Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

U.S. Stocks: Largest Single-Day Gain Recently, A Real Crack Appears in the War Narrative

On Tuesday, Wall Street marked the end of this brutal Q1 with a long-awaited surge.

The Dow closed up 1,125 points (+2.49%), at 46,341, marking the largest single-day gain this year. The S&P 500 surged 2.91% to 6,528, and the Nasdaq soared 3.83% to 21,590, both representing the best single-day performance since May. The VIX fear index plummeted 17.51% to 25.25, serving as the first relief valve after six weeks of extreme panic.

The spark for all this came from two pieces of news that dropped almost simultaneously.

The first: The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had signaled to his staff—despite the Strait of Hormuz not being fully reopened, he was willing to end military actions against Iran. This effectively dismantled half of the equation where "the Strait reopening = end of war" was the prerequisite. The second: Iranian President Pezeshkian spoke publicly, stating that Iran "has the necessary willingness to end this war," but only on the condition of obtaining "guarantees against further aggression." Iranian state media subsequently confirmed this statement.

With these two pieces of news combined, the market reacted with a reflexive surge.

The technology sector was the biggest beneficiary of this rebound and also the main target for retaliatory buying. The Technology Sector ETF (XLK) surged over 4% on that day, NVIDIA jumped 5.6%, Meta soared 6.64%, and Microsoft rose 3.1%. On Semiconductor led the S&P 500 with over a 10% increase, with the logic being: ceasefire expectations → oil prices drop → inflation cools → Fed rate cut narrative resurfaces → highly valued tech stocks regain breathing space. This logic chain, which had been broken by the war over the past month, was temporarily reconnected on Tuesday.

The travel and consumer sectors experienced explosive relief. United Airlines and Carnival Cruise Lines both rose about 8%, and Royal Caribbean increased about 5%—these stocks were the most severely affected victims in Q1 and exhibited the greatest elasticity after declines. Consumer confidence data added to the good news: the Consumer Confidence Index for March reported 91.8, higher than the Dow Jones consensus expectation of 87.5, marking a slight improvement against the trend.

The market breadth was excellent, with about 80% of the constituents in the S&P 500 closing up on Tuesday; this was not a structurally differentiated rebound across sectors but a return to overall risk appetite.

However, there was one glaring exception: Crescent Energy fell over 7%, becoming the biggest drag on the S&P that day—its CEO stated during an investor day that negotiations for a new data center power supply agreement "were not ready to be disclosed," leaving the market greatly disappointed.

Nike posted its Q3 earnings after hours: EPS of $0.35, exceeding Wall Street's expectation of $0.31; revenue was $11.28 billion, also surpassing the expected $11.24 billion.

But what truly surprised analysts was the performance from China. Pre-tax profit for the Chinese region reached $467 million, nearly 1.74 times the market expectation of $270 million, marking a turnaround after seven consecutive quarters of decline. Since new CEO Elliott Hill reemerged in October 2024, he has been labeled by the public as needing "time", but this earnings report provided the market with a reason to believe "perhaps the turning point is closer."

However, the median guidance for full-year operating profit (about $11.5 billion) was slightly lower than Wall Street's consensus of $11.73 billion. The war's impact on the supply chain—the rerouting costs through Vietnam and India due to Hormuz—remains an inescapable shadow in the management's speech. Nike's story is not over; it's just a bit more hopeful tonight than it was yesterday.

Gold and Oil Prices: WTI Rarely Falls, Brent Soars Against the Trend Due to Tanker Attacks

On Tuesday, the crude oil market showed a perplexing divergence.

WTI crude oil fell 1.46% to $101.38/barrel, following the drop in ceasefire expectations. But Brent crude surged 4.94% to $118.35, reaching a new high since June 2022—the driver being Bloomberg’s report of an Iranian attack on a Kuwaiti tanker in Dubai waters. WTI's drop paired with Brent's surge is itself the most accurate depiction of the current market: ceasefire expectations coexist with actual conflict, with the market being torn between two narratives.

Gold modestly rose under the ceasefire expectations, with the Gold Mining ETF (GDX) rising over 4%. As inflation expectations slightly eased and the rate cut narrative began to recover, gold found its logical support for a bullish stance again. Gold prices remained in the $4,600 to $4,650 per ounce range, still about 17% away from the historic high of $5,600 at the end of January, but the direction has shifted from plummeting to stabilizing.

Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin Rises About 2%, Coinbase Soars Over 6% in a Day

According to CoinGecko data, Bitcoin rose about 2% on Tuesday, trading at approximately $67,800.

Coinbase surged over 6%, Robinhood rose 5%. This linkage in the crypto ecosystem clearly reflects one thing: ceasefire expectations → oil price stability → reduced inflation pressures → Fed rate cut narrative resumes → increased expectations for liquidity easing → Bitcoin, as a "liquidity-sensitive asset," gets a boost. This logic chain is completely opposite to the one that had been broken due to the war in the past few weeks.

It is worth noting for the long term that Google Quantum AI released a white paper on Tuesday warning that existing crypto wallets could be cracked in under 10 minutes with quantum computing capabilities. This news was almost completely overlooked amid the day's surge—yet it’s a slow-moving bullet, worthy of being added to long-term observation lists.

Bitcoin is still down about 46% from last October's high of approximately $126,000, with a drop of over 30% for the entire season. Tuesday's rebound feels more like an oversold correction rather than a trend reversal.

Q1 Report Card: This Quarter Officially Defined by War

As the market closed on March 31, the bill for Q1 2026 is formally locked in:

Dow: Down 8% for the month, down 6% for the quarter, both the worst since September 2022. A streak of ten consecutive months of positive monthly returns came to an end this quarter.

S&P 500: Down about 6% for the quarter, down 5.1% for the month, with five consecutive weeks of decline, marking the longest streak of weekly declines since 2022; over 8% down from the historic high at the end of January.

Nasdaq: Down 7% for the quarter, down 4.8% for the month, still within correction territory (over 10% down).

The root of all this can only be traced to one timeline: On February 28, Israel and the U.S. launched the "Epic Fury" operation, drawing Iran into the war. In the subsequent 30 trading days, the Strait of Hormuz was nearly blockaded, and oil prices rose from $57 to over $100, with Fed rate cut expectations plunging from 95% to nearly zero. A quarter that was supposed to carry the wave of AI and hopes for interest rate cuts was rewritten by war into a different visage.

Today is April 1st, April Fool's Day.

If this rebound is real, the following week will bring more data to confirm it. If it dissipates like every previous "glimmer of ceasefire", the market has become seasoned enough not to price every post from Trump as the end game.

The true end requires one thing: the ships in Hormuz to sail again.