- The decline on Wall Street is clearly accelerating. The Nasdaq is already down more than 2%, and S&P 500 futures are hitting new session lows.
- Amid escalating tensions in the Middle East and renewed inflation fears, oil prices are rising by more than 3.5%, gold is giving up its gains and falling by 2.8%, and market sentiment remains defensive. Silver is performing very poorly today, currently down by more than 5%.
- The US dollar and the Japanese yen are performing best on the Forex market. Meanwhile, the currencies of the Antipodes—the AUD and the NZD—are under the most downward pressure.
- Several factors are contributing to the gloomy mood: Microsoft has announced a hiring freeze in its cloud computing and sales divisions, raising questions about the health of the entire tech sector and, above all, the hype surrounding AI.
- Meanwhile, geopolitics is once again making its presence felt—as reported by Reuters, following the death of Ali Khamenei on February 28, Iran’s conservative political wing, centered mainly around the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is increasingly calling for the development of nuclear weapons.
- During a cabinet meeting, Trump significantly ramped up his rhetoric against Tehran. “Iran is begging for a deal—not me,” the president declared, adding that Tehran should have sealed the deal four weeks ago. Furthermore, Trump openly admitted that he doesn’t know if he’s even ready to negotiate with Iran at this point.
- Meta Platforms shares plunged by more than 6.4% today, wiping nearly $70 billion off the company’s market value in a single trading session.
- Today’s sell-off coincided with the announcement of two landmark jury verdicts, which together have defined a new dimension of legal risk for the entire social media industry. This legal pressure is accompanied by an unprecedented capital expenditure program.
- Google unveiled the TurboQuant algorithm, which compresses the cache of language models down to just 3 bits, reducing KV-cache memory usage by up to six times and achieving up to an 8-fold speedup on H100 chips without any loss of accuracy. The market immediately priced in a potential decline in demand for memory chips: SanDisk fell about 4% at the open, Micron and Western Digital each fell about 2%, and Seagate fell about 2%.
The US100 is down nearly 2%; Microsoft freezes hiring in its cloud and sales divisions💡
Iran has allowed 10 oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz — an explanation of the enigmatic “gift” to Trump⚓
🚨 Trump warns Iran — Markets under pressure; oil prices rebound 💡
Report on U.S. natural gas inventories showed a larger-than-expected decline in stocks⬇️
The content of this report has been created by XTB S.A., with its registered office in Warsaw, at Prosta 67, 00-838 Warsaw, Poland, (KRS number 0000217580) and supervised by Polish Supervision Authority ( No. DDM-M-4021-57-1/2005). This material is a marketing communication within the meaning of Art. 24 (3) of Directive 2014/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments and amending Directive 2002/92/EC and Directive 2011/61/EU (MiFID II). Marketing communication is not an investment recommendation or information recommending or suggesting an investment strategy within the meaning of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse (market abuse regulation) and repealing Directive 2003/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and Commission Directives 2003/124/EC, 2003/125/EC and 2004/72/EC and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/958 of 9 March 2016 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards for the technical arrangements for objective presentation of investment recommendations or other information recommending or suggesting an investment strategy and for disclosure of particular interests or indications of conflicts of interest or any other advice, including in the area of investment advisory, within the meaning of the Trading in Financial Instruments Act of 29 July 2005 (i.e. Journal of Laws 2019, item 875, as amended). The marketing communication is prepared with the highest diligence, objectivity, presents the facts known to the author on the date of preparation and is devoid of any evaluation elements. The marketing communication is prepared without considering the client’s needs, his individual financial situation and does not present any investment strategy in any way. The marketing communication does not constitute an offer of sale, offering, subscription, invitation to purchase, advertisement or promotion of any financial instruments. XTB S.A. is not liable for any client’s actions or omissions, in particular for the acquisition or disposal of financial instruments, undertaken on the basis of the information contained in this marketing communication. In the event that the marketing communication contains any information about any results regarding the financial instruments indicated therein, these do not constitute any guarantee or forecast regarding the future results.
