Morning Brew March 12 2026

Good morning,

Tomorrow I will not be in the office so Monday is the next Morning Brew.

Yesterday I wrote we are fully in a headline driven market, that was confirmed and the headlines are monthly not good: not good:

• Oil heads  back towards 100, the planned release of emergency reserves was a drop in the sea.
• Iran says world should be ready for oil at $200 a barrel
• U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment,
• Iran appeared to have set ablaze two tankers in Iraqi waters as it stepped up attacks on oil and transport facilities across the Middle East
•  U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday launched a new trade investigation into 16 major trading partners in a move to reinstate tariffs, 
• Morgan Stanley has limited redemptions at one of its private credit funds
• Good News: Inflation in the US and Germany was in line with expectations

In the US, the Dow and S&P 500 lost 0.61% and 0.08%, respectively, while the Nasdaq gained 0.08% yesterday. Most sectors closed lower, except for energy, technology, and communication services.

Oracle ended the day 8% higher and pulled AI shares higher, Campbell's tumbled 7.1% after the packaged food company cut its annual forecasts  Volume on U.S. exchanges was 17.79 billion shares, compared with the 20.09 billion average

This morning, we are seeing risk sentiment under pressure again, US Indexes are between 0.5-1% lower, Germany 1.2% and Japan 2%.

US 10 Year Yields are at 4.22%, breaking resistance and pulling the USD stronger: the USD Index rises to 99.45, EURUSD is 1.1545, GBPUSD 1.3365 and USDJPY is above the 159. EURCHF is 0.9023.

EU 10-year yields are approaching 3%, currently at 2.92%, in light of rising inflation fears.

The next couple of days will continue to be news-driven, with a major focus on limiting the impact of the rising oil price, now focus is still on the uncomfortably high price at the gas station but the larger economic implications of a prolonged high oil price are massive and disruptive.
Tomorrow we are expecting the US PCE, the Feds favorite inflation measure, just like with the CPI yesterday,  we need a massive deviation from the expectation to have an impact. The impact of the oil price will be the critical datapoint - that will not be visible in the February data. 

The most worrying is that the US seem to be shooting completely from the hip in a matter that literally affects billions of lives significantly – at least the administration is very bad at outlaying their goals and strategy. This significantly raises uncertainty among traders and investors

Thursday, March 12, 2026

Initial Jobless Claims, International Trade, Fed issues quarterly accounts

Earnings. Dicks, Dollar General, Adobe, Wheaton
Friday, March 13, 2026

UK GDP, France CPI, US PCE

Monday March 16 2026

China Retail Sales, Canada CPI, US Industrial Production