Top 5 Stocks to Watch in April 2026: Q1 Earnings Season Winners to Watch
- Will Bell
- Mar 30
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 2
Top 5 Stocks to watch in April 2026: Q1 Earnings Season Winners to Watch
9 min read | Educational investing content
Q1 earnings season is here.
👀 wAnd if you know where to look, this is the single best month of the year to make money in the stock market. 💵
Every April, companies open their books.
💵 They tell the world exactly how much money they made in the first quarter.
And the market moves - sometimes violently - based on what it hears.
Some stocks gap up 15% overnight.
Others crater 20% before breakfast.
They're positioned before the numbers drop.
Here's what we already know heading into Q1 earnings season:
• The S&P 500 is expected to post +11.3% earnings growth in Q1 2026 - double-digit growth for the third straight year.
• The Tech sector alone is projecting +23.7% earnings growth on +21.2% higher revenues.
• The Finance sector is right behind it - expected to deliver +19% earnings growth, with the big banks reporting first.
• Broadcom already set the tone - Q1 revenue jumped 29% year over year to $19.31 billion, beating estimates and guiding higher.
The setup is real. The question is: which stocks do you want to own when the reports start rolling in?
👉 Here are the 5 stocks Wall Street is watching most closely this April - and the earnings stories that could make each one move.
Stock #1: Nvidia (NVDA) - The AI Empire That Just Keeps Growing
Nvidia already reported its fiscal Q4 2026 results in late February. The numbers were extraordinary.
• Revenue: $68.13 billion - beating estimates of $66.21 billion
• Data Center revenue: $62.3 billion - up 75% year over year, accounting for 91% of total sales
• Q1 fiscal 2027 guidance: $78 billion - more than $5 billion above Wall Street's consensus of $72.6 billion
• Net income: nearly doubled to $43 billion
The reaction?
Nvidia's stock sold off after the print. Down nearly 9% in the days following earnings.
That's your opportunity.
When a company beats on revenue, beats on earnings, guides 20% above consensus - and the stock still drops - that's the market giving you a gift.
The sentiment did.
JPMorgan raised its price target to $265. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley sit at $250.
Bank of America and Wedbush are at $275.
Evercore ISI leads with a Street-high target of $352.
👉 The average across 40+ analysts is $256.50 - with a strong buy consensus.
Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin rack-scale systems are already shipping samples to customers.
Order books run deep into 2027 and 2028.
➡️ With hyperscaler combined capex potentially approaching $700 billion this year, Nvidia sits at the center of the biggest infrastructure buildout in human history.
The bottom line: A post-earnings dip on a stock with this kind of fundamental momentum is the setup traders dream about.
Watch the $200 level closely heading into April.
➡️ Want alerts when big-cap names like Nvidia set up for the next major move?📈 GPSM Next Big Cap Alerts has you covered.
Stock #2: Broadcom (AVGO) - The Custom AI Chip King Nobody Talks About Enough
While everyone argues about Nvidia, smart money is quietly stacking Broadcom.
Broadcom reported Q1 fiscal 2026 results on March 4th. Here's what the numbers looked like:
• Revenue: $19.31 billion - up 29% year over year, beating estimates
• Adjusted EPS: $2.05 - beating estimates of $2.03
• AI revenue: $8.4 billion - up 106% year over year
• AI now represents 44% of Broadcom's total revenue - up from just 15% two years ago
CEO Hock Tan dropped a number on the earnings call that stopped the room cold:
"We have line of sight to achieve AI revenue from chips - just chips - in excess of $100 billion in 2027."
That's a commitment backed by signed orders.
Anthropic alone placed a $10 billion custom chip order with Broadcom.
👉 Meta's MTIA custom accelerator program - which Broadcom builds - is targeting multiple gigawatts of custom accelerator capacity in 2027 and beyond.
Citi has a Buy rating with a price target of $458.
😊 The bottom line: Broadcom is the second most important AI chip company in the world and most casual investors have never heard of it.
Q2 guidance calls for 68% adjusted profit margins.
This is a machine.
Stock #3: JPMorgan Chase (JPM) - The Bank That Kicks Off Every Earnings Season
Every Q1 earnings season starts the same way: JPMorgan Chase reports first, and the entire financial sector follows its lead.
The Finance sector is expected to deliver +19% earnings growth in Q1 2026 - the second-fastest growing sector behind Tech.
JPMorgan is the bellwether that sets the tone for all of it.
JPMorgan is the largest bank in the United States. It benefits directly from elevated interest rates, a booming investment banking environment, and strong consumer credit performance.
The bank has now beaten earnings estimates for nine consecutive quarters.
➡️ Bank of America named JPMorgan a top pick heading into Q1 earnings season.
With rate cuts potentially on the horizon for later in 2026, JPMorgan also benefits from the 'buy before the cut' trade - bank stocks historically rally when the Fed signals easing.
The bottom line: JPMorgan reporting a strong Q1 - which history strongly suggests it will - could be the catalyst that sends the entire financial sector higher.
👀 Watch the first week of April closely.
Stock #4: Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) - Healthcare's Quiet Monster
Not every April winner comes from Tech. And Vertex Pharmaceuticals is proof.
Bank of America named Vertex one of its top 10 stock picks for Q1 2026.
The Boston-based biotech dominates the cystic fibrosis treatment market with near-monopoly pricing power - a rare thing in any industry.
The real story for April is what's coming beyond cystic fibrosis.
Vertex has a deep pipeline targeting kidney disease, pain management (a non-opioid pain drug analysts believe could be a blockbuster), and type 1 diabetes.
Any positive trial data or FDA news during April could send this stock sharply higher.
👀 The healthcare sector "screens attractive near-term" according to Bank of America's equity strategy team - and Vertex is the name they keep coming back to.
The bottom line: Vertex gives your portfolio a non-correlated earnings catalyst.
While the rest of the market obsesses over AI, Vertex could pop on a completely different news cycle.
Stock #5: Amazon (AMZN) - The Everything Machine Reports in Late April
Amazon is the one big-cap stock where every single business unit is firing at the same time.
• AWS (cloud computing): Still growing at 19%+ annually - the backbone of AI deployment for thousands of companies
• Advertising: A $56 billion annual business growing faster than Google Ads
• Retail: Recovering margins as the company wrings efficiency from its logistics network
• AI infrastructure: Amazon is a leading hyperscaler whose combined capex could approach $700 billion in 2026
Bank of America has Amazon on its Buy list heading into Q1 earnings, citing AWS growth and AI infrastructure spending as the two primary catalysts.
➡️ The stock has been under pressure in early 2026 - which means the setup into earnings is clean.
👉 When a stock with Amazon's earnings power gets beaten down by macro sentiment and then reports a strong quarter, the snapback can be violent - in the best possible way.
The bottom line: Amazon's Q1 earnings report - expected in late April - could be one of the biggest single-day moves in the market this month.
The setup is there. The fundamentals are there. Watch for the date announcement.
Want to be positioned before the move, not after? See how our analysts track big-cap setups at GPSM Next Big Cap Alerts.
The April 2026 Earnings Watchlist: Quick Reference
• NVDA (Nvidia) - Post-earnings dip setup, $78B Q1 guidance, 40+ analyst buys. Watch $200.
• AVGO (Broadcom) - 29% revenue growth, $100B AI chip revenue target by 2027, Citi target $458.
• JPM (JPMorgan) - Finance sector +19% earnings growth expected, 9 consecutive beats, sector bellwether.
• VRTX (Vertex Pharma) - Healthcare top pick, BofA buy, pipeline catalysts beyond CF.
• AMZN (Amazon) - AWS + advertising + AI capex converging, BofA buy, late April earnings date.
How to Trade Earnings Season Without Getting Destroyed
Earnings season separates traders who have a system from traders who are just hoping.
Here's what the traders consistently walking away green during earnings season do differently:
• They identify their stocks BEFORE earnings - not the night before the report.
• They know the consensus estimate going in - because stocks don't move on the number itself. They move on whether that number BEATS or MISSES.
• They size their positions to survive a bad print - even great companies miss sometimes.
• They have a plan for both directions - what they do if it goes up, and what they do if it goes down.
• They take gains quickly - earnings pops rarely last more than 2 to 3 days.
The stocks above are starting points - not finish lines.
Each one has a specific catalyst, a specific reporting window, and a specific price level to watch.
That's how you trade earnings season like a professional.
If you want professional-grade alerts the moment any of these stocks set up for a major move - before the crowd catches on - you need to be inside GPSM's Next Big Cap Alerts:
The Final Word on April 2026
Q1 earnings season is the Super Bowl of stock trading.
The scoreboard updates every single day.
👉 The traders who win aren't the smartest ones - they're the most prepared ones.
Nvidia already showed what happens when the numbers are right and the stock is wrong.
Broadcom showed what a clean beat with strong guidance looks like.
JPMorgan, Vertex, and Amazon are all coming up next.
The clock is ticking.
Get positioned. Know your entries.
Know your exits.
And if you want a team of analysts doing the heavy lifting - watching these names every day and sending alerts when the setups form - start here.
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