The war in the Middle East drove most of the markets action as the S&P 500 closed down on the week at 6,740. We usually go day by day through the markets, but this week's news was fast and furious, so well just go to Friday and list the highlights. 1) WTI crude notched a 35% gain this week for its largest gain ever, and topping $90 per barrel for the first time since October 2023; 2) the Dow had its worst week since April 2025; 3) the S&P 500 had its worst week since November; 4) the first time the U.S. has sunk an enemy warship since WWII. Given that, lets focus on economic news and Fridays jobs data, which reported that February non-farm payrolls fell by 92,000, a sharp contrast from the downwardly revised January gain of 126,000 and far below the expected growth of 50,000. The unemployment rate also rose to 4.4% from 4.3%. That negative jobs number caught my eye and the last time we had a negative number was a revised negative 17,000 in December 2025. Decembers negative revision is important because 3 negative prints in a 5-month period is an economic deceleration signal. So lets look back to the previous miss, which was in COVID March 2020, and before that you must go back ten years to mid-2010 when we had four out of five months with negative numbers between May and September. And while the S&P 500 was up in 2010, it was an extremely volatile year with losses of -8.34% and -5.20% in May and June. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 has now turned negative Year To Date and sits 262 points or 3.74% below its intraday high of 7,002 on 28 January. That said, it feels like were much lower than that based upon all the uncertainty, which the markets do not like. For next week, the economic front has inflation numbers on Wednesday and GDP and Consumer sentiment numbers on Friday. For TSP TIPS weve taken a risk off strategy and increased our G fund allocation in all three models. That said, well continue to monitor market conditions and stand by for possible mid-week alerts.
The war in the Middle East drove most of the markets action as the S&P 500 closed down on the week at 6,740. We usually go day by day through the markets, but this week's news was fast and furious, so well just go to Friday and list the highlights. 1) WTI crude notched a 35% gain this week for its largest gain ever, and topping $90 per barrel for the first time since October 2023; 2) the Dow had its worst week since April 2025; 3) the S&P 500 had its worst week since November; 4) the first time the U.S. has sunk an enemy warship since WWII. Given that, lets focus on economic news and Fridays jobs data, which reported that February non-farm payrolls fell by 92,000, a sharp contrast from the downwardly revised January gain of 126,000 and far below the expected growth of 50,000. The unemployment rate also rose to 4.4% from 4.3%. That negative jobs number caught my eye and the last time we had a negative number was a revised negative 17,000 in December 2025. Decembers negative revision is important because 3 negative prints in a 5-month period is an economic deceleration signal. So lets look back to the previous miss, which was in COVID March 2020, and before that you must go back ten years to mid-2010 when we had four out of five months with negative numbers between May and September. And while the S&P 500 was up in 2010, it was an extremely volatile year with losses of -8.34% and -5.20% in May and June. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 has now turned negative Year To Date and sits 262 points or 3.74% below its intraday high of 7,002 on 28 January. That said, it feels like were much lower than that based upon all the uncertainty, which the markets do not like. For next week, the economic front has inflation numbers on Wednesday and GDP and Consumer sentiment numbers on Friday. For TSP TIPS weve taken a risk off strategy and increased our G fund allocation in all three models. That said, well continue to monitor market conditions and stand by for possible mid-week alerts.