1. S&P 500 and oil correlations usually turn increasingly more negative after a 30% oil spike.

The market seems to be pricing in a quick end to the war, which is still a high-risk assumption at this point.

Goldman says S&P 500 at 6,200 is the level to ‘blindly buy’. That’s about 7% lower.

2. Gold, silver and copper selloff.

Gold thrives when rates are low and the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding metal is minimal. When the Fed signals higher rates for longer, that calculus flips instantly, and investors dump gold for Treasuries that actually pay.
Jerome Powell's press conference Wednesday delivered exactly that signal, strengthening the dollar and accelerating the flush that had already begun after gold hit record highs. We saw the identical dynamic in 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices surging, fanned inflation, and gold fell for seven straight months from April to October. The Iran war is running the same script.

Copper's selloff is sort of a different ballpark. When the Fed revises GDP lower and signals stagflation risks, copper traders read it as a demand destruction call.

3. ECB sees possibility of rate hike at April meeting.

The hawkish tone from the ECB could offer the common currency some temporary relief but the broader backdrop remains hostile. Rising global energy prices act as a terms-of-trade shock that hits Europe disproportionately as a net energy importer, tightening financial conditions and supporting the dollar at the same time.
A close below $1.14 would confirm a deeper technical break and open the path toward $1.10, a level that would compound the ECB’s headache by adding currency weakness to the inflation mix.

4. DRAM (memory chips) versus ASML suggests significant upside for ASML.

5. The next wave of change around "Powering AI".

While power capacity is facing supply chain constraints across the board, the next opportunity will be in energy storage systems (ESS).
The thematic rotation toward energy storage is not just a logical step but a necessity.
The rapid growth of AI inference workloads is making power demand more volatile and peak‑heavy, increasing the need for ESS to perform peak-shaving and smooth sudden load spikes.
And ESS is increasingly being deployed as a practical mitigation to traditional power capacity constraints, including limited availability of gas turbines, grid congestion, and long interconnection timelines.
Last but not least, Iran war’s destabilizing impact on fossil-fuel markets is just another catalyst for data centers to consider batteries over diesel or natural-gas-fired power.

Below: Global ESS annual incremental deployment forecast for data centers.

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