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*                       FIEND'S SUPERBEAR MARKET REPORT                     *

*                                 March 2, 2026                             *

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*                       e-mail: fiendbear@fiendbear.com                     *

*                    web address: http://www.fiendbear.com                  *

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Fiend Commentary
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February Ended in a Stagflation Trap. March Opened in a War Shock.

February was the month the market stopped pretending it could have everything at once.

For a while, Wall Street tried to hold onto the old script: the economy would soften just enough to bring lower rates, inflation would cool without much pain, tech would keep carrying the indexes, and any wobble in policy or geopolitics would fade before it did real damage.

By month-end, that script was fraying.

The stock market told the story first. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both suffered their steepest monthly declines since March 2025, while the Dow managed to eke out a tenth straight monthly gain only because the old-economy names held up better than high-valuation tech. That is not broad strength. It is selective survival.

The inflation story also turned the wrong way. January producer prices came in hotter than expected, with the details pointing to core PCE inflation around 3.1% year-over-year — the hottest in nearly two years. In plain English: inflation is not dead, and the idea that the Fed can casually drift back toward easier money looks a lot less comfortable than it did a few months ago.

At the same time, the economy never looked particularly healthy underneath the surface. Housing stayed weak. Consumer demand looked uneven. Employment data still carried the smell of revisions and statistical gamesmanship. And yet prices remained high enough that the average person still doesn’t feel “relief” — only slightly slower pain.

That was the February backdrop before the weekend changed everything again.

Now March is opening with a full geopolitical shock. The U.S. and Israel launched major strikes on Iran over the weekend, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials, and Iran has already responded with missile barrages. Oil has surged, gold has surged, and stock futures are pointing lower. Brent jumped more than 6% and briefly traded above $82 before easing back, while U.S. crude pushed above $71. Gold blasted higher again into the mid-$5,300s. Silver, which had already staged a dramatic recovery from its late-January collapse, is back in the mid-$90s.

This is exactly the kind of setup markets hate most: weaker growth on one side, higher inflation risk on the other, and now a war premium layered on top.

That is why the first week of March could be even more volatile than the last week of January.

If oil stays elevated, it will hit the economy like a tax. It raises transport costs, production costs, and household stress all at once. If the Strait of Hormuz becomes more than just a headline risk, the inflation problem gets worse in a hurry. And if inflation stays sticky while growth keeps wobbling, the Fed is trapped again — unable to ease aggressively without feeding the very fire it is supposed to be extinguishing.

This is where gold and silver become more than just “commodity trades.” They are reacting to a world where policy looks improvisational, inflation is proving stubborn, and geopolitical risk is rising at exactly the wrong time. Gold above $5,300 is not a footnote. It is the market saying trust is getting more expensive.

The stock market still has its own story to tell, but February made one thing clear: tech cannot carry everything forever. AI enthusiasm is still there, but so are the doubts — about spending, about disruption, and about whether the biggest winners can keep outrunning both higher costs and higher expectations. If the economy slows more sharply this spring, tech will not be a safe hiding place. It could easily lead the next leg down the way it led the bull market up.

So the real March question is not whether volatility will stay high. It is whether investors finally accept the regime change:

  • growth is no longer clean,
  • inflation is no longer fading cleanly,
  • and geopolitics is no longer background noise.

That is not a recipe for easy dips and automatic rebounds. That is a recipe for a much rougher spring.

 

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