Weekly Markets #2
Market recap for 28th March 2026
Not sure about you, but world leaders broadcasting war updates on social media will always be weird to me. Markets rallied hard Monday after Trump posted that a ceasefire was underway, then fully retraced when Iran denied the whole thing.
The S&P closed Friday at 6,369, its fifth straight weekly loss and a seven-month low. The Dow joined the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 in correction territory. The MAG7 shed $850 billion in market cap for the week.
Brent crude finished at $112.57 after an insane round-trip: down 11% Monday on ceasefire hopes, then grinding back above $108 by Thursday. The Strait of Hormuz stays effectively closed, while some of that risk premium is definitely already priced it, oil prices might still push higher.
The macro picture is deteriorating fast. The OECD raised its U.S. inflation forecast to 4.2%, more than 150bps above the Fed’s own 2.7% estimate. CME FedWatch flipped to 52% probability of a rate hike by year-end for the first time. The 10-year hit 4.41%, highest since July 2025. Oil-driven inflation the Fed can’t cut through, a labor market too strong to justify easing, growth forecasts getting slashed weekly.
Tech got hit from multiple angles. Google’s TurboQuant algorithm (claims to cut LLM memory requirements by 6x) crushed Micron 15% for the week despite Micron posting its best quarter ever. Meta lost 11% on the $375 million child safety verdict plus broad risk-off. Oracle is now 50%+ off its September peak.
Trump’s five-day pause on Iranian energy infrastructure strikes expires today. Monday’s open could gap 3-5% either direction depending on whether bombs or diplomats show up first.
Next week is going to be another fun one. Almost every session carries high-impact news from both the US and other central banks. Friday is packed with NFP and a Powell speech, and if the jobs data comes in weak while wages stay hot, the recession conversation goes from background noise to front-page headline real fast.
Anyway, enough of the doom porn. Let’s have a look at some of the markets and see if they have any interesting trade opportunities.
Side note before diving into this week's market review: if you want analytics for over 1000 markets across options, crypto, and futures while learning systematic trading strategies that harvest different risk premiums across multiple asset classes, check out tradingriot.com. Use code “ANALYTICS” for 50% off your first month.
SPX
The S&P 500 closed the week at 6,362.75, down from Sunday’s 6,576.72 open. Monday ripped 1.15% to 6,581 on the ceasefire hopes before Iran denied everything within hours. By Thursday the index gave it all back and then some, dropping 1.74% to 6,477. Friday was uglier, with the SPX falling another 1.67% to close at the lows. The Nasdaq shed 3.23% on the week, and Meta took the hardest hit among the mega caps, down 11%.
SPX Composite regime stays heavily in red, while some of these dips got bought up quickly in the past, this time that doesn’t seem to be the case. What makes me think we might still be heading lower is that while the market keeps grinding down, we haven’t seen any of that signature elevator-down price action. VIX, credit spreads, and breadth are all staying in risk-off territory but are far from capitulation levels.
One thing I mentioned last week that hasn't changed is put skew. The fact that it's not getting more elevated is interesting. Expensive puts during market stress are almost the signature for any equity index with negative spot-vol correlation. This time around, put skew is far from extreme.
Coming into next week, my main line in the sand where I'd attempt to catch a knife is between 615-605 on SPY. This lines up with the prior ATH. The momentum indicator is in strong oversold territory, but due to what I mentioned above, I don't feel like being too aggressive trying to buy this dip, especially considering the global situation.
Crypto
Not a whole lot happened in crypto this week besides TAO, which continued its rally. TAO remains alongside HYPE as the two best-performing assets. TAO is the main driver on the AI front, while HYPE benefits from growing interest in tradfi perps trading on-chain. Both pulled back slightly towards the end of the week but still remain in what I’d consider an uptrend. One thing to note is that TAO hit an all-time high in open interest this week, so it’s quickly becoming a crowded trade. I probably wouldn’t chase it heavily here.
Bitcoin sold off alongside SPX. Funding rates spiked higher early in the week, showing some crowded longs coming in, which provided a great intra-week fading opportunity. Price is about to close more or less flat, unless something crazy happens tomorrow, which you never know in this market.
As I mentioned earlier in the week, I think Bitcoin is at a solid higher-timeframe spot for a bounce and will likely form an accumulation range somewhere between 40-60k.
That’s obviously a massive range, and while there’s plenty of intra-day volatility for short-timeframe traders, I don’t really day trade anymore so this is the area I have to work with. I don’t think Bitcoin is going to bottom and rally without the whole conflict settling down and a bounce across the board. Crypto sold off several months before equities, so the appetite to bid digital ponzi schemes isn’t exactly there right now.
Revisiting this year’s low at 60k is not the most unreasonable thing to consider, especially as it’s a heavy magnet on the options side. The open interest by strike chart shows massive put concentration around the 60k level. When that much open interest sits at a single strike, dealers who sold those puts need to hedge their exposure by buying or selling the underlying as price approaches. That hedging flow effectively turning strikes with highest Open Interest into a support or resistance levels. The bigger the open interest, the stronger the magnet.
Rest of the market
While I mentioned last week's flip in COT positioning with speculators getting short euro, no surprises here. The dollar continued its rally this week as the main beneficiary of the risk-off environment. I don't see many reasons to try fading this. The chart looks solid and is breaking out of a multi-month consolidation. In times like these, I like to play positioning extremes in different majors, mostly by trading FX crosses. More on that maybe in future articles.
What I find interesting is gold. Besides the fact that instead of being a safe-haven calm asset, it has crazier swings than Fartcoin, put skew is the most elevated since Covid. This opens the door to several trading opportunities: selling puts, buying risk reversals if you're bullish, or structuring favorable risk-to-reward scenarios by buying a put spread if you're bearish since the elevated 10-25 delta puts will finance the ATM put.
Looking at the chart, I'd lean towards the former. We had a sharp selloff the week prior and price seems to have found support for now.
The current global situation also favors gold with Central bank buying remains at record levels and geopolitical risk is the highest it's been in decades. After the wild swings we saw lately, some consolidation skewed to the upside makes sense here, especially with heavy put skew and large speculators sitting on the short side.
