by Bryan Perry
March 24, 2026
The war in Iran is now entering its fourth-week. The conflict – often referred to as the 2026 Iran War or Operation Epic Fury – began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched a massive wave of surprise airstrikes across Iran. Since this initial attack, energy prices and Treasury yields have spiked, while the vast majority of equities have corrected, some severely.
An old Wall Street maxim – “the charts don’t lie” – could not be truer than in the present situation. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was 3.95% the day before the war broke out, but as of Friday’s close, the 10-year yield spiked to 4.39” – a huge move contributing heavily to the market sell-off.
Graphs are for illustrative and discussion purposes only. Please read important disclosures at the end of this commentary.
With this move, the bond market is sending a strong message to the stock market – saying, in effect, the Fed is in no hurry to lower rates with the latest set of data points indicating new inflationary pressures. This past week The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.7% month-over-month (consensus: 0.3%) following a 0.5% increase in January. The Producer Price Index for final demand, less food and energy, jumped 0.5% month-over-month (consensus: 0.4%) following a 0.8% increase in January.
The primary takeaway from this report is a significant uptick in producer prices in both goods and services – even well before the war with Iran and subsequent surge in energy prices – a trend which will fuel concerns about a worsening inflation situation in the forth-coming February and March data.
Oil prices remain elevated, with WTI hovering around $100-barrel. Also, natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG) prices spiked after Qatar, the largest exporter of LNG in the world, suffered a material attack on its LNG infrastructure. Following this attack, 12.8-million tons per annum (MTPA) of capacity is now offline. This represents 17% of Qatar’s total export capacity and roughly 20% of the global base-load supply. This is bad news for Europe and China, which are hugely dependent on energy imports.
If and when this war in Iran winds down, oil prices will decrease, as will natural gas prices and bond yields, because the short-term spike in energy, food and bond yields is a broad-based head-wind for most consumers. This means any forward-looking forecasts for GDP growth are sure to come down.
To this point, The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (at a seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first-quarter of 2026 is now at 2.3%, down from 2.7% on March 13.
Another old Wall Street adage – namely, “the cure for high prices is high prices” – is essentially the market’s version of “what goes up must come down,” but with a specific economic motivation behind it.
In the current climate, where we see a massive spike in energy and commodity costs due to the conflict in Iran and the Qatar LNG attacks, so you will hear this phrase being tossed around a lot by the financial media. Inflation is a self-correcting cycle driven by two forces: Demand destruction and supply incentive.
With oil trading at around $100-per barrel, consumer discretionary spending will be curtailed while oil-producers spend whatever they can to bring supply back to the market. If all this new supply hits the market at once, it could create a glut, eventually causing crashes – the price of oil. At least that is the historical pattern for “curing” inflation. When spending declines, commodity prices decline, finished goods prices retreat, with a (maybe) new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh stepping into power to craft a soft economic landing.
At this juncture, investors need to keep a keen eye out for any new bullish price action among individual stocks in the energy, aerospace-defense, suborbital space infrastructure, data-center infrastructure, and select healthcare. Last week, investors saw a rare phenomenon: Gold and equities both sold off sharply, together. This usually means large hedge funds have to meet major margin calls, so they are forced to sell their winners (like gold) to cover losses in their losers (like technology stocks or small caps).
Last week felt like the flush typically defining a market bottom. No promises here, but it definitely had the look and feel of the market enduring a short-term rinse cycle following three weeks of steady war-related selling. Fingers crossed, but perhaps the market has priced in the bad news from what’s going on.
All content above represents the opinion of Bryan Perry of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
Also In This Issue
A Look Ahead by Louis Navellier
Fed Chairman Powell’s Tough Talk Shakes the Markets
Income Mail by Bryan Perry
Short-Term Inflation is Taking a Toll
Growth Mail by Gary Alexander
With Wars and High Oil Prices, Why is Gold Lower?
Global Mail by Ivan Martchev
A “Force Majeure” in LNG Has Been Triggered
Sector Spotlight by Jason Bodner
Follow the Flows, Then Follow Through
View Full Archive
Read Past Issues Here
Bryan Perry
SENIOR DIRECTOR
Bryan Perry is a Senior Director with Navellier Private Client Group, advising and facilitating high net worth investors in the pursuit of their financial goals.
Bryan’s financial services career spanning the past three decades includes over 20-years of wealth management experience with Wall Street firms that include Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Paine Webber, working with both retail and institutional clients. Bryan earned a B.A. in Political Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University and currently holds a Series 65 license. All content of “Income Mail” represents the opinion of Bryan Perry
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