America just lost 92,000 jobs 😬

Welcome back to the the Day Trading newsletter 📈 

What a week. 

The U.S. lost jobs for the third time in five months, oil blasted past $90 a barrel as the Iran war entered its second week, and the S&P 500 officially went negative for 2026.

If you're feeling whiplash, you're not alone, this was Wall Street's worst week since last October.

Let’s break it all down👇️ 

📆 Wednesday 3/11 — US CPI February (8:30am ET): The most important number of the week. Markets need to see whether surging energy costs from the Iran conflict are already showing up in headline inflation. Core CPI will tell the real story.

📆 Thursday 3/12 — US PPI February (8:30am ET): Producer prices feed directly into CPI with a lag. With oil up 35% this week, the pipeline inflation pressure is real. Watch energy and transportation components.

📆 Friday 3/13 — US GDP Q4 Second Estimate (8:30am ET): Updated read on Q4 growth. The first estimate was solid, but revisions matter, especially now that Q1 is shaping up to be much weaker.

🛢️ WTI crude settled at $90.90 on Friday, up 35% for the week (the biggest weekly gain since futures started trading in 1983). Brent hit $92.69. Goldman Sachs warned prices could breach $100 within days as Strait of Hormuz shipping drops further than expected (PBS)

🧑‍💻 Marvell Technology surged 18% after crushing Q4 earnings and issuing strong AI demand guidance. CEO Matt Murphy's response when asked if AI spending was slowing: "Do you see me blinking?" The chip designer is riding the custom silicon wave as hyperscalers diversify beyond Nvidia (CNBC)

🚢 Maersk suspended all vessel crossings through the Strait of Hormuz and shut down two key services linking the Middle East to Europe and Asia. 147 container ships are effectively stranded. If the blockage persists, supply chain disruptions could ripple through global trade within weeks (CNBC)

👕 Gap plunged 14% after a Q4 earnings miss despite 2.1% revenue growth. The retailer flagged tariff headwinds that the market clearly isn't ready to absorb. The stock is now down nearly 19% over the past month (Proactive Investors)

🔫 Defense stocks remain the clear winners of the Iran conflict as the Pentagon burns through precision weapons and air defense missiles at a pace that has officials pushing back on shortage concerns. Demand for advanced weaponry, missile defense systems, and intelligence platforms is projected to keep climbing (Washington Post)

🥇Gold futures closed at $5,165 an ounce, up 3.4% for the week, as safe-haven demand surged. Silver jumped 2.5% to $84.25. The U.S. Dollar Index fell 0.3% to 98.97 — investors are rotating into hard assets as stagflation fears mount (Investopedia)

The February jobs report was a signal that the labor market is cracking in ways the Fed can't easily fix.

The economy lost 92,000 jobs when Wall Street expected a gain of 50,000, making this the third negative payroll print in five months. Unemployment rose to 4.4%, and the average duration of unemployment hit 25.7 weeks (the longest since December 2021).

Yes, a Kaiser Permanente strike subtracted roughly 28,000 healthcare jobs from the total, and severe winter weather didn't help.

But strip those out and you're still looking at broad weakness: manufacturing lost 12,000, information services shed 11,000 (continuing a 12-month AI-driven decline), construction gave back 11,000, and transportation dropped 11,000.

Wages actually rose faster than expected, up 0.4% for the month and 3.8% year-over-year.

Add in oil surging past $90 on the Iran conflict, and you've got the textbook stagflation setup: a weakening economy with sticky inflation. 

The Fed is now stuck between two mandates pulling in opposite directions. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly put it plainly: "Both of our goals are risks now and we have to keep our eyes on both."

The silver lining: Some economists think this is a "perfect storm of temporary drags" rather than a sustained collapse. The healthcare strike is resolved, weather effects will fade, and January was revised up.

But with federal payrolls still shrinking and hiring averaging fewer than 5,000 new jobs per month since Trump took office, the margin for error is razor-thin.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.