Market Memo

Look guys, the first week of March 2026 was basically a total market meltdown, like everything hit at once and no one knew what to do. The big kicker was this crazy spike in geopolitical tension with the U.S., Israel, and Iran all in the mix and suddenly energy prices went nuts. Crude oil, which had been chilling in the mid-sixties, shot up over 12 percent past $82 a barrel with some wild intraday swings flirting with $90 all because traders were freaking about the Strait of Hormuz. That freak-out didn’t stay in oil though it bled into the whole economy making everyone whisper about stagflation right when cracks finally started showing in the U.S. labor market. And then Friday hit, March 6, and the Labor Department dropped a February jobs report that was straight-up brutal, 92,000 jobs lost when analysts were expecting a 60,000 gain, and core PCE inflation was stubborn at 3.1 percent, basically leaving the Fed with zero good options to fix both prices and jobs at the same time. Wall Street responded exactly how you’d expect, carnage. The S&P 500 lost 2 percent, the Dow sank 3 percent, almost 1,500 points gone, and the Nasdaq slipped 1.2 percent. Sure, some defensive sectors like utilities and the big oil players offered a tiny buffer, but the overall mood was pure caution as everyone looked ahead to the mid-month CPI report for clues on where inflation was headed.