Macro & Markets Daily — Mar 21, 2026

The S&P 500 closed its fourth straight losing week at its lowest level since mid-December, the Russell 2000 officially entered correction territory, and the Fed's hawkish hold has reduced rate-cut expectations, with roughly 12% of futures traders now pricing a Fed hike by year-end. Meanwhile, the White House is conducting strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities while lifting sanctions on Iranian oil — a policy contradiction so stark it tells you everything about how constrained Washington actually is. Oil, inflation, and geopolitics are no longer separate stories; they're the same story, and it's getting worse.

• FOMC March Decision (Federal Reserve): Held rates at 3.50%–3.75%; dot plot shifted to only one cut in 2026, hawkish surprise.
• February PPI (BLS): Headline +3.4% year-over-year vs. +2.7% expected; core +3.9% year-over-year — hot for a second consecutive month.
• Initial Jobless Claims (DOL): 205,000 initial claims vs. 215,000 expected — a reading consistent with a tight labor market.
• Philly Fed Manufacturing Index (Philadelphia Fed): +18.1, an unexpected jump signaling industrial expansion.
• Atlanta Fed GDPNow Q1 Update (Atlanta Fed): Q1 2026 GDP tracking revised down to 2.3% from 2.7%.
• JPMorgan S&P 500 Target Revision (JPMorgan): Year-end target cut to 7,200 from 7,500; near-term downside scenario at 6,000.

The S&P 500 closed Friday at 6,506.48, down 1.51% on the session; the Nasdaq closed at 21,647.61, down 2.01% on the session; and the Dow closed at 45,577.47, down 0.96% on the session. But the number that matters most this weekend is the Russell 2000's: it dropped more than 2% on the session and crossed the 10% decline threshold from its recent high, making it the first major U.S. index officially in correction territory. The Dow and Nasdaq both touched correction levels intraday before pulling back just above the line.

The VIX — Wall Street's volatility gauge, which measures how much turbulence traders expect — closed at 26.78, up 11.31% on the session. That's not panic, but it's the kind of reading that keeps institutional money on the sidelines. The S&P 500 also closed below its 200-day moving average on Friday — a technical break that can trigger mechanical selling from quant strategies that use volatility or trend-following rules.

Here's what makes this more than a correction headline: the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index is up 3.16% year-to-date while the cap-weighted S&P 500 is down 1.54% year-to-date. That gap means mega-cap tech — the AI and growth names that powered the 2024–2025 bull run — is dramatically underperforming the average stock. This isn't a broad market selloff. It's a concentrated unwind of the trade that defined the last two years.

What changes if this continues: if the S&P follows the Russell below the 10% correction line, systematic selling accelerates and the conversation shifts from "buying the dip" to "how deep does this go." JPMorgan just cut its year-end S&P target to 7,200 and sees a near-term floor as low as 6,000. Goldman is holding 7,600 but models a severe oil-shock scenario at 5,400. When the two biggest banks on Wall Street are 1,800 points apart on their bear cases, that spread is the story. Watch whether the S&P holds 6,400 next week — that's the level where correction math kicks in for the headline index.

Two things happened in the last 24 hours that, taken together, reveal how constrained Washington actually is.

First, the U.S. and Israel carried out strikes on Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. The IAEA confirmed no radiation leakage but issued a public call for "military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident" — the kind of statement the UN's nuclear watchdog makes only when the line is uncomfortably close. Iran responded by firing two intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward the Diego Garcia U.S.-UK base in the Indian Ocean — roughly 3,800 km from Iranian territory. Neither struck the base, but the range demonstration is new: every U.S. installation within 4,000 km of Iran just became a potential target.

Second, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the U.S. is temporarily lifting sanctions on Iranian oil already loaded on ships — expected to add about 140 million barrels to global supply through April 19. The administration said the measure is intended to reduce the risk of sharply higher gasoline prices and ease domestic political pressure. Administration officials also warned elevated prices could linger for months and indicated they see limits to standard policy levers for this supply shock.

If this sanctions relief works as intended, Brent could ease below $108 on Monday — that's the de-escalation signal. If it doesn't move the needle (because 140 million barrels against roughly 100 million barrels of daily global consumption is less than two days of supply), the administration faces a choice between deeper military escalation — including the publicly debated seizure of Iran's Kharg Island — or accepting a prolonged supply disruption that feeds directly into inflation and jeopardizes hopes for rate cuts. The observable signal: watch Brent's Monday open and the Brent-WTI spread, which closed Friday at $14. A widening gap means non-U.S. buyers are still paying a steep war premium that American consumers haven't fully absorbed yet.

Gold is the thing you're supposed to own when everything else is on fire. So why has it fallen from its $5,589 record high to roughly $4,491 — a 17% decline from that peak — during an active Middle East war?

The answer is the Fed. Gold pays no interest. When real interest rates — rates after accounting for inflation — are rising, investors can earn a return just by holding Treasuries, so the appeal of non-yielding gold drops. The Fed's hawkish hold, combined with a surging dollar and rising Treasury yields, created a classic macro squeeze: leveraged gold traders got margin-called as the dollar strengthened, and institutional money rotated into yield-bearing safe havens instead. Some intraday reads put gold as low as $4,488 on Friday intraday.

The $4,500 level is now the line between "painful correction" and "something structurally broken." J.P. Morgan's 2026 gold target is $6,300; Deutsche Bank's is $6,000 — both set before the Iran escalation. The structural bull case (central bank buying, fiscal deficits, geopolitical hedging) hasn't changed. But right now, the Fed's credibility on holding rates is more powerful than the war's safe-haven bid. The signal to watch: if gold breaks convincingly below $4,400 while the 2-year yield keeps climbing, the "higher for longer" repricing has further to run and gold's correction deepens. If the 2-year reverses — say, on weak jobs data — gold snaps back fast. The metal isn't broken; it's just losing a tug-of-war with Treasury yields.

A small-cap index in correction, the president lifting sanctions on the country he's striking, and a metal that's supposed to protect you from chaos down 17% because Treasuries pay better — Friday was a masterclass in nothing working the way the textbook says it should.

Somewhere in Qatar, a helium atom that was supposed to cool a chip fab is just… not there — and the entire AI boom is one noble gas away from learning what "non-substitutable" actually means.

Markets are closed. Your cortisol isn't. See you Monday.

If someone you know is trying to make sense of this week, send them this — they'll thank you before the open.