Market Insights Recap — Week of March 30, 2026

Hello, I'm Steve Orr, Chief Investment Officer for Texas Capital's Private Bank.

Downshift from neutral, outside impact and steady growth at home. Let's look at all three of those today.

I'm going to shake it up this week and start with the war over there in Iran. It's Iran versus everybody. Watch carefully that the administration doesn't move the goalposts. Now throughout history, when the military campaign goes very well, often the political goals move. The winning side gets stuck in neutral, or worse yet, a quagmire.

Certainly, our stock market was stuck in neutral from Halloween through Valentine's Day. Since the Iran versus everybody war started, S&P is off about 7%. Now support for the index is down around 6,200. We need to see the big index spend time above 6,650 to escape the current downtrend. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down nearly 10%, almost correction territory. It has dropped for 10 weeks straight. It's never dropped for 11 weeks. So we'll see. Now there are four times we can find where the Nasdaq did fall for 10 weeks in a row. All four times the Nasdaq had positive returns the next three months. Our charts suggest that we may be about halfway through this correction, barring any worsening of the global economic situation. Bottom line, we think the stock markets are just not taking the global situation seriously enough.

Tariffs last year took the S&P 500 down 18%. Today we're down about 7%, with 15% of the world's oil and gas supply offline. What about impact outside the U.S.? So far here at home we have pump prices a dollar higher. Most of the world doesn't have the energy supplies that we do. The Philippines went to a four-day workweek last week to conserve fuel. Australia gas stations started closing on Friday. Bangladesh closed its universities to conserve fuel. A month from now, you're going to hear about shortages and shutdowns in Europe. The normal oil market is plus or minus 2% from equilibrium in supply and demand. Today, 15% of that supply is offline. It's not coming back for months if the war stopped today. Fertilizer and ammonia shortages will cut crop and food production later this year. So food inflation is going to hit in 2027. A very different impact outside the U.S. Now, we think producer prices and import prices were already rising pre-war. Now oil prices are going to push inflation past our 3.5% forecast in the coming months. So get ready for higher inflation reports.

How does this affect interest rates? The Fed is stuck between rising inflation and a pretty steady economy. Employment is hanging in there. This Friday's job report should show modest job growth and unchanged unemployment at 4.4%. Retail sales are slowly improving. Longer-term interest rates, they're trending higher. Markets are more worried about Congress deficit spending and inflation than a wartime flight to safety. Private credit issues, they've been pushed off the front page, but the list of gated funds and lower marks is growing. 

Okay, let's wrap it up. Stocks need to adjust to a slower global economy at some point. Remember, almost half the S&P 500's revenues come from overseas. Now we think there's still some time and lower levels left in this stock correction. Your three short-term signals are all negative. Ten-year Treasury yield is rising. Brent crude oil prices are rising. The U.S. dollar is rising. So it's time to sit tight and ignore those AI trading schemes on X; 'til next time.