IRAN WAR Day 18 |  VIX @22 |  10Yr 4.20% |  Dollar $99.57

“You don’t need to be right.
You need to make money.” 

Iran hit UAE energy and transport infrastructure again, including reported fires at the Shah gas field and disruptions around Fujairah, while another tanker was struck near the Strait of Hormuz. That matters because the strait handles roughly a fifth of global oil and LNG trade, and every new attack keeps inflation risk alive even when stocks want to celebrate something else. Oil jumped again this morning after Monday’s brief exhale.

Nvidia is still the glitter cannon. Jensen Huang said Nvidia sees roughly $1 trillion in orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin through 2027, up from the prior $500 billion framework. He also pushed the “agentic AI” story hard, unveiled the Groq-based inference push, expanded autonomous driving partnerships, and pitched orbital data center infrastructure because apparently Earth was getting too small for the AI capex party.

The market’s big question is the same one every sane trader should ask: where is the money coming from? Apollo’s John Zito said private-equity software marks are wrong, and that warning matters because if AI compresses legacy software valuations, stale marks in private equity and private credit can become tomorrow’s “nobody saw this coming” headline. That is code for: the public market is partying, but credit may be hiding a hangover in the guest bedroom.

Trump is still working the geopolitical switchboard. He said coalition support for tanker protection is “on the way,” delayed his China trip by “a month or so,” and is pressing allies and China to help reopen Hormuz. That keeps foreign policy directly wired into oil, inflation, and Fed expectations.

The Fed begins its two-day meeting today, and markets broadly expect no rate change tomorrow, but oil-driven inflation has pushed traders to price a more hawkish tone and fewer near-term cuts. Today’s scheduled U.S. data point is February pending home sales at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

• 10:00 a.m. ET — Pending Home Sales

| Alfred Rappaport

Strengths
The market still has two things bulls can use: resilient demand and concentrated leadership. Monday showed that when oil backs off even a little, buyers rush right back into growth, especially AI. Delta’s guidance hike says the real economy has not rolled over, and Nvidia’s trillion-dollar order vision keeps the capex supercycle narrative alive. That means money still has a reason to crowd into a handful of leadership names, and as long as the generals keep marching, the indexes can stay upright longer than the doom crowd expects.

Weaknesses
The market is still hostage to oil. That is the weakness. Period. Higher crude leaks into diesel, freight, margins, inflation expectations, and then rate expectations. Add in warnings about private-equity software marks and private-credit exposure, and you get a market where the public side is cheerleading innovation while the private side may be carrying stale marks and silent stress fractures. This is not broad, healthy abundance. This is selective strength with macro landmines.

Opportunities
If you are tactical, this market is serving setups on a silver platter. Energy remains the obvious relative-strength pocket while AI keeps creating fast momentum bursts around headline catalysts. The day before an FOMC decision also tends to carry a historical upward bias in equities. Seasonax found that across 120 regular FOMC meetings from 2006 to 2021, the S&P 500 tended to rise particularly strongly in the final two days before the announcement, with an average gain of 0.51% over the prior seven trading days. That does not guarantee today rips, but it does mean traders should respect the possibility of pre-decision drift higher before Powell says something that ruins brunch.

Threats
The threat stack is ugly: a prolonged Hormuz disruption, sticky inflation, a hawkish Fed hold, and geopolitical escalation that keeps turning energy infrastructure into confetti. Diesel above $5 is not just a gas-station headline. It is a tax on freight, agriculture, manufacturing, and consumer prices. If oil stays elevated, the market’s biggest current fantasy — that AI can outrun macro gravity forever — gets stress-tested hard. And if the Fed sounds even slightly less friendly tomorrow, the market may remember very quickly that valuations still need oxygen from rates.

Surprising stat: Seasonax found the S&P 500’s average gain over the seven trading days before the FOMC announcement was 0.51%, with the strongest portion of that advance clustering in the last two days before the decision.

TFT read:
Don’t chase the first pop.
Don’t short the first wiggle.
Let the market show whether it wants a positioning bid into Powell or whether oil is about to body-slam the whole party.

Stock market wisdom of the day:
“A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.” — Bernard Baruch

March 17, 2020: one week after the first U.S. pandemic-era circuit breaker, the S&P 500 ripped about 6% in a single session after the Fed announced a lending facility for short-term debt markets and Washington signaled direct-payment stimulus support. That day mattered because it reminded traders that the nastiest bear markets can also produce face-ripping countertrend rallies.

Surprising statistic:
On that same date, the NYSE market-wide circuit breaker working group recorded the S&P 500’s gain at roughly 6% after one of the most violent stretches in modern market history. That is your reminder that volatility cuts both ways. Panic is expensive. So is hesitation.

Here’s the beautiful insanity of stock-market leverage:

In late May 2024, Nvidia stock surged more than 9% after earnings, and then kept ripping as AI mania snowballed. Reuters reported the stock jumped over 9% on May 23 after its blowout forecast, and Bloomberg reported that some very short-dated Nvidia call options rallied 1,000% or more during the follow-through squeeze.

Math example using a $1,000 starter trade:
Say you had a $1,000 position in one of those near-dated call structures that gained 1,000%.

• Starting trade size: $1,000

• 1,000% gain = 10x profit

• Ending value: about $11,000

• Trade duration: multi-day into earnings follow-through, with some of the option explosion happening intraday on the squeeze open
  
  

That is why leverage, used with discipline, can compress time in a way salaries never can. A stock move of roughly 9% to 10% can translate into an option move that is ten times your money when gamma, time, and positioning all line up. The stock market is one of the few places on earth where a small, planned stake can create asymmetric upside that meaningfully moves your freedom timeline. Of course, the reverse is also true. Undisciplined leverage turns accounts int

Today’s mindset is prudence under pressure.

Everybody wants conviction when the tape is green. Real traders want clarity when the tape is conflicted. That is a different game. Today you have bullish AI headlines, bullish airline demand, bullish futures on the screen — and at the same time you have war-risk inflation, diesel above $5, and a Fed decision tomorrow. 

That means your real edge is not raw aggression. 

It is disciplined discernment.

Make 2026 the year you stop admiring leverage and start using it with a system.

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Fast-forward 12 months.

It’s December 2026.

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AI is on its 7th hype cycle.

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