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Anna's Markets Recap

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Saturday, 5:18 AM

March 28, 2026

Good morning news friend! Here is a quick recap of what happened in the markets this week. 📰🌟

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Economic & Market Overview

The S&P 500 posted its fifth straight weekly decline, falling 2.12% to close at 5,580. The Dow Jones dropped 793 points on Friday alone to enter correction territory. The Nasdaq plunged 3.23% to 17,322. The US-Iran conflict, now in its fourth week, drove every major move. Oil prices swung violently, consumer sentiment cratered, and investors rotated hard out of growth stocks into energy and defensive names.

The conflict, which began February 28 with joint US-Israel airstrikes, has shut the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint for 20% of global seaborne oil. Maritime traffic through the strait dropped 96%. Brent crude whipped between $99.75 and $112 during the week. The VIX fear gauge spiked to 31.05 on Friday. Markets now price a roughly 50% chance of a Fed rate hike by year-end — a stunning reversal from the two rate cuts expected just weeks ago.

Monday opened with a sharp rally after President Trump posted about "productive talks" with Iran and paused strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. The S&P 500 gained 1.4% and the Dow jumped 631 points. Investors rushed back into beaten-down tech names, hoping the conflict might wind down. But Iran's foreign ministry flatly denied negotiations on Tuesday, erasing the prior day's gains. By Thursday, Israel killed IRGC Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri in an airstrike, Iran rejected the latest ceasefire offer, and Brent crude surged $6 per barrel in a single session. Trump extended his ultimatum deadline to April 6, giving Iran one more window to reopen the Strait. Friday brought an accelerating selloff as investors positioned defensively ahead of the weekend.

Economic data reinforced stagflation fears. The S&P Global Flash Composite PMI fell to 51.4, an 11-month low. Input costs surged at the fastest pace since August 2022. The University of Michigan's final March consumer sentiment reading collapsed to 53.3, in the bottom 1st percentile of the survey's history, with one-year inflation expectations jumping to 3.8%. Weekly jobless claims came in at 210,000, roughly in line with expectations. The labor market remains in a "low-hire, low-fire" equilibrium. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.44%, its highest since July 2025.

Technology & Growth

Meta Platforms was the week's biggest casualty, plunging from approximately $590 to $525.72 — a decline exceeding 11% and wiping out $119 billion in market capitalization. On March 24, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for failing to protect children from online predators, awarding $375 million in damages. The next day, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube negligent in a social media addiction trial, with Meta deemed 70% responsible. Internal documents showed the company knew its platforms were addictive to teens. The verdicts could influence roughly 2,000 pending lawsuits nationwide, with a federal bellwether trial set for June 2026. Several analysts compared the legal exposure to the tobacco industry's landmark settlements. Cathie Wood's ARK Invest dumped $2.1 million in META shares on March 25.

Microsoft sank nearly 7% from approximately $383 to $356.77. The stock now sits 31% below its October 2025 all-time high. Investors fear $100+ oil prices will compound Microsoft's massive AI infrastructure spending — $37.5 billion in capex in a single recent quarter. Rising Treasury yields disproportionately punish high-duration growth names, and MSFT proved the most rate-sensitive of the mega-caps.

Apple stood out as the lone bright spot, gaining approximately 2.3% to roughly $253.60. The catalyst was a March 26 announcement that Apple plans to open Siri to rival AI assistants including Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude. Apple also expanded its US manufacturing program with $400 million in new investment.

NVIDIA slipped roughly 3% to $167.52, digesting its GTC conference announcements from the prior week. Competitive pressure mounted: ARM announced an AI data center chip on March 24, Google's TurboQuant algorithm reduced memory requirements for AI models, and Senators Warren and Blumenthal questioned NVIDIA's $20 billion Groq licensing deal on antitrust grounds. NVIDIA's forward P/E dropped to roughly 20x — below the S&P 500's for the first time in years.

Amazon fell approximately 3% to $199.34, pressured by its $200 billion capex plan for 2026. Alphabet declined about 3.2% to $278.70, weighed down by the same social media verdict that hammered Meta. Tesla dropped roughly 2% to around $360.73 despite Elon Musk's unveiling of "Terafab," a $20–25 billion chip fabrication joint venture. An NHTSA investigation into FSD covering 2.4 million vehicles and UBS's slashed delivery forecast overshadowed the news.

Salesforce fell roughly 5–6% to approximately $181 amid broader fears about AI disrupting traditional SaaS businesses, though the company commenced a record $25 billion accelerated share repurchase. Netflix gained approximately 2%, supported by a March 26 price increase across all US tiers that demonstrated pricing power. Broadcom fell roughly 2.8% to approximately $301.78 despite flagging a TSMC production capacity bottleneck and winning a $970 million Department of Defense software contract.

Financial Institutions

The financial sector faced cross-currents. The Fed proposed easing Basel III endgame capital requirements, which would reduce Tier 1 capital requirements by 4.8% for the largest banks. That boosted lending capacity expectations. On the negative side, JPMorgan Chase marked down software loans amid AI disruption fears and restricted lending to private credit firms. Apollo Global's $15 billion fund faced 11.2% redemption requests — more than double its quarterly limit.

Berkshire Hathaway fell approximately 2.6% to $468.49, triggering a "death cross" technical pattern, though its energy holdings and massive cash pile provided a buffer. JPMorgan fell 2–4% and cut its 2026 S&P 500 year-end target from 7,500 to 7,200, citing the oil supply disruption. Visa held roughly flat at $301, while Mastercard slipped 1–2% to around $502. On March 26, the FTC sent warning letters to Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe about "debanking" practices, creating late-week pressure on payment stocks. Bank of America fell 3–5% to approximately $47.

Consumer Staples & Healthcare

Johnson & Johnson gained roughly 1.5% to $240.45, buoyed by the FDA approval of ICOTYDE, an oral psoriasis pill. AbbVie rose approximately 2.8% to around $210.90 on defensive positioning and positive ABBV-295 obesity drug data. Costco advanced about 1.2% to roughly $984 on strong Q2 earnings momentum, including 9.1% net sales growth and 22.6% digital sales growth. Walmart edged up approximately 1.7% to about $123, though the Walton family's $1 billion in recent stock sales generated negative headlines.

Eli Lilly slipped roughly 1–2% to the $889–915 range despite positive Phase 3 retatrutide data. An HSBC downgrade questioned whether the obesity drug market was overhyped, and growing price competition from Indian generics added pressure. UnitedHealth remained weak near $270–279 amid antitrust investigations and ACA subsidy expiration concerns. Procter & Gamble fell about 2.7% to roughly $142, trading near its 52-week low on China market weakness and tariff-driven input cost pressures.

Energy & Industrial

Exxon Mobil surged approximately 5.2% from $161.91 to roughly $170, hitting an all-time closing high on March 26. Morgan Stanley upgraded its price target to $172, and HSBC raised its target to $158. The IEA declared the Strait of Hormuz crisis the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, with Gulf production cuts exceeding 10 million barrels per day. Energy was the month's best sector, up 18% in March.

Home Depot hit its 52-week low of $320.26 on March 20 before finishing the week roughly flat. Housing market weakness persisted — January new home sales had dropped to the lowest pace since 2022.

Gold fell approximately 4.9% during the week from around $4,660 to $4,430 per ounce. The decline came despite geopolitical turmoil, driven partly by massive selling from Turkey's central bank — which sold 52.4 metric tons ($8 billion) in the prior week to support the lira through swap agreements. Gold remains up roughly 47% year-over-year but has retreated 20% from its January 2026 all-time high. Silver closed at $67.73. Brent crude finished the week roughly flat at $107.81 after the volatile ride. Goldman Sachs estimates a $14–18 per barrel geopolitical risk premium currently embedded in oil prices. The US Dollar Index firmed to 100.21, gaining about 0.3% on safe-haven demand.

On trade policy, China launched two retaliatory trade investigations into US practices on March 27, examining barriers to Chinese goods and restrictions on advanced tech exports. The effective US tariff rate stands at approximately 10.5%, the highest since 1943. The USMCA bilateral review deadline is July 1, and the Section 232 automobile parts tariff process opens with submissions beginning April 1.

The market's central tension is now clear. Valuations across mega-cap tech have compressed to multi-year lows, yet the macro backdrop grows hostile. Energy stocks gained 18% in March while consumer discretionary lost 12% — a 30-percentage-point spread rivaling the most extreme rotations seen during 2022. The April 6 Strait of Hormuz deadline looms as the next inflection point. Its resolution — or escalation — will determine whether this correction deepens into something worse.

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Baked with love,

Anna Eisenberg ❤️

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