March was supposed to be boring.

Jobs report. Tariff drama. Maybe a Fed quote or two. Yawn.

Then the US and Israel hit Iran over the weekend. And the market spent five straight days discovering what "geopolitical risk" actually means when it's not just a line item in a Goldman Sachs slide deck.

Every session swung on a headline from the Persian Gulf. Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz. Trump posts on Truth Social. Crude surges. Repeat.

By Friday, the market had cycled through denial and bargaining and landed firmly on fear.

One star. Would not trade again.

Here's the damage.

The S&P 500 dropped 2.0% to 6,740.02. Down 1.5% for the year. The Dow fell 3.0% to 47,501.55, a 3.5-month low. CNBC anchors broke out the serious lighting.

The Nasdaq got off easy at -1.2%. Software carried it. More on that later.

Small caps? Obliterated. The Russell 2000 shed 4.1%. The S&P Mid Cap 400 dropped 4.6%. When the world feels fragile, nobody wants to hold the small stuff.

The VIX surged 48.5% to 29.49. Reminder: the "V" stands for volatility, not "vacation."

Treasury yields ripped higher across the curve. The 2-year jumped 18 bps to 3.56%. The 10-year gained 13 bps to 4.13%. Inflation fears from the oil surge crushed whatever flight-to-safety bid was forming.

Translation: nowhere to hide.

Markets opened with US-Israeli strikes already in the rearview. The S&P finished flat. The Nasdaq eked out 0.4%. Investors were doing their best Jamie Dimon impression: "Short conflict, not inflationary, everything's fine."

Defense stocks didn't get the memo about being calm.

Nothing says "buy me" like a global conflict involving your biggest customer.

Then Reuters dropped the bomb. Iran would attack any ship attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That's 20% of the world's oil supply. Crude, already up 6.2% on the day, spiked further after hours.

Monday's calm? A mirage. And not even a convincing one.

Crude surged another 4.7% to $74.58. Tanker traffic through the Strait ground to a standstill. The S&P fell 0.9% after being down as much as 2.5% intraday.

What pulled markets off the mat? Trump directed the US Development Finance Corporation to insure carriers in the Persian Gulf after private insurers ran for the exits. He floated Navy tanker escorts as backup.

The geopolitical equivalent of your dad sighing and saying, "Fine. I'll drive."

The market took half a breath. That's it. Half.

Stocks rallied. S&P +0.8%. Nasdaq +1.3%. Oil finally paused at $74.70. Treasury Secretary Bessent promised to announce energy prices. Mega-caps led:

Bitcoin caught a sympathy bid, rallying 7% above $73,000. Coinbase surged 14.6%.

The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index came in hot at 56.1% vs. 53.9% expected. Any other week, that's the headline. This week? A mid-crisis appetizer.

Enjoy it. Wednesday was the last time anything felt okay.

Iran struck a US oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.

Crude ripped 8.4% to $80.97. The Dow dropped 1.6%. Industrials fell 2.2%. UPS shed nearly 6%. Materials lost 2.3%.

But here's the subplot nobody expected: The Information reported that OpenAI was backing off from travel booking inside ChatGPT. Expedia exploded 13.4% higher. Booking Holdings gained 8.5%.

The best thing that can happen to your travel stock? An AI giant deciding not to eat your lunch. Sound familiar?

After the bell, Broadcom delivered a monster quarter. Q1 revenue: $19.3 billion. AI revenue: $8.4 billion, up 106% year-over-year. Q2 guidance: $22 billion.

Wall Street briefly forgot about $80 oil. Briefly.

Crude exploded 12.2% to $90.86. A total gain of $23.80 for the week. That's 35.5%.

WTI touched $100 intraday. A number nobody's said out loud since 2022.

Qatar's energy minister warned that all Gulf producers could be forced to halt operations. Let that sink in.

The jobs report made everything worse. Nonfarm payrolls: -92,000. Consensus was +60,000. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4%. But average hourly earnings rose 0.4%, hotter than expected.

Your house is sinking, and your electricity bill is going up.

The S&P dropped 1.3%. The Russell fell 2.3%. Bloomberg dubbed the dollar's surge a "war dollar" trade. Two words. That's bleak. That's accurate.

The Fed now sits between weakening employment and surging price pressures, with $90 oil threatening to pour gasoline on the inflation fire.

Literally.

The week's most fascinating trade wasn't oil. It was the split inside tech.

The PHLX Semiconductor Index cratered 7.2%. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF surged 7.9%. That's a 15-percentage-point spread. Pick your fighter.

Software names became safe harbors:

Chipmakers got hammered as the market priced in what an energy shock means for global capex.

One exception: Marvell Technology, up 20% on earnings. CEO Matt Murphy reportedly told analysts, "Do you see me blinking? You don't."

Sometimes all it takes is swagger and $2.22 billion in quarterly revenue.

The Financial Times reported that BlackRock limited withdrawals from its HPS Corporate Lending Fund. BLK dropped 7.7%.

In a week where liquidity seized up in the physical world, tankers stuck, oil routes blocked, shipping insurance pulled, the market really didn't need a reminder that financial liquidity can freeze, too.

It got one anyway.

The prediction market crowd spoke. The message: the Fed is paralyzed, and your gas bill is about to get ugly.

Polymarket's collective wallet: rates stay frozen, energy gets uglier, the Fed watches from the sidelines.

Helplessly.

Gold spent the week doing what it's done for 5,000 years. Being the panic button.

Spot gold traded between $5,152 and $5,181 per ounce, rebounding sharply from a dip to $5,071 amid escalating Middle East tensions. Still below January's all-time high of $5,608. But the direction is unmistakable.

Analysts are openly discussing a $10,000 target. War premium plus tariff-driven inflation. The 1970s playbook. The one nobody wanted to reread.

The bull case is simple: when oil is surging, wars are expanding, the dollar is rising on fear, and the Fed is frozen, gold doesn't need a marketing team.

It never has.

The housing market had been quietly catching a break. Mortgage rates were drifting down from 2025 peaks.

Then the Iran conflict kicked the door in.

The 30-year fixed climbed to 5.98% by Saturday. Up 17 basis points in one week. Freddie Mac's weekly average landed at 6.00%, right at the psychological line between "I'll think about it" and "I'll wait."

For context, the 30-year had averaged 6.18% through January and February. A month of gradual progress was erased in five trading days.

The MBA Mortgage Applications Index had jumped 11% earlier in the week. Buyers were taking advantage of pre-crisis rates. Accidentally well-timed.

If oil stays elevated and yields keep grinding, the spring buying season arrives as a polite open house. Not a bidding war.

Retail sentiment this week was a masterclass in whiplash.

Cryptotwits by Stocktwits captured the mood: "Spent 24 Hours Not Trusting the Pump." "Can't Tell If I'm Numb or Enlightened."

That's the kind of existential investor comedy that only happens when people are simultaneously scared and scrolling.

Institutional money was different. The rotation was systematic. Out of cyclicals and small caps. Into mega-cap software and defense. Not panicking. Just quietly repositioning away from anything with "fuel costs" on the income statement.

Here's the signal worth watching: when retail is posting memes about their feelings and institutions are quietly moving money, the informed money usually has it right.

Usually.

This week tasted like a barrel-aged Cabernet someone left uncorked next to a space heater.

Intense. Overwhelming. Way hotter than expected.

The oil shock provided the tannins. The jobs report added a bitter finish. Wednesday's rally went down smoother than it had any right to.

Then, on Thursday and Friday, you were reminded that the bottle was turning to vinegar.

The week of March 2 to 7, 2026, will be remembered as the week a geopolitical shock did what tariff debates, earnings wobbles, and Fed speculation couldn't: it unified the market's attention around a single narrative and forced every asset class to recalibrate in real time.

Oil surged 35.5%. The kind of move that rewrites assumptions about inflation, margins, monetary policy, and consumer spending. All at once.

A negative 92,000 jobs print with rising wages landed on Friday like a cherry on an already-burning sundae. The Fed now has zero clean options.

Every major index closed lower. Every Treasury yield closed higher. Volatility nearly doubled. The only assets that "worked" were oil, gold, the dollar, and defense stocks.

A portfolio nobody builds on purpose. A portfolio everyone wishes they had in hindsight.

The February CPI arrives on Wednesday, March 11. It won't reflect the energy shock yet. But it'll be dissected for any hint that inflation was already reaccelerating before crude went vertical.

Buckle up. Or don't. The market doesn't care either way.