S&P 500 Up 1.6% as Oil Jumps 50% on Iran War
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- US equity indexes finished the week green despite turbulence from Trump's Wednesday address and Iran conflict: S&P 500 +1.6%, Dow +1.2%, Nasdaq +2.2%, though the S&P and Dow remain down 3.8% and 3.2% respectively year-to-date
- The March jobs report blew past expectations with 178,000 nonfarm payrolls added versus 65,000 consensus, reversing February's 92,000 loss and prompting JPMorgan's Michael Feroli to write that the economy can "weather the ongoing energy price shock"
- Oil futures have surged more than 50% since the Iran war began five weeks ago, with Trump's Wednesday night threat to bomb Iran "back to the stone ages" pushing prices firmly back above $100 after a brief dip below
- February's PCE (Thursday) and March's CPI (Friday) will be the first real reads on oil price pass-through to inflation, though Goldman economist Manuel Abecasis argued the current shock is "less concerning than prior episodes that caused inflation problems"
- US gasoline crossed $4 per gallon nationally last week per AAA, while Strait of Hormuz traffic remains near zero against a roughly 15-million-barrel supply deficit, with Rystad's Paola Rodriguez-Masiu warning the buffer phase from pre-war surplus and crude-on-water "is now ending"
- Delta Air Lines (DAL) reports Wednesday as the key read on jet fuel's airline impact, joined by Levi Strauss and Constellation Brands in two consumer-spending gauges during wartime
Why it matters: With oil up 50%+ since the war's start and Trump raising the stakes with "stone ages" rhetoric, this week's PCE, CPI, and Delta earnings represent the first hard data on whether the energy shock is bleeding into broader prices — testing the market's resilience that delivered an S&P 500 weekly gain of 1.6%.
