Firefighters at Kuwait's Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery are working through a second consecutive morning of Iranian drone strikes. It's one of the largest refineries in the Middle East. Overnight, drones hit again, sparking fresh fires across several units, per U.S. News. Hours earlier, Iran also struck Israel's Haifa oil refinery with missiles, per Al Jazeera, and the damage at Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG complex, hit Wednesday, will reportedly take years to repair, with Reuters reporting the strike knocked out roughly 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity.
This is the war spilling into the global energy grid in real time. And it's landing on the single most volatile trading day of the quarter.
What matters:
Roughly $5.7 trillion in stock, index, and ETF options expire today in the first triple witching of 2026, the largest March expiry in Citigroup data going back to 1996, per Bloomberg.
Brent crude pulled back from Thursday's intraday high near $119 per barrel and was trading around $110 early Friday, per Investing.com. The relief came after Netanyahu said Israel would help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Seven U.S. allies issued a joint statement backing a potential Strait of Hormuz coalition, per Axios. The signatories: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, and Canada. But the statement includes no commitment to send ships.
The coalition that isn't one yet.
The seven-nation statement sounds significant. It isn't, at least not yet. The countries condemned Iran's attacks on commercial shipping and energy infrastructure, expressed readiness to "contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage," and called for "preparatory planning." That language is diplomatic code for: we agree this is a problem, but we haven't agreed to do anything about it. For now, it's largely a gesture to placate Trump, who has railed against allies for declining to help secure the strait. Markets briefly cheered the headlines anyway. The Russell 2000 gained 0.65% on Thursday, and Brent dropped from its $119 intraday high.
Meanwhile.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.27% to 6,606.49. The Dow fell 0.44% to 46,021.43. The Nasdaq dipped 0.28% to 22,090.69. That puts all three major indexes on track for a fourth straight losing week. The 10-year Treasury yield eased to around 4.25%.
Futures this morning are pointing lower again, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures both nudging down in pre-market trading.
Gold is trading around $4,700 per ounce, well off its highs from earlier this year but still elevated by war-driven safe-haven demand.
One story to watch beyond the war: the SEC is preparing a proposal to let public companies report earnings every six months instead of every quarter, per the Wall Street Journal. Chair Paul Atkins could publish the proposal as soon as April. Trump has backed the idea. Investor groups are pushing back.
Triple witching is the wildcard. The last hour of trading today (3-4 PM ET) is historically where volume spikes as $4.1 trillion in index contracts, $875 billion in single-stock options, and $772 billion in ETF options all settle at once. In an already jittery market sitting on a fourth losing week, that rebalancing pressure could amplify moves in either direction.
Worth bookmarking: The Bloomberg triple witching breakdown has the full options expiry data, and Axios has the full text of the seven-nation Hormuz coalition statement.
