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Your Friday Market Brief
Opening Insight
This was a lot to absorb in five days. The US and Israel struck Iran over the weekend and by Monday morning markets were already trying to figure out what that meant for oil, inflation, and rate cuts. The initial selloff was sharp. The recovery was tentative. And today's jobs report, which came in at -92,000 for February, turned the dial back toward ugly just as things looked like they might stabilize. The AI earnings story put up a real fight this week. Marvell and Intuit both printed numbers that would have sent markets sharply higher in a calmer environment. Instead they provided a floor, not a rally. When strong earnings can only hold rather than lift, it tells you something about the pressure building underneath.
Market Recap
Equities faced two distinct waves of selling. Iran-driven oil shock hit Monday and Tuesday hard, with intraday S&P lows of over 2.5% before a partial recovery. A mid-week earnings rebound in tech provided brief stabilization. Today a negative February payrolls print of -92,000 added fresh pressure, sending indices back toward weekly lows. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both tracking to close the week down approximately 2%, turning both negative for the year. Global markets fared worse, with South Korea's Kospi falling more than 7% Tuesday alone.
The S&P 500 declined roughly 2% on the week, closing near 6,735. The index turned negative year-to-date after Tuesday's Iran-driven selloff and failed to reclaim that ground by today's close.
The Nasdaq fell approximately 2.1% on the week to around 22,500. Growth names surrendered mid-week gains on today's soft jobs data and oil-driven inflation pressure. The index is now down over 5% year to date.
Stocks That Won The Week
MARVELL TECHNOLOGY INC.
$MRVL
+12.90%
Q4 earnings beat on AI data center strength. Custom ASIC revenue hit $1.5B annually, with design wins at AWS and Microsoft validating Marvell as a core AI infrastructure supplier at scale.
SPOTIFY
$SPOT
+12.31%
Carried by the software recovery trade and residual momentum from its blowout Q4. Subscriber growth and expanding margins continued attracting buyers rotating back into beaten-down tech and consumer names.
INTUIT INC.
$INTU
+19.56%
Beat Q2 estimates with 17% revenue growth and a 15% dividend hike. An AI partnership with Anthropic for QuickBooks drove further sentiment recovery in a software sector looking for permission to bounce.
Stocks That Lost The Week
MONGODB INC.
$MDB
-16.23%
Q4 beat masked a guidance collapse. Forward EPS missed consensus by a wide margin and two senior sales leaders, including the CRO, announced departures simultaneously. The combination triggered a confidence selloff that overwhelmed the headline numbers.
PARAMOUNT SKYDANCE
$PSKY
-14.20%
Fitch cut the debt to junk after the $110B Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. The combined entity will carry roughly $79B in net debt, and both Fitch and S&P placed Paramount on negative credit watch within the same week.
AEROVIRONMENT INC.
$AVAV
-19.82%
Space Force reopened the $1.4B SCAR contract for competitive bidding, directly threatening its BlueHalo subsidiary. Raymond James triple-downgraded the stock from strong buy to underperform on the news in a single action.
Sector Snapshot
Sector | Weekly Change | YTD Change |
|---|---|---|
Technology - $XLK | -0.57% | -5.58% |
Energy - $XLE | -0.02% | +26.40% |
Financials - $XLF | -1.14% | -8.02% |
Industrials - $XLI | -3.60% | +8.96% |
Healthcare - $XLV | -4.35% | -1.40% |
Healthcare and Industrials absorbed the week's biggest losses. Industrials are pricing in Iran-driven supply chain and global trade disruption risk. Financials weakened as oil-driven inflation pushed back rate cut timelines and credit concerns widened. Tech held up on strong earnings. Energy decoupled from crude's move, with durability concerns capping the equity bid despite the commodity surge.
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Crypto Recap
Crypto showed unusual resilience against the week's risk-off tone. Bitcoin and Ethereum both closed positive through two waves of equity selling. XRP was the lone decliner. The asset class held ground even as the dollar and Treasuries absorbed geopolitical safe-haven flows. YTD losses remain deep across the board, but the weekly bid held.
Performance Overview
Asset | Weekly Change | YTD Change |
|---|---|---|
Bitcoin ($BTC) | +2.25% | -22.18% |
Ethereum ($ETH) | +0.63% | -33.28% |
Solana ($SOL) | +0.39% | -31.65% |
XRP ($XRP) | -1.06% | -26.13% |
Mover Of The Week
BITCOIN
Bitcoin posted the week's largest absolute move and held positive through both equity selloffs. Buyers appear to be treating it as a partial inflation and dollar instability hedge. The bid is thin but persistent, with a macro repricing thesis quietly developing in certain positioning segments.
Commodities Recap
Oil dominated all commodity action on Iran supply shock fears. Precious metals sold off as the dollar strengthened and rate cut timelines were pushed back, punishing gold and silver despite the geopolitical backdrop. Copper edged lower on demand uncertainty tied to softening global growth signals.
Asset | Weekly Change | YTD Change | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
Gold - $XAUUSD | -3.63% | +19.04% | Dollar surge and rate repricing drove the selling |
Oil - $CL1! | +26.69% | +57.93% | Hormuz supply risk pushed crude to multi-year highs |
Copper - $HG1! | -2.21% | +2.50% | Demand uncertainty weighed on industrial metals |
Silver - $XAGUSD | -6.97% | +15.10% | Dollar strength and rate pressure hit the hardest |
Macro Drivers
The Iran conflict placed the Strait of Hormuz directly at risk, threatening roughly 20% of global oil supply. The resulting inflation repricing lifted the dollar and pushed Treasuries lower. That dollar strength was the key driver behind precious metal weakness. Gold and silver declined not from reduced safe-haven demand but from rate repricing and dollar appreciation eroding their relative attractiveness. Copper's mild pullback reflects softening global industrial demand signals as growth data disappointed alongside the conflict uncertainty.
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Final Take
The AI earnings story held up. Marvell and Intuit both printed strong numbers, but barely moved the indices. Macro noise is now loud enough to compete with fundamentals as the market's primary narrative. That's a real shift from six weeks ago, and it matters for how you read the next round of earnings.
Oil is the variable that matters most right now. A sustained move higher with a weakening labor market is a stagflation setup. The Fed cannot cut into that. Today's payrolls miss makes the picture murkier, not cleaner. If energy stays elevated and jobs keep printing soft, the consumer gets squeezed from both sides at once and credit starts to show cracks. You saw a preview of that in financials this week.
The defense story is messier than it looks. AVAV showed you that in a hot geopolitical week, contract risk still dominates stock risk. The broader sector bid is real but single-stock execution matters more than the sector narrative right now.
Crypto holding quietly positive through all of this is worth tracking. Not dramatic, not capitulating either.
The market needs a resolution path on Iran or a clear Fed signal. Until one of those arrives, this level of volatility is the base case, not the exception.
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