This weekly recap covers 2–8 March 2026. The week started where the previous one left off, with the Iran conflict still unresolved and markets still trying to work out what kind of problem they were dealing with. By Friday it was clear the answer was not a simple one.
What changed in the 2–8 March window was not the geopolitics itself but the layer that landed on top of it. The February jobs report showed the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs, far below any consensus estimate. That print arrived into a market already digesting surging energy prices and a near-paralysed Strait of Hormuz, and it shifted the narrative toward something more structurally uncomfortable: a potential stagflation setup.
For students of markets this was one of those rare episodes where geopolitics, energy, and macro data all deteriorated at once. That combination is what produces the sharpest cross-asset repricing, and this week delivered it in full.
Quick highlights
- Geopolitical escalation: The U.S.-Iran conflict entered its second week with no sign of de-escalation; tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell to near zero as Iran threatened to fire on any vessel attempting passage (Barchart, Mar 3).
- Oil shock: WTI broke above $90/bbl on Friday for the first time since 2023, ending the week up roughly 35% — its largest weekly gain since oil futures trading began in 1983 (CNBC, Mar 6). Brent settled near $93/bbl.
- Macro shock: The BLS reported nonfarm payrolls fell by 92,000 in February, versus an expected gain of around 50,000–59,000. Unemployment rose to 4.4% (BLS, Mar 6).
- Equity pressure: On Friday alone, the S&P 500 fell 1.33% to 6,740.02, the Nasdaq dropped 1.59% to 22,387.68, and the Dow lost 453 points (0.95%) to 47,501.55. All three major indexes finished the week negative for 2026 (Yahoo Finance, Mar 6).
- Korea crash: The Kospi fell 12.1% on March 4 — its worst single session on record — followed by a partial recovery. Samsung Electronics fell 11.7% and SK Hynix lost 9.6%.
- European selloff: The CAC 40 lost over 6.8% on the week — its worst weekly performance since "Liberation Day" in April 2025. The pan-European Stoxx 600 fell 4.6%.
- Rates: The 10-year Treasury yield ended the week approximately 14–20 bps higher — its largest weekly jump since the tariff swings of April 2025 — reflecting the inflation signal embedded in oil.
- Gold under pressure: Spot gold closed near $5,080–$5,131/oz on Friday, pressured by a surging dollar and rising real yields, after trading above $5,200 earlier in the week.
- Private credit stress: BlackRock capped withdrawals from its $26bn HPS Corporate Lending Fund after redemption requests exceeded 9.3% of shares — the first time in the fund's four-year history (Reuters, Mar 6).
- Barclays forecast: Raised its Brent target to $100/bbl at the start of the week; analysts and Qatar's energy minister warned of $120–$150 scenarios by week's end.
Numbers snapshot (2–8 Mar 2026)
- Mar 2 — S&P 500 close: 6,881.62 (+0.04% — dip-buying after initial drop of 1.2%).
- Mar 3 — WTI crude intraday: +8.5% in the session; 8.5-month high.
- Mar 3 — Kospi (Seoul): −7.24% to 5,791.91 ("Black Tuesday"); foreign investors sold over 3 trillion won in the morning session.
- Mar 4 — Kospi: −12.1% to 5,093.54 — worst single day on record. Trading halt triggered. Samsung −11.7%, SK Hynix −9.6%.
- Mar 4 — UAE markets reopen: ADX and DFM fall sharply after two-day closure.
- Mar 5 — Dow intraday: −750 pts at low; all 2026 gains erased.
- Mar 6 — Nonfarm payrolls (Feb): −92,000 vs +50K–59K expected; unemployment 4.4% (BLS).
- Mar 6 — S&P 500: 6,740.02 (−1.33%).
- Mar 6 — Nasdaq: 22,387.68 (−1.59%).
- Mar 6 — Dow Jones: 47,501.55 (−453 pts / −0.95%).
- Mar 6 — CAC 40: 7,993.5 (−0.6% on the day; −6.8% on the week).
- Mar 6 — DAX: 23,547.5 (−1.1% on the day).
- Mar 6 — FTSE 100: 10,284.7 (−1.2% on the day).
- Mar 6 — WTI crude: ~$90/bbl; weekly gain +35%.
- Mar 6 — Brent crude: ~$93/bbl.
- Mar 6 — Gold (spot): ~$5,080–$5,131/oz.
- Mar 6 — 10-yr Treasury yield: ~4.11–4.16%; +~14–20 bps on the week.
- Mar 6 — VIX: 29.26 (+23.2% on the session).
1) Macro and policy: when geopolitics collides with the cycle
Coming into the week, markets had at least partially digested the geopolitical shock. The focus was supposed to shift back to data: the February jobs report, retail sales, the usual macro rhythm. It did not work out that way.
Nonfarm payrolls came in at minus 92,000 for February (BLS, Mar 6), the third time in five months the economy shed jobs and far worse than the 50,000-to-59,000 gain the street had pencilled in. Health care lost 28,000 positions, largely because of the Kaiser Permanente strike in Hawaii and California. Government payrolls fell another 10,000, extending a cumulative decline of 330,000 since October 2024. At this point the three-month average for total nonfarm payrolls sits at less than 6,000 new jobs per month (CNBC, Mar 6), which is close to statistical noise.
Tim Holland, CIO at Orion, said what most market participants were thinking: soft labor data plus rising energy prices is how you get "that toxic '70s mix of slowing growth and rising inflation" (CNBC, Mar 6). The Fed cannot simply cut rates to address weak employment if crude is simultaneously pushing CPI higher. That policy trap, more than any individual number, is what made Friday afternoon feel heavier than the index moves alone would suggest.
2) Energy: the Strait of Hormuz and the arithmetic of disruption
WTI ended the week above $90 per barrel, posting a gain of roughly 35% in five sessions. That is the largest weekly move in crude since oil futures began trading in 1983 (CNBC, Mar 6). Brent settled near $93.
The Strait of Hormuz handles about one-fifth of global oil supply. When Iran announced it would fire on any vessel attempting transit, tanker traffic effectively stopped (Barchart, Mar 3). WTI gained 6.28% on Monday and another 4.67% on Tuesday as the market absorbed the reality of a near-closed corridor. By Thursday the benchmark had crossed $80 for the first time since early 2025; by Friday it was above $90.
The headline price is not the whole story, though. The Strait is also a key route for fertilizer ingredients, and the timing could not be worse: we are heading into planting season. CF Industries, Bunge Global, and Archer Daniels Midland were among the handful of S&P 500 names trading higher on Friday morning, not because of their oil exposure but because of what a closed Hormuz means for global food supply chains. Most macro models focus on the oil price itself; the second-order pass-through into food and manufacturing inputs is where inflation actually gets built, and this week it started building.
3) Asia-Pacific: South Korea and the anatomy of a concentrated shock
South Korea had been the best-performing major market in the world going into this week. The Kospi broke through 6,000 for the first time on February 25, year-to-date gains were running near 45-50%, and Nomura had a target of 8,000. Five days later, two sessions erased roughly 18% of its value.
Tuesday was already bad enough to earn the nickname "Black Tuesday" in Korean financial media: the index fell 7.24% to 5,791.91, with foreign investors dumping over 3 trillion won in a single morning session. Wednesday was worse. The Kospi closed down 12.1% to 5,093.54, triggering a temporary trading halt and logging its worst single day on record. The Kosdaq dropped 14%. Samsung Electronics lost 11.7% and SK Hynix 9.6%, a combined two-day decline not seen since 2008.
None of this was accidental. South Korea sources nearly all of its crude from the Middle East, so a Hormuz closure hits the country more directly than almost anywhere else. Add to that the fact that Samsung and SK Hynix together represent close to 50% of the Kospi by weight, and you have a market where a single external shock gets multiplied twice over: once through the energy channel and again through index concentration. The one sector that moved in the opposite direction was defence. Hanwha Aerospace gained 19.8% and LIG Nex1 jumped nearly 30%, pricing in a sustained increase in regional defence spending.
By Thursday the Kospi had recovered almost 10% as bargain hunters came in, and by Friday morning it was essentially flat. The Nikkei ended the week up 0.6% and the Hang Seng gained 1.7%. China was the regional outperformer, buffered by lower direct Hormuz exposure and by the relatively stable signal coming out of the National People's Congress, which set a 2026 GDP growth target of 4.5-5%.
4) Europe: defence wins, tourism loses, and Spain enters a trade war
European markets came in already under pressure and Monday confirmed the direction: the Stoxx 600 fell nearly 1.7%, with virtually every major bourse in the red. The exceptions were energy producers. Norway's Vår Energi and Equinor rose 6% and 8% respectively as investors repriced supply scarcity. Defence was the other winner. BAE Systems added 6%, Leonardo closed up nearly 3%, and Germany's Renk gained over 3%, with the market pricing in an acceleration of European rearmament spending.
The strangest subplot belonged to Spain. On Wednesday the IBEX 35 actually closed 2.5% higher after Trump threatened to cut all trade with Madrid, following Spain's refusal to allow U.S. forces to use its bases for strikes on Iran. Equities rising on a trade war threat sounds counterintuitive, but the move reflected short-term hedging flows into Spanish exporters and some opportunistic buying of the dip. It did not last. By Thursday the index had reversed 1.4% lower as Washington kept the pressure on and Prime Minister Sánchez publicly called the crisis a "disaster."
By Friday the weekly numbers told a clear story: the CAC 40 lost 6.8% on the week, its worst performance since "Liberation Day" in April 2025. The DAX fell 1.1% on Friday to 23,547.5, the FTSE 100 dropped 1.2% to 10,284.7, and the Stoxx 600 was heading for a 4.6% weekly decline. Travel and tourism stocks were among the hardest hit, as Middle East airspace disruptions cascaded into flight cancellations and insurers repriced airline risk. Consumer discretionary names fell too. Europe does not control the variables driving this crisis but absorbs the costs of it through energy prices, supply chain disruption, and wider risk premia. The defence and energy rotation is the market's clearest statement of that asymmetry.
5) U.S. equities: a week where the dip-buyers ran out of conviction
Monday opened with a brief window of optimism. The S&P 500 ended the session just above flat at 6,881.62, recovering from an intraday drop of 1.2% as investors bought the dip in Nvidia and Microsoft. Markets have historically absorbed geopolitical shocks reasonably well over time, and that precedent was doing some work early in the week.
By Thursday it was not enough. The Dow had shed more than 750 points at its intraday low, wiping out all of its 2026 gains. Then came the jobs number on Friday morning, and the selling intensified: the S&P 500 closed at 6,740.02, down 1.33%; the Nasdaq lost 1.59% to 22,387.68; the Dow finished down 453 points at 47,501.55 (Yahoo Finance, Mar 6). All three major indexes ended the week in negative territory for the year.
Sector rotation told a cleaner story than the headline numbers. Tech fell 2.05% on the week, financials 1.37%, industrials 1.26%. Energy was the only sector that posted meaningful gains. When that kind of rotation happens during a broad selloff, the market is not just reacting to fear: it is repricing the relative winners and losers of a world where energy costs more and the cost of capital is going up.
6) Rates: the unusual configuration of rising yields and falling growth
Bonds did not behave the way a standard risk-off week would suggest. The usual pattern is that investors buy Treasuries when equities sell off, yields fall, and the safe-haven trade is clean and simple. On Friday afternoon that partially happened: after the jobs print the 10-year yield dipped 3 bps to 4.11%, and the 30-year was little changed at 4.74% (Yahoo Finance, Mar 6). But zoom out to the full week and the picture inverts. The benchmark 10-year yield ended approximately 14 to 20 bps higher on the week, its largest weekly jump since the tariff shock of April 2025.
The reason is straightforward once you accept the stagflation framing. A supply-driven oil shock does not just raise the price of fuel; it shifts the entire inflation distribution upward. Central banks cannot respond to slowing growth with rate cuts if energy is simultaneously pushing CPI higher. Markets are now pricing the first Fed cut in July, with roughly even odds on whether a second follows before year-end (Trading Economics, Mar 6). That is a meaningful repricing from a week ago, and it is why yields moved higher even as growth data got worse. When oil, yields, and inflation breakevens all rise in the same week, the collective message is that this shock looks sustained, not temporary.
7) Safe havens: gold and the paradox of simultaneous risks
Gold opened the week above $5,200/oz, consistent with the prior week's elevated levels and reflecting continued demand for a hedge against both geopolitical instability and currency risk. By Friday it had slipped to $5,080-$5,131/oz, down roughly 1.2% on the session even as the Middle East situation showed no improvement. Analysts described the pressure as coming from two sources at once: a U.S. dollar index that crossed above 99 and a 10-year yield sitting at 4.138%, both of which raise the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset (InvestingCube, Mar 6).
There is a recurring tension in gold markets that this week illustrated well. Geopolitical stress is bullish for the metal, but when the same shock pushes energy prices up, yields up, and the dollar up simultaneously, those forces can temporarily overwhelm the safe-haven bid. What is worth noting is that gold held above $5,000 through all of that. That level is not simply inertia; it reflects how much residual geopolitical risk premium is still being priced in, even after the macro repricing.
8) Private credit: the market-structure signal hiding in plain sight
Most of Friday's coverage focused on oil and payrolls. Buried further down was a development that arguably deserves equal attention. BlackRock announced it was limiting withdrawals from its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund (HLEND) after investors submitted redemption requests worth 9.3% of shares, the first time in the fund's four-year history that requests have exceeded the 5% quarterly cap (Reuters, Mar 6). BlackRock shares fell 6.7% on the NYSE on the news, and Apollo, Ares, and KKR all slid between 4% and 6%.
Private credit has grown into a $2 trillion asset class over the past five years, absorbing yield-hungry capital from institutional and retail investors alike. A gating event, even at a single fund, changes the calculus. If redemption pressure forces managers to unwind positions, it can set off broader deleveraging in credit markets at exactly the moment when public markets are also under stress. This is how a geopolitical shock that begins in the Middle East eventually shows up in the plumbing of U.S. capital markets. It rarely makes the top of the news bulletin. That is partly why it matters.
9) Energy forecasts: repricing the upside scenarios
Barclays moved first. On March 1, the bank lifted its Brent forecast to $100/bbl from $80 the prior Friday, citing the scale of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran (Arab News, Mar 1). By mid-week the same team was warning that the inventory builds accumulated through 2025 could be "totally wiped out" if the conflict runs for several more weeks (CNBC, Mar 3). Qatar's energy minister went further in comments to the FT, saying Gulf producers could be forced to cut output entirely within weeks, which would push prices well beyond anything currently modelled.
The reference points worth keeping in mind: Brent at $100 is already above the threshold where demand historically starts to soften and corporate margins begin to compress. At $120, central banks face a genuine policy dilemma between fighting inflation and supporting growth. At $150, the historical precedents are the 1973 OPEC embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, both of which preceded recessions. None of these are the base case right now. But they are being priced as non-trivial possibilities, and that probability mass is what is showing up in oil prices, in equity multiples, and in the bond market this week.
10) Deal tape: quieter volume, but signals worth reading
New deal announcements were sparse, which is typical when geopolitical uncertainty is this high. M&A activity tends to slow when acquirers cannot model the macro environment with any confidence, and IPO windows close even faster. The carry-over from the prior week that kept traders busy was the Brinks / NCR Atleos transaction. NCR Atleos fell 8% in Friday premarket after the company sought noteholder approval for amendments designed to prevent the merger from triggering a "change of control" clause under its existing debt. It is a reminder that the distance between a signed deal and a closed one contains a lot of risk that the original headline price does not reflect.
The one genuinely positive single-name story was Marvell Technology, which jumped 11% after posting record earnings and guiding bullishly for fiscal 2027, citing surging demand for custom AI chips from hyperscalers (CNBC, Mar 6). In a week where essentially every macro signal was negative, Marvell's results underlined a point worth keeping in mind: AI infrastructure capex is running on its own cycle, funded by multi-year hyperscaler commitments that do not reprice every time a geopolitical headline crosses the wire. Defence names benefited for the obvious reasons, with Lockheed Martin up 6% and Northrop Grumman up 5% earlier in the week. Agricultural input suppliers also outperformed. Growth, tech broadly, and financials were on the other side of that rotation.
11) Bottom line
The week started as a geopolitical story and ended as a macro one. That transition is worth understanding because the two types of risk behave differently. Geopolitical shocks are typically sharp and mean-reverting; markets price the worst case quickly and then recover as the situation clarifies. Macro problems compound over time, especially when they constrain central bank options. What made this week significant is that the oil shock did not wait for the macro data to arrive: by the time the jobs report hit on Friday, yields were already up, equity multiples were already compressed, and private credit was already showing signs of stress. The payrolls number did not cause the repricing. It confirmed it.
The sequence that ran through the week: an energy shock disrupted supply chains and pushed inflation expectations higher; rising yields followed, as the market priced out near-term Fed cuts; weak employment data then arrived on top of all of that, closing off the easier policy exit. Underneath everything, a $26 billion private credit fund gated its withdrawals for the first time in four years. Each of those things on its own would have been a story. Together they were a regime shift.
Sources (primary / checkable)
- BLS, The Employment Situation — February 2026 (Mar 6, 2026): bls.gov
- CNBC, February 2026 jobs report (Mar 6, 2026): cnbc.com
- Yahoo Finance, Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq drop as oil surges above $90 (Mar 6, 2026): finance.yahoo.com
- Barchart, Crude oil sharply higher on war in Iran (Mar 2–3, 2026): barchart.com
- Reuters / US News, BlackRock limits withdrawals at private credit fund (Mar 6, 2026): usnews.com
- Arab News / Barclays, Barclays says Brent could reach $100/barrel (Mar 1, 2026): english.aawsat.com
- BlackRock Investment Institute, Middle East conflict: energy risks in focus (Mar 2, 2026): blackrock.com
- CNBC, Barclays: Iran war could wipe out 2025 oil inventory gains (Mar 3, 2026): cnbc.com/video
- InvestingCube, Gold price forecast: twin assassins weigh on bullion (Mar 6, 2026): investingcube.com
- Trading Economics / FRED, US 10-year yield and Fed rate expectations: tradingeconomics.com