Monday's 1% surge felt good for about four hours. Then the cracks started showing.
What matters:
The S&P 500 rose 1.15% to 6,581.00 on Monday, the Dow jumped 631 points to 46,208.47, and the Nasdaq gained 1.38% to 21,946.76. All three indexes are still down for the month.
Iran's foreign minister told NBC News that Iran needs "to continue fighting" and wants a permanent end to the war, not a temporary ceasefire. That's the other side of Trump's "productive conversations" post that fueled the rally.
Brent crude snapped back above $100, trading around $103 per barrel this morning, per Investing.com. Monday's oil selloff reversed almost entirely overnight.
The five-day clock is the story. Trump paused strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, per PBS, citing progress on negotiations. But the diplomatic picture is tangled. Turkey's foreign minister Hakan Fidan has been working back channels between Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, per Axios, alongside parallel efforts from Oman, Pakistan, Egypt, and Qatar. The question for markets is simple: does this produce anything verifiable before the clock expires?
Netanyahu made his answer clear Monday. After speaking with Trump, the Israeli PM said strikes on Iran and Lebanon will continue, per India TV News. That's not the posture of a partner preparing for a ceasefire. It's the posture of a government using the diplomatic window to expand operations.
The gold crash deserves your attention. Gold is trading around $4,400 per ounce, roughly its 10th consecutive decline, per Sunday Guardian. That's a 21% drop from the $5,603 record high earlier this year. The selloff isn't signaling peace. It's being driven by surging Treasury yields and forced liquidation. The 10-year yield ticked up to around 4.37% this morning, per CNBC, and rate hike odds have climbed to nearly 40% for 2026, per Schwab. A month ago, rate cut odds sat at 95%. That repricing is brutal for gold, brutal for growth stocks, and it hasn't fully filtered into equity valuations yet.
The sectors to watch: energy names like XLE could give back Monday's gains fast if the ceasefire window produces even a partial deal. Defense stocks (LMT, RTX, NOC) haven't flinched through any of these diplomatic cycles. And the GLD selloff is creating a setup where any breakdown in talks sends gold ripping back higher from oversold levels, which makes the next few sessions a binary bet for metals traders.
Bitcoin is hovering around $71,000, up roughly 4% from its weekend lows, per Phemex. It's still down about 30% from its late-2025 cycle high near $100,000. Not acting like a hedge. Not acting like risk-on. Just stuck.
Today's data: Flash PMI readings for March land this morning. Australia's already came in at 47.0, down from 52.4, per S&P Global, the first contraction in 17 months. If the U.S. manufacturing or services numbers show similar weakness, the stagflation argument the Fed acknowledged last week gets louder. Q4 productivity and unit labor cost revisions are also due.
U.S. futures are pointing slightly higher, with S&P 500 futures up about 0.3% and Nasdaq futures up about 0.5% in early trading.
Worth bookmarking: The S&P Global PMI release page will have the U.S. flash numbers as soon as they drop this morning. And the FRED 10-year Treasury tracker lets you chart the yield move that's quietly reshaping everything.
