes up. So we've already started to see some inflationary impact to this.

Austin Wilson:

And there's not an alternative, right? Not at this point.

Josh Robb:

So a couple years ago, egg prices were real high. Well, you can switch proteins or if beef gets real high, you switch to chicken, but if oil goes high, gas, there's not an easy alternative switch.

Austin Wilson:

Not quickly.

Josh Robb:

It's not like my car can take anything else. Now I could switch cars and get a hybrid or electric vehicle, but it's not an easy switch on what I have. Whereas food prices, those things, you can make your own adjustments to counter inflation. Gas, you cannot. You cannot. You can slow your consumption of it by traveling less.

Austin Wilson:

As much as you can.

Josh Robb:

But you still are, it's essential for travel for most people at this point.

Austin Wilson:

So what all this did was it really put upward pressure on bond yields. And that is unfortunate because bond yields are very, very impactful for things like growth stocks. This is why undergrowth stocks and tech underperformed. We're all discounting future earnings to today. And when yields go up, that makes them worth less. That's how that works. So that is why the tech side of the market was much more under pressure than everything else. In fact, really one of the only things that worked through the first quarter was energy.

Energy was very high because, well, all of a sudden the oils got marked. Oil got a lot more expensive. They're able to make a lot more money. They're more incentivized to bring more production online, all kinds of other things. So that was really the only bright spot in there, but that is why the tax side of the market was under more pressure in the first quarter. And we actually saw that pressure just kind of continued through the end of March. And around the end of the March, March 30th, I believe was the bottom. And because right now, as of today, we're recording this on tax day, by the way.

Josh Robb:

The 15th. Get your tax returns in.

Austin Wilson:

On the 15th of April, so this is two weeks from the end of the quarter, we have now gotten back to all time highs for the S&P 500. That was not the case two weeks ago, by the way. We were flirting with, and we never hit, but we were flirting with correction territory that's a 10%-

Josh Robb:

NASDAQ got into that.

Austin Wilson:

NASDAQ and small caps got to correction territory. The S&P never did, but we were getting the upper single digits, certainly, and now we're back to where we were. And what happened? Why was there a turnaround? And the turnaround was, there's this market theme right now where it seems like when markets get pretty weak, there is some pressure on the current administration to change things pretty quickly. And that happened. Around March 30th, Trump was like, "Well, I guess things aren't looking so good. This is really impacting things. We're going to soften things up a little bit. We're going to work towards a ceasefire. And anytime you got a whiff of good news on ceasefire with Iran, the market rallied from there." And we're kind of in this quasi ceasefire right now, couple week period where we're trying to work things out, but we'll see how things linger from here.

But that is what has caused such a sharp rally in the last couple of weeks, pretty much back to where we were. So yeah, that's where we are. That's what happened in the first quarter. That trade, the buy the dip trade is real. It really worked again. In fact, that buy the dip trade has worked for the last few years pretty strongly.

Josh Robb:

Anytime you see a dip, there's been a-

Austin Wilson:

People have been wanting to put money.

Josh Robb:

Yep.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah. So that's what I saw from the markets. That's what drove the markets. Obviously I ran towards the end of the quarter was hugely impactful, but I do want to reiterate, there was already a bit of a rotation going on before that. We just saw this exacerbate that, right?

Josh Robb:

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[12:45] - Financial Planning Trends & What Clients Are Asking

Austin Wilson:

So Josh, let's flip the page. In terms of individual investors, in terms of investor mindset and investor behavior, what are clients asking about?

Josh Robb:

Yeah. So the first one was just when Iran conflict first started was kind of the idea of, okay, what does this mean for us?

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

Because again, Middle East, little ways away from where we are. Overall economic impact, especially in the short term, minimal. You got gas price change, but it really doesn't disrupt our lives.

We're not seeing much different. Gas is a little more expensive, but it's not changing much. And so the question is, what should I expect? And so we looked at kind of the historical trends of Middle East conflicts, which this is not the first and probably won't be the last.

Austin Wilson:

Or the third or the 50th.

Josh Robb:

And so the idea is just, okay, here's the things that historically have happened, things to look for, anticipate. And then the big question is just anything you're playing change based on this.

Austin Wilson:

Probably not.

Josh Robb:

Probably not. And if so, then what adjustments do we need to make? But for most people, let's say you're six months out of retirement. Is this now a good time to retire? Well, just this Middle East conflict in and of itself is not a reason to change your retirement plans.

Austin Wilson:

Right.

Josh Robb:

Because this is always going to have something. There's always going to be something. There's never a period of time where everything is perfect and that's when you pull the trigger.

Austin Wilson:

Right. Exactly.

Josh Robb:

And so the idea really comes to, is anything that I've been planning on, has that been changed or disruptive that I make an adjustment to? And if the answer's no, then although it's no fun to sit through that volatility, it really doesn't have an impact on you. Hopefully, go to my example of retirement, hopefully you've prepared by creating a little bit of cash, having a little bit of extra cushion there for that exit pointed into retirement so you're not forced to start selling right away of some of those highly appreciated assets that may be down a little bit. But overall, most of the clients are just, "Okay, is there anything else going on or will this be a domino into the other things?" And so far it really has yet to show that being the case. Again, everybody comes back to inflation. I think part of it is 2022 was just so rough. With high inflation that the fear is, "Oh no, what if we start heading back that direction? And I don't think this in of itself will do that." Get us to that.

Austin Wilson:

Well, and even-

Josh Robb:

High oil prices alone is not going to-

Austin Wilson:

And even if you think of how this impacts monetary policy, which is what we would be looking at, how does the Fed look at this? They understand that their tools at their disposal, which is really a balance sheet that they use a lot-

Josh Robb:

Yeah.

Austin Wilson:

More than they probably should, and interest rate changes. Neither of these address an oil shock. They can only control demand so they can make money cheap and easy and easy to flow and easy to buy things and debt easy and cheap. Or they can mess with their balance sheet, which we're not going to get into. But though it does not address an oil shortage.

Josh Robb:

Didn't fix anything.

Austin Wilson:

So, what they're probably going to do, we walked into this year saying, "Hey, we're probably going to get a couple interest rate cuts."

Josh Robb:

This is not going to do it.

Austin Wilson:

They may still have a cut. Markets are kind of like maybe one. It seems unlikely they're going to get aggressive on cutting just because inflation's probably going to be temporarily elevated, but are they going to go out and hike? Heck no.

Josh Robb:

Not yet. There's no reason to.

Austin Wilson:

The labor market is solid, but not like gangbusters like it was a couple years ago. So they're not willing to weaken that any further. So I think they're just going to be able to look through some of this data and say, "Okay, we can't fix the problem." We're going to hold and hold for a while. So next we're going to go talking about some good news. There was some good news.

[16:26] - Good News in The World

Josh Robb:

Talk about some good stuff.

Austin Wilson:

In the first quarter. And we're going to kind of go back and forth on themes here, but first step is animal news.

Josh Robb:

Animals.

Austin Wilson:

Good animal news from Q1 2026. Giant pandas no longer classified as endangered species by the IUCN. Wait, that's pretty great.

Josh Robb:

If you've ever watched anything about pandas, they're an endangerment to themselves.

Austin Wilson:

Have you seen them fall?

Josh Robb:

Oh my goodness. They're hurting themselves right now. They're not endangered from anything else, but their own ability to-

Austin Wilson:

Totally.

Josh Robb:

... Even they chew the bamboo, right? That's their thing.

Austin Wilson:

That sounds so prickly.

Josh Robb:

Well, it's not efficient. They're digest ... They're just making horrible life decisions. But I'm glad to hear that.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah. So off the endangered species list.

Josh Robb:

Yes, that is good.

Austin Wilson:

And number two, Brazil's iconic blue and yellow macaws returned to Rio, so Rio de Janeiro. After 200 years following some successful rewilding efforts. So Rio de Janeiro has the iconic blue and yellow macaw's back after a couple hundred years. That pretty awesome.

Josh Robb:

Yes. Always cool to see that recovery of-

Austin Wilson:

Species.

Josh Robb:

... Species that were heading the wrong direction.

Austin Wilson:

Yeah.

Josh Robb:

If we flip to more environmental, a couple things now. Growing up, ozone.

Austin Wilson:

Ozone.

Josh Robb:

Was this big for you? Be careful. Don't use hairspray. You're making a hole in the ozone.

Austin Wilson:

Refrigerator.

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

Refrigerants and all that too.

Oh yeah.

Josh Robb:

So for me, especially, I'm a little older than you are.

Austin Wilson:

A lot.

Josh Robb:

Growing up, that was this huge thing. It's like aerosol. Don't use aerosol can. And as a kid, I remember growing up thinking, they kept talking about these hole in the ozone layer. I just kept thinking you would see space because there's this hole now in the sky. Oh no, everything's leaking in. You're going to get acid rain. That was the other thing. It's like, I'm going to walk out into-

Austin Wilson:

And dissolve.

Josh Robb:

... That was happening. Well, good news. The ozone is healing faster than they expected and is potentially on track to fully recover in the coming decades, according to the global monitoring agencies.

Austin Wilson:

Hey, that's good.

Josh Robb:

There we go. All that-

Austin Wilson:

It's fully recovered.

Josh Robb:

... Lack of aerosol hairspray. I think that's what killed the '80s hairstyles was like, we can't do this. Stop the hair is.

Austin Wilson:

You stopped using hairspray just for that.

Josh Robb:

Just for that reason. That was the only reason I saw that.

Austin Wilson:

That's right.

Josh Robb:

Yeah. And then the other side, which again is an awesome thing. So Norway, for a long time, has had very strong forest protection policies and they have maintained a deforestation free status for over 10 years, for over a decade.

Austin Wilson:

There's a lot of trees going on over there.

Josh Robb:

That's pretty cool. And considering we all breathe oxygen. And trees create oxygen for us, that's a nice thing to have. But that shows, because again, over a decade, I'm going to assume I'm not an expert in Norway, a political area, but they've had to have turnover of different parties doing different things to stay on the same page all across the board of saying this is something as a country we want to do and maintain that for a decade, that's pretty cool.

Austin Wilson:

That's pretty good. Onto crime.

Josh Robb:

Oh yes.

Austin Wilson:

Good news on crime. But this is good news, remember. So we're talking about good news. Speaking of Europe, because we love talking about Europe, the Netherlands closed more than 20 prisons since 2009 because crime rates have fallen so much.

Josh Robb:

That's a cool trend.

Austin Wilson:

Let's keep that up around the world.

Josh Robb:

I wonder what they did with them because this, I mean

Austin Wilson:

Make them hotels.

Josh Robb:

What do you do with the prison? Because there's not a lot of carryover.

Austin Wilson:

There's some crazy people who would probably rent a room over there.

Josh Robb:

Or like turn into Airbnb…

Austin Wilson:

Airbnb of a prison. Yeah. And on prison news, the Dutch prison population has fallen by more than 40% the last 20 years.

Josh Robb:

That's awesome.

Austin Wilson:

Europe, they're getting it together over there.

Josh Robb:

Yeah. And then finally in health news, so we just kind of look about health. Australia is on track to become the first country to effectively eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem. So vaccinations and screening, they've really initiated a widespread program. And so they're pretty much eliminating that as a health problem.

Austin Wilson:

That's Cool.

Josh Robb:

Down under.

Austin Wilson:

That's cool.

Josh Robb:

Down under.

Austin Wilson:

Yep. And that's all the good news. No, there's a lot more good news.

Josh Robb:

Those are some highlights.

Austin Wilson:

Those are some highlights, good news.

Josh Robb:

Yes.

Austin Wilson:

Global highlights, by the way.

Josh Robb:

That does not even focus-

Austin Wilson:

Finley, Ohio's had some pretty great stuff too.

Josh Robb:

There's a panda. We have a panda somewhere, right?

Austin Wilson:

Somewhere.

Josh Robb:

Columbus Zoo, do they have a panda?

Austin Wilson:

Columbus Zoo, I think might. Toledo does not. We're big Toledo Zoo people.

Josh Robb:

I love Toledo Zoo.

Austin Wilson:

They're not about that. They can't have one of everything. No. They're not even a major city. But-

Josh Robb:

They have one of the best zoos. They continually break-

Austin Wilson:

I think it's my favorite zoo because-

Josh Robb:

It's a good zoo.

Austin Wilson:

This is a tangent on Toledo Zoo, but plug for Toledo.

Josh Robb:

Not a sponsor.

Austin Wilson:

Plug for Toledo Zoo. If you want to sponsor us, hit us up. But we like the Toledo Zoo because it's A, close to home. It's 40 minutes away. But B, it's not intimidating. You can walk the entire zoo in like two and a half hours.

Josh Robb:

And see a ton of stuff.

Austin Wilson:

And see a ton of stuff.

Josh Robb:

There's a lot of animals.

Austin Wilson:

And if you go to Big City Zoo, like Columbus or whatever, it's hours and hours and hours. Go Toledo.

Josh Robb:

Another one that's nice is the Fort Wayne Zoo.

Austin Wilson:

I've heard that.

Josh Robb:

Nice one. Kind of like a circular, easy to walk, pond in the middle. Nice stuff.

Austin Wilson:

All right. Well, that's Q1. It's in the books.

Josh Robb:

All right.

Austin Wilson:

We're sitting in the second quarter now, and we'll probably do this again here in a few months, but if you found value in our conversation, feel free to subscribe to this podcast, The Wealth Mindset Show on whatever platform you're listening to so you don't miss any episodes. Also, you can feel free to visit us at thewealthmindsetshow.com for more resources or show notes. And if you're ready to, just learn about what we do at Hixon Zuercher Capital Management. Visit hzcapital.com and check us out on social media. We're pretty active on there and we'd love to stay connected. Otherwise, thanks for listening and we'll catch up next time.

Josh Robb:

All right. See you at the zoo.

Austin Wilson:

At the zoo. Bye.

Josh Robb:

Bye.

Thank you for joining us at The Wealth Mindset Show, where we tackle the complexities of finance and life planning to help you align your wealth with your values. We hope today's conversation provided value and clarity as you navigate your financial journey. Your hosts work for Hixon Zuercher Capital Management and all opinions expressed by them or any podcast guest are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Hixon Zuercher Capital Management.

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