March 9th Market Overview

Happy Monday

What a day. Oil hit $119 overnight then crashed below $87 in after-hours after Trump went on CBS and said the war is "very complete, pretty much." Markets went from down 900 on the Dow to green across the board in a few hours. Massive commodity swing on the sitting president's words.

I think traders are way too eager to price this as over. Paper contracts reversed but actual oil is still stuck in the Persian Gulf. Kuwait declared force majeure. Qatar shut down LNG exports. You don't undo that with a sound bite. If this drags another two weeks gas is at $4. The reality is though when ships start to move…. oil tanks fast, we saw 3 tankers start moving today.

Let’s dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Oil's Historic Reversal 
   
   WTI hit $119 overnight on Tehran oil fires, Kuwait's force majeure, and the Strait of Hormuz closure. Then Trump told CBS the war is "very complete, pretty much" and prices reversed hard. Dan Yergin at S&P Global called it the largest oil disruption in history with about a fifth of global daily supply now offline. G7 finance ministers met to discuss tapping strategic reserves but made no decision.
   

2. Markets Flipped From Panic to Green 
   
   The Dow was down 900 points at its session low. Asia got crushed overnight with South Korea off six and Japan off five. Then Trump's war comments hit and U.S. indexes reversed hard into the close, Nasdaq leading the way. BlackRock called the shock "likely short-lived" but I'd note we're still pricing in a short war that may not be short.
   

3. Rate Cut Hopes Are Fading 
   
   Markets now price just one Fed cut this year, down from two a week ago. Nearly one in five traders sees zero cuts for all of 2026. Higher energy costs feed inflation, which boxes the Fed in even if growth slows. That's the stagflation setup.

Market Overview

Index Performance

Stock Spotlight

Hims & Hers Health $HIMS ( ▲ 46.79% )  
struck a deal with Novo Nordisk to sell Wegovy on its platform, ending last month's legal fight over copycat GLP-1 products. The deal covers injection and pill distribution.

uniQure $QURE ( ▲ 26.07% )  
E led a broad biotech rally after FDA vaccines chief Vinay Prasad announced he's stepping down at end of April. Prasad had blocked several rare-disease drugs from accelerated approval. Dyne Therapeutics $DYN and Denali Therapeutics $DNLI also ran hard on the news.

Live Nation $LYV ( ▲ 5.25% )  
settled its DOJ antitrust case and gets to keep Ticketmaster. Stock was up five on the day.

Big Name Updates

Carnival $CCL ( ▲ 1.38% )  
was the worst performer in the S&P 500. Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line weren't far behind. All three have fallen more than fourteen % this month on fuel cost fears. We saw a big rally into close on fuel dependent names like these.

American Airlines $AAL ( ▲ 2.46% )  
led airlines lower alongside Delta, United, and Southwest. Jet fuel tracks crude oil closely and these carriers have limited hedging in place.

Broadcom $AVGO ( ▲ 4.62% )  
led a semiconductor rally with a gain of more than three. Micron, AMD, and Nvidia all traded higher while the broader market was still red. AI spending is the one story this market refuses to reprice.

GE Vernova $GEV ( ▲ 4.4% )  
got a double upgrade from Rothschild Redburn, from sell to buy, with a $1,100 price target. The analyst cited gas turbine order margins nearly double what they modeled in October.

Other Notable Company News

Strategy $MSTR ( ▲ 4.09% )  
bought nearly 18,000 more Bitcoin last week at roughly $70,946 per coin. Total stack now sits at 738,731 BTC.

GE Aerospace $GE ( ▼ 0.47% )  
is dropping $1 billion into U.S. manufacturing this year and plans to hire 5,000 workers.

Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 1.14% )  
pushed back on reports about its Abilene data center campus, calling them "false and incorrect." Two buildings are operational and the company has leased an additional 4.5GW for OpenAI.

Chevron $CV ( ▲ 1.19% )  
X is in talks to buy roughly a third of Ipiranga, the Brazilian fuel distribution business.

Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 0.03% )  
is offering Lilly's Zepbound at $299/month with plans to expand same-day pharmacy delivery to 4,500 cities by year-end.

AppLovin $APP ( ▲ 3.17% )  
keeps adding e-commerce advertisers. Third-party data shows roughly 5,500 merchant pixels live by end of February with new adds steady at about 200 per week.

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Sector Watch

Bond Market

Interest rates moved higher today because investors expect oil prices to push inflation back up. That matters for your wallet. Mortgage rates, car loans, and credit card rates all follow.

• The 10-year Treasury rate (the one that sets mortgage pricing) hit 4.19 before pulling back to 4.10

• UK and European rates climbed too

Warren Pies at 3Fourteen Research made a point worth noting: if rates start falling while oil keeps climbing, it means the market has stopped worrying about inflation and started bracing for recession. That would be a much bigger problem for stocks. He thinks that flip could happen by end of week. I don't. I think we stay in the inflation trade longer than people expect.

Policy Watch

Energy 
Gas prices are climbing fast and the pain is about to get worse.

• National average hit $3.48 a gallon Monday

• Multiple analysts expect $4 by the weekend

• An Iranian military spokesman warned oil could reach $200 if strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure continue

International
The supply picture is deteriorating. Saudi Arabia started cutting oil output as storage fills up. Roughly 40 million barrels from Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are sitting on tankers off China's coast, up sharply from the week before the war. Chinese private refiners have a temporary buffer but sanctioned crude is piling up with nowhere to go.

Force majeure declarations are spreading:

• Bahrain's Bapco refinery halted after Iranian drone strikes overnight

• QatarEnergy, the world's largest LNG producer, had already shut down

• Analysts at Melius expect more countries to follow and are comparing this to the 1973 Arab oil embargo

Trade 
Trump's China trip later this month will be limited to Beijing only, March 31 to April 2. Security concerns ruled out a second stop in Shanghai.

What to Watch

G7 Energy Ministers Meeting Tuesday Morning 
Finance ministers met today but made no decision on reserves. Energy ministers meet virtually Tuesday morning. A coordinated reserve release would be the biggest market intervention since COVID.

Trump Press Conference Tonight
He said the war is nearly over on CBS. Now the market needs specifics. Any update on the timeline for reopening the Strait matters more than anything else.

Oil Analyst Price Targets Keep Rising 
Barclays says $120, Capital Economics says $150 by mid-year, Macquarie says past $150 if the Hormuz closure drags on even a few more weeks. Ritterbusch says odds favor oil exceeding Monday's highs within days. Nobody is calling for a quick return to pre-war prices.

Strait of Hormuz Traffic 
Three tankers passed through headed toward China on Monday. That's a tiny crack in what's been a total blockade. Whether that trickle becomes a flow matters more than almost anything else for oil.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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