Table of Contents

• April 2026, a “risk-on” month

• Few numbers

• The Dardanelles

• B-R & H Finance

Market Review

April 2026, a “risk-on” month

April felt like one of those months when markets ignore the calendar and replay the whole economic cycle in fast‑forward. Risk appetite was clearly back: global equities moved sharply higher, US and Asian indices gained ground, and equity volatility dropped even as oil prices fell. The KOSPI delivered the strongest performance of the month at around +29.0%, just ahead of Bitcoin at +18.0%, while the Nasdaq 100 added +15.2% and Ethereum +14.0%. At the other end of the spectrum, WTI crude slipped by -7.9% and the VIX fell by -25.3%, as if investors had collectively decided that, for now, geopolitical and monetary risks could wait.

Beneath the surface, the story was all about technology and everything linked to AI. Intel, up about +151% year‑to‑date, has become the emblem of a turnaround among names long seen as laggards, while the usual podium regulars ; Nvidia, AMD, TSMC, continued to post double‑digit gains. In Europe, STMicroelectronics, NXP and Infineon also recorded impressive advances, and Nokia, up 106% since January, showed that some “old champions” can still benefit from a new investment cycle in networks. By contrast, defence stocks such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin ended among the month’s laggards, alongside several industrial names exposed to public spending. European luxury and banks, after an excellent 2025, were more mixed, with profit‑taking on the most expensive names and a tone best described as consolidation rather than clear leadership. In Switzerland, ABB’s roughly +19% monthly rise captured investors’ appetite for high‑quality industrials geared to automation and the energy transition, while more defensive Swiss names lagged.

In the background, Bitcoin’s path deserves a special mention. Its strong April performance, tight correlation with the Nasdaq 100 and sharp moves around Federal Reserve headlines or swings in oil, combined with robust ETF inflows, all reinforce the idea that institutions now treat it more like a leveraged growth asset than digital gold. For long‑term investors, the month underlines how performance remains concentrated in a few themes ; AI, semiconductors, quality industrials, and how quickly market mood could flip if central‑bank messaging changes. The lesson, in a spring when almost everything seems to bloom at once, is to keep tending the same garden: a disciplined, diversified allocation rather than chasing whichever story happens to be in full flower this month.

Few numbers

• CATL’s new Shenxing battery charges from 10% to 98% in just over 6 minutes, even in deep-freeze conditions close to -30°C.

• In 79 years, Ferrari has sold 330,000 cars ; roughly what Hermès moves in Birkins and Kellys in two years, and what Rolex sells in watches in just three months.

• Brazil accounts for 22% of global potash demand and relies on imports for around 98% of its needs.

Editorial

The Dardanelles

Straits are not lines on a map; they are hands wrapped around the world’s throat. In the space of a few weeks, the Strait of Hormuz has reminded us of this with brutal clarity, as if history had decided to replay, in fast‑forward and on a global scale, the forgotten tragedy of the Dardanelles.

In the early 20th century, Churchill’s name was attached to a disaster that schoolbooks later over‑simplified: 20,000 Britons sent to their deaths against Ottoman defences, as if everything came down to one man’s stubbornness. The reality was far messier: conflicting orders, hesitation, attacks called off while several battleships could still have forced the passage, a divided high command and garbled communication between the navy and troops on the ground. The Dardanelles Strait itself did not move; it was the decision‑makers who failed. Through that narrow throat of the Sea of Marmara, the British Empire thought it could preserve its grip on the routes to Russia; what it really lost was a chunk of its naval supremacy and much of its self‑confidence.

Today the same script is being replayed, this time on the stage of global energy. Hormuz, a mineral bottleneck just a few dozen kilometres wide between Iran and Oman, carries close to a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade and a critical share of liquefied natural gas and has become the main lever in a worldwide game of blackmail. When Tehran even partially turns off the tap, it is not only tankers that stall; supply chains, government budgets and election campaigns in importing countries all find themselves under pressure. As Turkey once did at the gateway to the Black Sea, Iran is discovering that a mid‑sized state can punch at imperial weight once it controls the chokepoint for a vital flow.

From Gibraltar, that narrow threshold between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, to the Turkish Straits locked in by the Montreux regime, via the Suez Canal or Bab el‑Mandeb, the map of trade looks like a circulatory system where a few arteries are both indispensable and acutely exposed. Their closure is no longer a textbook risk; it now shows up in Usd, in inflation points, and in the temperature of domestic politics.

What has changed since the Dardanelles is not geography, it is our level of dependence. When 20% of global oil consumption is funneled through a corridor just a few nautical miles wide, the smallest skirmish becomes a matter for central banks. The wrong reading would be to believe that everything comes down to the psyche of a leader ; a Churchill too bold, an Iranian ruler too sure of his leverage, when the real issue lies in the structure: no alternative routes, highly concentrated risk, a collective inability to accept costly redundancy.

For an investor, an entrepreneur or a saver, these straits offer a useful metaphor: does your wealth also have its own Hormuz, a single point on which everything else depends? A business that draws almost all its sales from one country, a family whose fortune is piled into a single asset, a career tied to a single skill – each is a potential chokepoint. Naval history suggests that straits are never really “removed”; we simply learn to live with them by multiplying access routes, diversifying our supports, and refusing to entrust our fate to a single corridor.

The question, then, is not whether Iran is “strangling the world” any more than Turkey supposedly “decimated the British Empire”. It is why, a century later, we still organise our economies, our supply chains and sometimes our lives as if straits did not exist. In a world where every local crisis can go global in a matter of hours, wisdom may lie less in the bravery of forcing a passage than in the quiet art of never depending on just one.

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Wealth

Family offices: when “safe haven” property turns into an illiquidity risk

By 2026, Knight Frank estimates there will be around 10,000 family offices worldwide, growing by roughly 5% a year, with 40% based in North America and close to half of the remainder split between Europe and Asia‑Pacific. What they tend to share is a strong appetite for directly held real estate, seen as a tangible, asset‑backed holding that fits an intergenerational horizon. Many families talk about bricks and mortar as a quasi safe haven, and the rising share of wealth parked in commercial property shows the shift: among HNWIs, direct holdings in commercial real estate have climbed over fifteen years from a low single‑digit allocation to more than 20% of investable wealth in 2023.

The Family Office Survey 2026, however, points to a quiet change of gear: strategies are becoming more targeted, more “value‑add”, with a stronger operational tilt (data centres, logistics, healthcare, managed residential) and, above all, a wider spread of investment jurisdictions. At the same time, geopolitics keeps reminding us that real estate is not an abstract refuge: the Iranian conflict hangs over the Gulf just as Dubai and Abu Dhabi remain major hubs for deals and super‑prime sales, concentrating both opportunity and risk. As Knight Frank notes, these markets head into 2026 after an exceptional 2025, but against a backdrop of rising uncertainty.

For a family thinking in decades, the real question is no longer “should we own more property?” but “where can we afford to be illiquid for ten or fifteen years?”. The rise of family offices shows the action shifting from products to governance: the ability to trade off yield against control, and to limit the number of countries where you are exposed simultaneously as owner, taxpayer and heir. Property remains a pillar, but seen through a more demanding lens: fewer love‑at‑first‑sight purchases, more exit scenarios – including the scenario where today’s “safe haven” becomes, tomorrow, a place that is hard to get out of

B-R & H Finance

Founded in 2004, B-R & H Finance SA is a Swiss entity specialized in wealth management. We offer a full range of personalized and independent investment services and advisory solutions. Regulated by SO-Fit and authorized by FINMA, we are also members of the ASG (Swiss Association of Independent Asset Managers) and work with leading custodian banks.

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