🔹 ONE YEAR OF TARIFFS, FIVE WEEKS OF WAR

Oil above $108, yields rising, and gold selling off. A strange week for safe havens.

Good afternoon,

A year ago today, the White House unveiled its "Liberation Day" tariff agenda. The market barely recognized the anniversary. It was too busy reacting to a presidential address pledging more strikes on Iran, oil surging back above $108 a barrel, and another Thursday selloff in equities.

For retirement-minded investors, the week captures something worth sitting with: resilient consumer spending and solid jobs data on one hand, and an escalating energy shock on the other. The tension between the two is what markets are pricing right now.

Getting started.

The Pulse

The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.38% on Thursday, up 5 basis points on the day and roughly 30 basis points over the past month. Markets have now fully removed Fed rate cuts from the 2026 calendar. At the same time, WTI crude briefly crossed $111 per barrel, up 11% overnight. The combination of rising yields and surging energy costs is the core pressure point for equities this week.

Markets

S&P 500 closed Tuesday at 6,528.52, up 2.91%, its strongest session since May, as hope around a U.S. withdrawal from Iran within "two or three weeks" lifted risk appetite across the board.
Nasdaq futures climbed 0.63% to 24,065 at Wednesday's open, with Nvidia and Microsoft leading the mega-cap recovery as tech resumed its role as the engine of index performance.
Treasury yields pulled back, with the 10-year reaching ~4.32% after gaining up to 40 basis points in March, easing fears about a rate hike cycle restarting in response to oil-driven inflation.
Brent crude hovered near $104, seesawing through volatile intraday moves as markets tried to reconcile Trump's peace signals with the IEA's warning that 12 million barrels per day remain offline.

The March selloff was driven by something markets hadn't fully modeled: a genuine supply shock. Oil is not like tariffs. It hits prices immediately and broadly, touching everything from transportation to food to manufacturing inputs. That's the reason investors were nervous even as equities bounced. The underlying conditions haven't resolved. They've simply paused.

Earnings

Nike (NKE) reported fiscal Q3 results Tuesday evening. Revenue came in flat at $11.3 billion, and earnings of $0.35 per share beat the $0.28 consensus. But the stock fell 14 to 15% Wednesday after management guided Q4 revenue down 2 to 4%, flagged a roughly 20% decline in Greater China sales, and reported a 130 basis point contraction in gross margins tied to North American tariff costs. Nike shares are now down nearly 30% year-to-date.
Oracle cut up to 30,000 employees globally, roughly 18% of its workforce, via surprise 6 a.m. termination emails. TD Cowen estimates the move frees up $8 to $10 billion in cash flow to fund Oracle's $156 billion AI infrastructure buildout, even as the company posted a 95% jump in net income last quarter.
Estée Lauder and Puig advanced merger talks, with a formal announcement expected within weeks. The deal would create the world's second-largest listed beauty company, with combined pro forma revenues of $21.6 billion.

Nike is the cleaner signal here. A company beating estimates but losing 15% tells you the market is focused on where things are going, not where they have been. China and tariff headwinds are real, and investors are not waiting to see if they ease.

Gold & Silver Moves

Gold:

Spot gold is trading near $4,630 to $4,650 per ounce on Thursday, down roughly 3.2 to 3.5% intraday. Gold closed March at $4,678, marking its worst monthly performance since June 2013, a decline of more than 10% from where it began the month.

The counterintuitive story here is worth explaining carefully. Gold fell during a war. That is not how the textbook says it works. The reason is that the Iran conflict has pushed energy prices sharply higher, which has raised inflation expectations, which has caused markets to remove Fed rate cut bets entirely. When yields rise and the dollar strengthens, gold becomes more expensive to hold for non-U.S. investors, and it pays no income. So leveraged investors sold it to raise cash, and the price fell. Goldman Sachs analysts have flagged this as a rotation of "weak-handed capital" out of crowded momentum positions rather than a structural change in gold's long-term case. Their year-end target remains $5,400 per ounce. Central banks, the buyers who started this rally, have not stepped away.

Silver:

Silver is trading near $71 to $72 per ounce, down sharply. March was its worst month since 2011, with a decline of roughly 19%. Silver is now about 40% below its all-time nominal high of $121.67 set on January 29 of this year.

Silver has two roles in a portfolio: monetary safe haven and industrial input. When both inflation fears and growth fears rise simultaneously, as they do in an energy shock, silver's industrial demand story weakens while its monetary story competes with a stronger dollar. The result is underperformance relative to even a falling gold price.

The Gold / Silver ratio sits near 64 to 65, meaning it takes roughly 65 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold.

That number carries context. Over the past five years, this ratio has ranged from 70 to 100, with peaks near 90 during periods of acute risk-off stress. The ratio compressed sharply in 2025 when silver surged alongside gold, at one point approaching 40 to 50, as supply deficits, tariff-driven stockpiling, and industrial demand all converged. What we are seeing now is a partial reversal of that compression. Silver's larger percentage decline in March pushed the ratio back toward the middle of its historical range.

A ratio of 64 to 65 is neither a screaming signal to buy silver nor a reason to abandon it. It suggests silver is fairly valued relative to gold on a historical basis, not cheap enough to represent a contrarian opportunity, and not expensive enough to suggest it is getting ahead of itself again. For investors watching the ratio for rebalancing signals, the current level is a neutral zone. The ratio would need to move back above 80 to suggest silver is historically cheap relative to gold, which has historically been a more meaningful entry signal.

For retirement-focused investors, gold's structural case, rooted in central bank demand and reserve diversification, remains intact even through this correction. Purchasing power protection over a decade tends to reward patience more than perfect timing.

The takeaway

At current prices, both metals have fallen meaningfully from their highs, and for investors focused on purchasing power protection over a multi-year horizon, the structural case for holding precious metals as a hedge against currency debasement and fiscal excess has not changed.

The Deal Room

M&A / Investments

Intel will repurchase the 49% stake in its Ireland Fab 34 joint venture from Apollo for $14.2 billion, regaining full control of its most advanced chip manufacturing facility; the deal is funded partly by $6.5 billion in new debt and sent Intel shares up roughly 9%. (Intel IR)
Estée Lauder and Puig are advancing a mostly stock-based merger that would create a $40 billion luxury beauty group combining Clinique, Tom Ford, Carolina Herrera, and Charlotte Tilbury under one roof. (Bloomberg)

IPO / Listings

SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC for what could be the largest IPO in history, targeting a valuation above $1.75 trillion and a potential June listing, ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic. (CNBC)

Distress / Credit

Blue Owl capped redemptions at 5% across two of its non-traded private credit funds after withdrawal requests hit 15% of NAV in its tech-focused vehicle, reigniting concerns about AI-sector overexposure in the $1.8 trillion private credit market; shares fell 9%. (CNBC)

Retirement Lens

Two things this week deserve attention from a long-term perspective. First, the energy shock is real and the timeline for resolution is uncertain. Portfolios with exposure to inflation-linked instruments or energy assets have had a different week than those without them. Second, the jobs and retail sales data confirm that the underlying U.S. economy has not broken yet. Resilience and vulnerability are both present simultaneously. The steadiest posture in this environment remains what it has been for months: diversification across geographies, a measured allocation to assets that hold value through inflation, and patience with the noise.

Headline Hunt

March ADP payrolls showed private sector added 62,000 jobs, well above the 40,000 forecast, suggesting the labor market remains resilient despite five weeks of war-driven uncertainty.
U.S. average gasoline prices crossed $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022, up 35% since the Iran war began, applying direct pressure on household budgets.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol warned that April will be "much worse than March" for the global oil supply crunch, as the last pre-war tanker shipments have now reached port and no new flows are coming through the Strait.
Macquarie assigns a 40% probability to oil reaching $200 per barrel if the Iran conflict extends to June and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed; Eurasia Group puts 55% odds on the war lasting through May.
Europe's diesel futures benchmark surged above $200 per barrel for the first time since 2022, while European gas prices have risen more than 70% since the war began.
The EU Parliament's trade committee is set to vote Thursday on advancing ratification of the U.S.-EU trade framework agreement, a step toward concluding one of the few active trade deals still in motion.
Tesla shares fell 4% after reporting one of its worst quarterly sales figures in recent years, compounding a broader decline in high-multiple technology stocks tied to war escalation fears.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a court that its system for processing $166 billion in illegal tariff refunds is 40 to 80% complete, with a target of issuing payments to importers by later this spring.
JPMorgan cut its 2026 year-end S&P 500 target to 7,200 from 7,500 citing oil shocks and rising recession risk, while Goldman Sachs held its 7,600 target anchored to earnings resilience.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned that 18 U.S. technology companies, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet, could be considered "legitimate targets" in response to U.S. military operations.