Yesterday's exhale lasted less than a day. Germany, Italy, and Spain refused Trump's naval coalition. Oil climbed back above $96 while the U.S. slept. The Fed's two-day meeting begins this morning.
President Trump called on seven allied nations to deploy warships to escort oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The request was intended to restore the flow of approximately 20% of global oil supply currently disrupted by the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict, now in its third week.
Germany, Italy, and Spain explicitly declined, citing the absence of a UN Security Council mandate and NATO authorization. France and the UK remained noncommittal. South Korea and Japan gave diplomatic non-answers. Zero warships committed.
This is why oil climbed back overnight. Yesterday's brief calm — triggered by Treasury Secretary Bessent's comments about Iranian tankers moving — assumed some form of allied stabilization. There is none. The Strait remains contested. WTI is back at $96, and Brent is back above $102.
Benzinga · Allies Reject Hormuz Coalition · March 17, 2026The FOMC convenes its March 17–18 meeting this morning. The rate decision Wednesday is the most certain call in financial markets — 99.1% probability of unchanged rates at 3.50–3.75%. The decision is not the story.
The story is Wednesday's Summary of Economic Projections. The March dot plot is the first update since the Iran war began — the first time the Fed's own forecasts must formally incorporate a 40%+ oil shock and Trump's 15% tariffs. What the dots say about 2026 rate cuts (one? zero? two?) will move markets more than the statement.
Also watch for dissents: Governors Miran and Waller are expected to vote for a 25-basis-point cut. Three dissents on a hold would be historically unusual and would signal meaningful internal division at the Fed.
The December 2025 SEP showed a median of one 25-bps cut in 2026. Wednesday's update must incorporate two new variables the December dots did not: Trump's 15% tariffs and a 40%+ oil shock from the Iran war. The Fed has never navigated a simultaneous external inflation shock and labor market deterioration quite like this.
Oil at $95+ means inflation stays elevated. Core PCE at 3.1% doesn't allow cuts. Fed holds all year. Markets would reprice aggressively — yields spike, equity multiples compress.
December's median, maintained. One cut signals that if oil stabilizes by summer, the Fed sees room to ease. Neither panic-cut nor total hold. Markets would take this as neutral-to-slight-positive.
Requires the committee to believe the oil shock is transitory and the labor market weakness from February's −92,000 jobs print warrants urgency. Unlikely with oil above $95 today, but dissents from Miran and Waller lean this direction.
Bitcoin briefly touched $75,912 in overnight trading — its highest level since late January — before pulling back to $74,238 by 6 AM. The move was primarily driven by derivatives activity: the closure of large $60,000 put positions forced market makers to rebalance, generating mechanical buying pressure unrelated to fresh spot demand.
The FOMC historical pattern is a warning: Bitcoin declined after 7 of 8 Fed meetings in 2025, including all three sessions where the Fed actually cut rates. A rate hold Wednesday at 3.50–3.75% is almost certain — but the dot plot revision and Powell's tone on the inflation-growth bind are unpredictable inputs.
Three consecutive weeks of positive spot ETF inflows ($767M last week) provide a stronger fundamental floor than the derivatives-driven overnight spike suggests. But the head-and-shoulders pattern's support at $65,600 is the risk if FOMC goes hawkish.
February housing data arrives at 8:30 AM. Context: January 2026 starts were a mixed story — total starts rose 7.2% month-over-month, but single-family starts fell 2.8% and permits declined 5.4%. The oil-driven inflation environment has kept 30-year mortgage rates stubbornly elevated, suppressing the market even as rates haven't moved in months.
A miss on permits (another month of declining authorizations) would strengthen the stagflation narrative the Fed is walking into today. A beat would be a small bright spot in an otherwise grim economic picture — but it won't change the FOMC calculus.
Jensen Huang's GTC keynote — the Vera Rubin reveal, the $1 trillion forecast, the 30,000-person crowd — happened yesterday. Today, Day 2 is entirely developer-focused. The SAP Center becomes a technical conference: CUDA new features, AI agent deployment patterns, LLM-generated kernel benchmarking, NIM microservice architecture.
NVDA stock was essentially flat in pre-market — the keynote bounce (+1.65% Monday, ~+1% after-hours) has settled. This is the normal post-keynote cooldown. The real test is whether NVDA's forward guidance, embedded in yesterday's $1T AI TAM forecast, holds up as analysts recalibrate under the broader macro pressure from oil and rates.
NVIDIA GTC 2026 · Developer Tools Sessions · March 17