What a difference a week and a war makes.
The average price per gallon for gasoline in the US shot up 27 cents from last week to $3.25, a 9% increase, according to new data from AAA, as escalating tensions in the Middle East push oil prices higher.
Higher fuel costs are rippling through markets: the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR Fund is down 2%, and bargain retailers like Dollar General and Walmart are also trading lower.
US crude oil climbed by more than 8.5% in afternoon trading, pushing the price of benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude above $81 at points, a level it hasn’t seen since the summer of 2024.
The price spike is hammering energy sensitive shares like airlines and consumer staples, and driving outperformance among oil and gas companies. Energy is already the S&P 500's top performing sector by far in 2026.
In a March 5 note, analysts from S&P Global Energy CERA wrote:
"The scale and duration of a price spike will depend on how much oil is kept off the market -- and for how long -- due to danger in the strait, higher shipping insurance rates or damaged Gulf infrastructure.”
US prices at the pump are already surging, rising an average of 27 cents to $3.25 per gallon, a 9% rise in just a single week, according to new data collected by AAA.
In a March 5 note, analysts from S&P Global Energy CERA wrote:
"The scale and duration of a price spike will depend on how much oil is kept off the market -- and for how long -- due to danger in the strait, higher shipping insurance rates or damaged Gulf infrastructure.”
US prices at the pump are already surging, rising an average of 27 cents to $3.25 per gallon, a 9% rise in just a single week, according to new data collected by AAA.
According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration will propose regulations that would require American approval for AI chip shipments worldwide, expanding existing export controls that currently apply to roughly 40 countries.
Nvidia and AMD both dropped on the news that the government would essentially act as a “gatekeeper for the AI industry,” though approval processes will vary and ramp up in complexity with the size of the order, and would only require the involvement of the host country’s government “for truly massive deployments,” according to Bloomberg’s sources. Bloomberg added that exports for the largest projects would only be approved for US allies that make stringent security commitments and “matching” investments in American AI, though the draft rule does not specify what that investment ratio would be.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported the US is also considering putting a cap on the number of AI chips that Chinese firms can purchase, though Nvidia CFO Colette Kress mentioned on the company’s Q4 earnings call it does not yet know whether it will be able to ship any AI chips to China regardless of US regulations.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported the US is also considering putting a cap on the number of AI chips that Chinese firms can purchase, though Nvidia CFO Colette Kress mentioned on the company’s Q4 earnings call it does not yet know whether it will be able to ship any AI chips to China regardless of US regulations.
Coming into this week, there had been some very well-defined and well-subscribed trades:
Memory stocks > everything, especially software.
Rest of the world’s stocks > US stocks.
Within the US market, the many > the few (as in, S&P 500 equal weight over S&P 500).
War is far from kind. In fact, for markets, it is seemingly a catalyst for mean reversion: all of these aforementioned trades are reversing this week.
There’s some fundamental backing, or at least an excuse, behind all of these unwinding:
Europe, for instance, is much more adversely impacted by oil price shocks than the US;
That’s also true for South Korea (whose market is dominated by a pair of memory chip stocks);
Oil price spikes are generally negative for economic activity; tech companies (particularly the heavyweights) have tended to enjoy acyclical growth.
“Who knew that a war against Iran would cause a mean reversion trade here in the US?” wrote analysts at Bespoke Investment Group on Wednesday. “So far this week, the best-performing stocks have been ones hit hardest this year through February, and vice versa.”
For markets, the risk was that war would drive a pickup in correlations within US stocks and between different asset classes. On Tuesday, the price action was validating and accentuating these concerns. Since then, broadly speaking, it hasn’t.
The S&P 500’s energy stocks (Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund) are some of the few bright spots in the blue-chip index Thursday, after continued US and Israeli bombing, and renewed Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the Middle East diminished hopes that the Islamic Republic’s military action to disrupt the flow of oil and gas out of the Gulf would quickly peter out.
“There are no signs that either the US and Israeli attacks or the Iranian retaliatory missile and drone strikes are slowing down,” Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management, told reporters for Platt’s Commodity News early Thursday.
US gas drillers such as APA Corporation, Devon Energy, and Coterra Energy are seeing sizable gains as Qatar Energy’s ongoing shutdown of liquefied natural gas production has sent global gas prices soaring. Qatar Energy fully shut down gas liquefaction on Wednesday. It is unclear when it will resume liquefaction, but once it does, it will take a month for Qatar’s LNG production to hit peak capacity again.
US crude oil prices are also on the rise, with NYMEX continuous futures on West Texas Intermediate — the US oil benchmark — up to over $78 shortly after 10 a.m. ET. That’s the highest since the start of the war and the highest price for US crude since early 2025.
Indeed, oil market participants are currently putting almost as big a premium for a barrel of Brent crude delivered as soon as possible relative to future delivery as they did during the energy shock that followed Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The surge in energy prices in recent months — amid US interventions first in Venezuela and now Iran — has turned energy stocks into the biggest winner of the year among the S&P 500’s 11 so-called industry “sectors.”
The rise in crude bodes poorly for US gasoline prices, but it’s a boon to US refiners and marketers: Valero and Phillips 66 are posting solid gains on the day.
Airlines, sensitive to short-term swings in fuel prices, also fell. Budget airlines including Allegiant and Frontier were down more than 6%. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and American Airlines were all down more than 5%.
And since gasoline prices will mechanically work as a tax on consumption, it’s unsurprising to see that Thursday’s biggest losers early were consumer staples stocks, with that sector (Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR Fund) down more than 2%.
Walmart and Dollar General — whose less affluent customers can be especially sensitive to higher gasoline prices — was leading the charge lower there.
Shares of ticket marketplace StubHub are down 16% in premarket trading following weaker-than-expected earnings results.
StubHub posted a loss of $1.56 per share, significantly worse than the $0.01 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet had expected. It booked $449.2 million in revenue, below the $485 million consensus and down about 16% from a year earlier.
Gross merch sales reached $2.3 billion in Q4, which StubHub pointed out would represent 6% year-over-year growth excluding the impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The figure was also below expectations.
Looking ahead, StubHub expects full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of between $400 million and $420 million. Analysts had expected $704.4 million.
Legal changes also threaten to squeeze StubHub in the year ahead. Earlier this month, lawmakers in both New York and California — two of the world’s largest live music markets — introduced legislation that would cap concert ticket resale prices to the ticket’s original face value.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth downgraded StubHub to “neutral” from “overweight” in the wake of these results, while slashing his price target to $10 from $22.
The company “needs to work through its lock-up expiration beginning this Monday, March 9, overcome ongoing regulatory concerns, and gain credibility with the Street,” he wrote.
