Market Wrap US Stock Market Summary – March 24, 2026
Today at a Glance
Market Summary
On Tuesday, March 24, US equities reversed course after the prior session's relief rally driven by Trump-era commentary, with major indices turning lower again. The Nasdaq led the decline at -0.84%, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.37% and the Dow Jones dipped a modest 0.18% (WSJ). Some optimism emerged after Iran announced it would allow "non-hostile vessels" to transit the Strait of Hormuz under its own terms (Bloomberg), but the optimism faded as Iran imposed transit fees on certain ships (Bloomberg) and Israel stated it had no intention of ending the war (Yahoo Finance), reviving concerns over a prolonged conflict. Brent crude climbed past $100 a barrel and the bond market moved closer to a 5% yield (MarketWatch), weighing on investor sentiment. The Fear & Greed Index re-entered extreme fear territory at 14.
Sector & Asset Trends
Leading sectors: Energy ($XLE, +2.03%) stood out as the clear winner on the back of a rebound in crude prices, with the sector's own RSI climbing into overbought ground at 80.49. The CEO of TotalEnergies remarked that "the world has never experienced refining margins like this" (CNBC). Industrials ($XLI, +0.58%) edged higher, supported by strength in Eaton (ETN, +3.99%) and Deere (DE, +2.46%). Semiconductor equipment names (KLAC +3.62%, AMAT +3.37%, LRCX +2.37%) rallied in unison, lifting the semiconductor ETF SOXX (+1.32%) back above the RSI 50 line.
Lagging sectors: Communications ($XLC, -1.40%) posted the steepest decline, dragged down by Alphabet ($GOOGL, -3.85%), with the sector's RSI reaching 29.74 — dangerously close to oversold. Technology ($XLK, -0.58%) sold off after a report surfaced that Amazon is developing new AI tools (Bloomberg), triggering a broad-based selloff in cloud and SaaS software stocks. Salesforce ($CRM, -6.23%), Snowflake (-7.38%), CrowdStrike (-4.92%), Zscaler (-8.16%), and Atlassian (-8.39%) all posted sharp declines.
Bonds: Treasury prices fell again (yields rose), with long-dated $TLT (-0.43%), intermediate-dated $IEF (-0.34%), and short-dated $SHY (-0.15%) all weakening. Soft demand at the 2-year Treasury auction (Bloomberg) added to bond market anxiety. Some experts, however, noted that the rate hike the market is pricing in is actually unlikely to materialize (Bloomberg).
Commodities: Crude oil ($USO, +3.60%) rebounded sharply after the prior session's -8.95% plunge. A report that the Pentagon is planning to deploy an additional 3,000 troops to the Middle East (MarketWatch) fueled the move higher in oil prices. Gold ($GLD, +0.02%) traded flat at an RSI of 27.51, appearing to be bottoming out, while silver ($SLV, +0.77%) and platinum (PPLT, +1.01%) posted modest rebounds. Separately, Russia was reported to have boosted oil exports to a four-year high, capitalizing on the Iran war-driven price surge (Bloomberg).
Key Stock Movements
Top gainers: The day's most defining feature was the extreme polarization between hardware/equipment strength and software weakness. Eaton ($ETN, +3.99%), KLA ($KLAC, +3.62%), Applied Materials ($AMAT, +3.37%), Texas Instruments ($TXN, +3.18%), and Analog Devices ($ADI, +3.09%) — all tied to semiconductor equipment and industrial power — dominated the top of the leaderboard. GE Vernova ($GEV, +3.03%) extended its winning streak to a second day on expectations of power infrastructure demand, while ExxonMobil ($XOM, +2.64%) rose in tandem with the oil rebound. Dell ($DELL, +7.49%) surged on expectations of AI server hardware demand, and AI infrastructure hardware names including Lumentum (LITE, +10.02%), Celestica (CLS, +5.07%), and HPE (+7.08%) also posted strong gains. Comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that AGI has "been achieved" (Yahoo Finance) further lifted sentiment toward AI hardware investments.
Top decliners: Salesforce ($CRM, -6.23%) posted the largest decline among the top 100 stocks by market cap. Concerns that Amazon's in-house development of AI tools could erode the market share of SaaS companies hit the software sector broadly. AppLovin ($APP, -5.02%), Oracle ($ORCL, -4.67%), Shopify ($SHOP, -4.09%), and SAP ($SAP, -4.02%) all dropped more than 4%, while Alphabet ($GOOGL, -3.85%) fell sharply on fears of intensifying AI competition. Palantir ($PLTR, -3.77%) gave back a large portion of the prior session's +6.74% surge. Steep losses in names hit by company-specific headwinds were also notable, including Coinbase ($COIN, -9.76%), Axon Enterprise ($AXON, -9.99%), and Estée Lauder ($EL, -9.85%).
Technical Signals & Outlook
A key technical development was Microsoft ($MSFT) entering oversold territory with an RSI of 28.41. The world's second-largest company by market cap falling to an RSI of 30 or below indicates that market stress has now spread to the mega-cap core. Alphabet ($GOOG/$GOOGL) registered a "triple bearish signal," with a Bollinger Band lower-band breach, stochastic oversold reading, and MACD death cross occurring simultaneously.
Among stocks breaking below the lower Bollinger Band, utilities plunged from 15 names to just 2, while 8 new technology and software names (MSFT, SAP, CRM, SNOW, ZS, TEAM, etc.) entered the list, signaling that the center of downward pressure has shifted from utilities to software. On the upside, energy (17 names) and AI hardware (9 names including DELL, LITE, CLS, HPE, FLEX) dominated Bollinger Band upper-band breakouts, reflecting extreme polarization across the market.
> For a more detailed technical analysis, see the March 24 Technical Signals Report.
The MACD golden cross list included 15 financial names, reaching the largest count on record — a positive signal. However, the energy sector's RSI of 80.49 and Brent crude's breach of $100 are overheating warnings. The longer oil prices remain elevated, the greater the inflationary pressure and the higher bond yields will climb, which is expected to keep pressure on high-valuation software stocks. Whether Iran-US negotiations see meaningful progress and whether Treasury yields break above 5% will be the key variables determining the market's near-term direction.
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