Thursday, March 26, 2026…4:10 PM ET
[4:00 PM ET closing prices for stocks; 3:50ish for commodities and bonds.]
Tale of the Tape at the gas pump, nationwide averages, courtesy of AAA.
Fri., Feb. 27…regular gas $2.98…diesel $3.75
Thurs., Mar. 26…reg. $3.98…diesel $5.37
You want some good news? For the first time since the Iran war started early Feb. 28, the price of regular gas did not go up, and diesel just a penny, though it’s now only 44 cents from its all-time high of $5.81.
I watch every tick in the oil futures all day, and all night lately, and I do the same for gasoline futures, which the past week or so have gyrated wildly between about $2.92 and $3.30.
It takes a few days for changes in the oil or gas markets to work their way to the pump, up and down, but gas futures rose today, back to $3.10.
Oil rose to above $94 a barrel on West Texas Intermediate after President Trump issued a fresh warning to Iran to advance peace talks aimed at ending the conflict.
Stocks fell hard on the upward move in crude, which of course is the way the equity market rolls these days.
Fighting continued across the Middle East, with Trump urging Tehran to engage seriously “before it is too late” as the White House maintains that discussions are ongoing, though Iran has rejected proposals and set its own conditions.
Reports indicate Iran’s parliament is drafting a bill to charge fees for securing ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran has started charging transit fees on some commercial vessels passing through, the latest sign of its control over the critical waterway.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence called this a “de facto ‘toll booth’ regime.”
The shipping intelligence firm said vessels have to provide manifests, crew details and their destination to Iran’s Guard for sanctions screening, cargo alignment checks that currently prioritizes oil over all other commodities, and for what is described as ‘geopolitical vetting.’”
“While not all ships are paying a direct toll, at least two vessels have and the payment is settled in yuan,” Lloyd’s List said, referring to China’s currency.
U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads U.S. Central Command, said his forces have hit more than 10,000 targets since Israel and the U.S. started the war Feb. 28, destroying 92% of Iran’s largest ships and more than two-thirds of the country’s missile, drone and naval production facilities.
Notice Adm. Cooper said two-thirds, not 99% as some White House officials, and the president, have said.
[Some analysts have observed that talk of number of targets hit, smacks a little of former Defense Secretary Robet McNamara’s descriptions of U.S. progress during the early years of the Vietnam War.]
Thursday, Israel said it killed the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy, Alireza Tangsiri, along with senior Iranian naval command officials, in overnight strikes. Tangsiri was “directly responsible” for mining and blocking the Strait, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
The U.S. and Israel temporarily removed two senior Iranian officials from their list of officials to eliminate as they explore possible peace talks, U.S. officials said.
Iran signaled it could move to close or control a second key waterway, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, with the help of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
President Trump on Truth Social, Thurs. 6:39 AM:
“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange.’ They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.’ WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty! President DJT”
If you watched the president’s performance at his Cabinet meeting late this morning, you should be worried. It veered off wildly from serious discussions on the war to the Trump/Kennedy Center, “moron” Jerome Powell and the cost of the Fed renovation, to at least five minutes on his pen, to the “Supreme Court has hurt our country.”
And in the middle of it all, he said, “We’ve got to get our priorities straight.”
—
Happy Opening Day! Us Mets fans are glued to the game this afternoon, at least part of me is. Every Opening Day I think of my late mother, who put up no fight when for like five straight years, from third to seventh grade, I suddenly came down with Mets fever, a very bad cold (cue the fake ‘hack hack’), and Mom let me stay home as I miraculously recovered the next day to head back to school.
Time to focus on this column, Mets up 11-4 in the seventh, Pirates starter Paul Skenes taken out after 37 pitches in the first, though he was the victim of atrocious center field play.
Dow Jones -470…-1.0% [45959]
S&P 500 -114…-1.7% [6477]
Nasdaq -521…-2.4% [21408]
Oil (WTI) $94.20…Brent $107.60
Gold $4370
Silver $67.10
Bitcoin $68,500 [4:00 PM ET]
U.S. 2-yr. 4.00%…up 12 basis points on inflation fears….
U.S. 10-yr. 4.42%…up 10 bps….
Japanese 10-yr. 2.26%…the Italian 10-year yield rose 19 bps….
Check out my Week in Review, posted Friday around 4:30 PM ET.
Have a good weekend. More March Madness.
Brian Trumbore
