Friday, March 6, 2026

Drillers Remain Calm

 3/6/226

Drillers Shy from Higher Oil Prices

he stock market tumbled intraday Thursday as crude oil prices surged again. But the indexes pared losses, especially the Nasdaq.

Still, Dow giants Walmart (WMT), Merck (MRK), along with GE Aerospace (GE) and Viking Holdings (VIK) fell solidly after holding up relatively well in recent days.

Investors.com

Recall that the first day of the current Iran attack was Saturday, February 28, 2026. All of February had ended before that

The jobs report came in this morning at a negative 92,000.  This is amazing in that Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last June as he did not like the negative report. Stating he would have HIS  (emphasis added) people running the BLS. Amazing that HIS people registered a negative number. This means no new jobs were created and 92,000 were eliminated. Those decisions were made before the Iran conflict. I emphasis this so readers will evaluate the news reports that markets are all down because of the conflict.

The DOW topped February 11 closing at 50,300, rounded. By February 27, before the conflict it closed at 48,977. That is a drop of 1,323 points. Mid-morning today DOW had declined 2,917 points since February 11.

This column has suggested over valuations in the markets for months. It is now correcting and the conflict is blamed for everything, though the decline started February 12.

In this same February 11 to today period Walmart WMT has fallen from 133 to 123. Recall WMT is became the second trillion-dollar retail firm after Amazon. Recall WMT got there by expanding its home delivery business. Apparently, the market ignores this feature, thinking that higher gasoline prices will keep shoppers away from WMT.

Caterpillar, one of the two most expensive DOW stocks, Goldman Sachs is the other, has lost about $100, now trading around $680. Why? In the developing bear market, all news will be bearish.

April West Texas just h it $90.18, well up from its $63 level in early February. It is pointless to make an estimate of how high this may go. Tankers are idled rather than traverse the narrow Straits of Hormuz. The longer deliveries are delayed to oil-less countries like England and France, the higher the price will go.  Even Trump, elected on promised lower gasoline prices, has resigned to market gasoline prices.

Gold and silver are up amid the uncertainty, but not a lot.

Drillers remain calm.  This is seen as more of a temporary spike than a long-term trend.

 

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