The four major stock indexes are poised to finish this week in the red as developments in Iran continue to weigh on the market. Of great consequence as of late, the Strait of Hormuz has yet to open, pushing oil prices to $110 per barrel. Since the Iran conflict began, oil prices have increased by roughly 50%. On the bright side, energy, basic materials, and the utilities sector are up on the week and the year. Times such as these are a great reminder of the benefit of being diversified.
One market that is also suffering due to the Iran conflict is the luxury market. In 2025, while the global luxury market was flat, the Middle East luxury market grew at 8%. Since the conflict began last month, luxury companies such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes, and Ferrari have seen their stock prices fall by more than 15%. Bentley, Maserati, and other car companies have halted deliveries to the Middle East. In other corporate news, Volkswagen made headlines this week in clearing a key milestone in its $5.8 billion software partnership with electric car maker Rivian. This partnership began in 2024 with the intent of providing Rivian with the capital needed and allowing Volkswagen to strengthen its software capabilities. Volkswagen announced this week that the winter testing of its first vehicles was a “technological milestone.” The venture is set to be completed in 2027.
In economic news, consumer sentiment figures were released on Friday. To little surprise, the index fell to 53.3 in March from 56.6 in February, marking its lowest amount this year. This decrease is largely due to inflation fears stemming from concerns about rising gas prices. Consumers also expect prices to rise 3.8% in the next year, up from 3.4% in February and the biggest increase since April 2025. This new figure comes at a time when the average gasoline price has increased by roughly $1.00 to $3.98 per gallon. Jobless claims came in at 210,000, up 5,000 from the previous week and matching estimates. For now, at least, the trend of “low-hire, low-fire” continues.
As March ends, we enter the second half of the NCAA basketball tournament, or as most call it, March Madness. For those who enjoy filling out a bracket and attempting to pick upsets, here are a few fun probability facts. The odds of picking every single first-round game correctly are one in 4.3 billion. According to research, if you were to pick every favorite to win, the odds of a perfect first round are increased to one in 33,000. If you had a complete, perfect bracket, the odds would be 1 in 9.2 quintillion. For context, researchers at the University of Hawaii estimate that there are about 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth. If all the world’s sand was collected in a jar, and one was to pick one grain of sand at random and attempt to pick the same grain of sand again, they would have higher odds than predicting a whole March Madness bracket accurately. Yet, considering seeding and generally predicting favorites to advance, the odds of a perfect bracket increase to roughly 1 in 20 billion. The closest to a perfect bracket ever recorded was in 2019 by Greg Nigl, a neuropsychologist from Columbus, Ohio, who correctly predicted the first 49 games. When asked how he did it, he said he didn’t remember even filling it out.