From the desks of Stanley Katz & Lauren Madera
HAPPY MERMAID DAY TO OUR AUDIENCE OF 5-YEAR-OLDS! ALSO, CHAG SAMEACH TO THOSE CELEBRATING PASSOVER AND APRIL FOOLS’ DAY THIS WEEK. IT STILL WORKS FOR APRIL FOOLS’, RIGHT?
Markets extended their losing streak to a fifth consecutive week — the longest such run since May 2022 — as surging oil prices, sticky inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty continued to press stocks lower (DJIA: –0.90%, S&P 500: -2.12%, Nasdaq: -3.23%). The week began on an optimistic note. Hours before Monday’s market open, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held productive talks and that the U.S. would pause strikes on Iranian nonmilitary infrastructure for five days. This sent stocks rallying at the open and briefly pulled oil prices off their highs. But it didn’t last. That instant pivot on perceived good news has been a recurring feature of the market in 2026. Sell-offs on Thursday and Friday left the major indexes down overall as Iran denied meaningful talks were underway, and oil resumed its climb. The S&P 500 ended Friday’s session at a seven-month low, with the Dow falling into correction territory. The Nasdaq was already there, almost 13% below its October record. Perhaps the most striking signal of the week came from the interest rate futures market. Traders pushed the probability of a Fed rate hike by the end of 2026 to 52% — the first time it has crossed the 50% threshold. Time will tell whether surging energy prices and mounting stagflation concerns force the Fed in this direction.
Argus Research frames the broader market environment as one driven almost entirely by geopolitical news flow, with the U.S.-Iran war at the center. The most striking illustration is what happened to oil prices over the past month. West Texas Intermediate (WTI, the U.S. crude oil benchmark) had been trading at $66.31 a barrel as recently as February 23, climbed to a multiyear high of $98.23 on March 20, briefly pulled back after President Trump’s Truth Social post, only to resume its climb as uncertainty persisted. The ripple effects are widening. According to Argus, the national average for regular gasoline reached $3.96 per gallon as of March 23, up 35% in a single month. Diesel prices have risen 43% to $5.29 per gallon. Argus notes a useful rule of thumb: gasoline prices above $4.00 per gallon tend to begin weighing on consumer spending — a threshold the country is now approaching. The damage to global energy infrastructure compounds the picture. The International Energy Agency reported that at least 40 energy assets across nine countries have been severely damaged since the war began, with global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply reduced by roughly 20%. Barring a lasting truce, Argus sees a high likelihood that markets will continue to jump and slump on breaking geopolitical news in the weeks ahead.
While the near-term outlook remains clouded, BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink’s 2026 annual letter to investors offers a longer perspective worth holding alongside this week’s volatility. Fink’s central argument is that markets reward those who stay invested. According to BlackRock, over the past two decades every dollar in the S&P 500 grew more than eightfold, and missing just the ten best trading days would have cut those returns by more than half. His deeper concern, however, is structural. Since 1989, a dollar in the U.S. stock market has grown more than 15 times the value of a dollar tied to median wages. Fink warns that artificial intelligence may repeat that pattern of wealth concentration at an even larger scale. The solution, in his view, lies in broadening access to markets rather than retreating from them — through emergency savings programs, birth-investment accounts, and a long-overdue conversation about whether a portion of Social Security could be invested with the same long-term orientation already benefiting pension funds and endowments. It is a timely reminder that some of the market’s strongest days have come amid its most unsettling headlines, and that the capacity to remain invested through turbulence has historically proven more valuable than any attempt to time an exit.
Below are links to a number of third-party research reports that we have read and analyzed over the past week. We hope you will find the information interesting, useful, and worthwhile.
Argus:
BlackRock:
Nomura:
PIMCO:
J.P. Morgan Asset Management:
Stanley Katz & Lauren Madera, Financial Advisors
ClientFirst Financial Strategies, Inc.
937-293-5500
Source for weekly stock market returns: Barron’s.
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