New York, March 27, 2026, 07:06 EDT
Global equities lost ground Friday. U.S. futures wandered, with investors weighing President Donald Trump’s call to push back the Iran Strait of Hormuz deadline to April 6. Oil and bonds hardly budged on the announcement. In Europe, the STOXX 600 slipped 0.8% by mid-session. U.S. stock-index futures barely moved ahead of the open.
Thursday’s sharp drop stung—Wall Street just logged its worst day since the Iran war erupted. The S&P 500 fell 1.7%. The Dow dropped 1%. Tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 2.4%, dragging it nearly 11% below its Oct. 29 record close, pushing firmly into correction territory. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are now on track for five straight weekly losses.
Investors are wrestling with three fronts: oil, rates, and growth. About a fifth of global oil and LNG shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz—a crucial chokepoint. CME FedWatch data, cited by Reuters, now shows traders have all but abandoned hopes for Fed rate cuts this year, as fresh conflict revives inflation worries.
European stocks got knocked back, Frankfurt and Madrid leading the slide. New numbers showed private-sector growth stumbled hard in March. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi both slipped 0.4%. Hong Kong and Shanghai just managed to finish slightly higher.
“Words alone aren’t cutting it right now,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, reacting to Trump’s move to extend the pause on strikes against Iranian energy sites. For IG’s chief markets analyst Chris Beauchamp, stocks probably won’t steady unless talks directly take on reopening Hormuz. Reuters
Oil prices stayed in the limelight, with Brent crude advancing 1.73% to $109.88 a barrel by 0954 GMT. U.S. crude gained 1.66%, settling at $96.05. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield shot up to 4.456%, its highest since July, while Germany’s 10-year yield also edged up, hitting levels not seen since 2011.
Nasdaq slipped, as the big tech names took another hit. Meta, Nvidia, and Alphabet were at the front of Thursday’s slide. Meta shares plunged 8% after juries held the company responsible for damages related to young users.
Wall Street tags any drop of 10% or more from a recent high as a correction. So far in 2026, the Nasdaq’s down about 8%, hitting levels last seen back in early September 2025. The war’s pressure is clear, adding to a market still jittery about the timeline for payoffs from those hefty AI bets.
The weekend’s outlook is still anyone’s guess. Macquarie analysts think oil could tumble fast if fighting eases soon, but they aren’t betting on a full return to prewar levels. Should the conflict drag into late June, their target for crude sits at $200 a barrel. On top of that, rumors of Trump sending in more ground troops are rattling investors.
Oil’s holding traders’ attention right now. Phillip Nova’s Priyanka Sachdeva puts it down to “war longevity, not just headlines.” The supply side’s still under a cloud—“scale of supply at risk remains significant,” ING’s Ewa Manthey and Warren Patterson note. Reuters
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