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Stocks slid some more on Thursday, as investors, traders and speculators price in a potential energy shock and figure out what policymakers will do to contain its impact on consumers and the economy. “Wait-and-see” mode is getting more and more complicated for the Fed, while the White House continues its own efforts on multiple fronts to ease concerns about control of the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said U.S. ally Israel “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as the South Pars Gas Field in Iran.”
According to Trump, the U.S. “knew nothing about this particular attack,” and Qatar, which shares the natural gas field with Iran, “was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen.” Israel said U.S. officials knew about its plan before it was launched.
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The president said Israel won’t attack the field again, but also said the U.S., with or without Israel’s help or consent, “will massively blow up the entire South Pars Gas Field at an amount and strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”
The front-month West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures contract was lower by 1.2% at $94.28 per barrel but has risen more than 40% since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran at the end of February. Natural gas futures were up 2.5% and have risen 9.8% since February 28.
Energy prices (and energy costs) are going higher
“The Iran situation continues to roil the markets,” Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates writes. “Energy assets throughout the region have suffered damage on top of only a fraction of shipping taking place through the Strait of Hormuz.”
As Navellier explains, “In addition to higher fuel costs, the region also supplies major amounts of fertilizer chemicals, which is especially impactful as the spring planting season approaches.”
Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell didn’t help during his press conference after the March Fed meeting. “He didn’t see the need to consider a rate cut anytime soon,” Navellier notes.
The Fed chair did cite uncertainty about the impact of tariffs on inflation, but also said the economy “is not performing as though restrictive policy is holding it back inappropriately,” he adds.
The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) rose as high as 27.52 from 25.09 on Wednesday, settling at 24.40 vs 14.95 at the end of 2025. A normal range for the stock market’s “fear index” is between 12 and 20.
At the closing bell, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4% at 46,021, the broad-based S&P 500 was off 0.3% at 6,606, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had lost 0.3% to 22,090.
Micron sinks on “exceptional” earnings and “stellar” guidance
The memory and storage provider reported fiscal 2026 second-quarter earnings-per-share growth of 682.1% on revenue growth of 196.3%. Management of the semiconductor stock guided to fiscal third-quarter EPS of $19.15, representing 903% year-over-growth, on revenue of $33.5 billion.
“Micron delivered an exceptional fiscal Q2,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said at the top of Micron’s earnings conference call, citing “stellar records” for EPS and revenue as well as gross margin and free cash flow.
As Mehrotra explained, Micron’s fiscal third-quarter revenue guidance “exceeds the full year revenue for every year in our company’s history through fiscal 2024.”
Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini reiterated his Positive (Buy) rating and raised his 12-month target price for MU stock from $525 to $600 following the report. Hosseini says memory pricing trends remain strong, noting that Micron “is increasingly benefitting from its exposure to higher-value products.”
The price of oil in Oman
“Oil around $100 doesn’t seem particularly extreme after all,” Deutsche Bank Macro Strategist Tim Baker observes. “This occurred through 2022, and was the norm in 2011-2014.” This is the price for Brent crude, Baker explains; the West Texas Intermediate crude oil price familiar in the U.S. is still below $100.
Meanwhile, the per-barrel price of crude oil in Oman reached $153.47 this week. “At around $150,” Baker says, “it’s a sign that Asian buyers are desperate to secure product.”
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Oman is across the water to the south of Iran, separated by the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. Their maritime boundaries meet at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Iran to the north and Oman’s Musandam Peninsula opposite its southern coast.
The oil price there reflects real concern about Iran’s use of low-tech options to control the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. “The Middle East picture is different,” Baker writes. “The Oman price for near-term delivery has more than doubled.”
According to Baker’s data, things haven’t gone from bad to worst: “The geopolitical risk index indicates this is the 5th-largest shock in the past 40 years,” he writes. “9/11-Afghanistan was easily the biggest, but the current episode is not far behind the others,” including the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the Ukraine invasion.
