Dow Futures Are Flashing Warning Signs — and This Time, the Threat Isn’t Coming From the Fed

Wall Street gets its first glimpse of the upcoming week on Sunday night, and the image was not particularly reassuring for traders who watched Dow futures fall nearly 300 points after Friday’s market close. The price of oil was rising once more. There were rumors that Marine Expeditionary Units had reached the Middle East, followed closely by paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Trump stated that he would seize Iran’s oil “indefinitely.” There had already been five weekly losses in a row. And somewhere on Monday morning, a shortened trading week was about to start, with the jobs report actually dropping on Good Friday.

As investors processed Trump’s assertion that Tehran had accepted “most” of a 15-point U.S. plan to end the war, the futures had reversed by Monday morning in New York and were slowly rising. Dow futures were up about 0.5 percent. Nasdaq futures and the S&P 500 both went in the same direction. If you’ve been watching this market for a few weeks, the morning bounce felt more like exhaustion than relief. Over the past month, stocks have been selling on negative news and cautiously rising on any sign of a de-escalation, only to plummet once more when the next round of developments arrives. People are getting tired of the pattern.

Even though the situation is complicated, what’s causing it isn’t. The war between the United States and Iran, which is currently in its fifth week, has caused energy prices to rise sharply and created the kind of geopolitical uncertainty that causes institutional investors to shorten their time horizons and seek safer positions. This is what most wars do to commodity markets. On Monday morning, Brent crude increased to about $115 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate surpassed $100. According to AAA, the average price of gasoline nationwide reached $3.98 per gallon on Sunday, which is $1 more than it was a month ago. Practically speaking, this means that a family filling up a minivan is paying significantly more than they were at the beginning of March, and consumer data eventually reflects this kind of burden on household spending.

The mechanism responsible for the majority of the damage is the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has established itself as an unofficial gatekeeper by threatening drone attacks on passing vessels, effectively bottling up about 20% of the world’s crude supply in the Persian Gulf. As a result, shipping routes have become convoluted, complicating everything from fuel supply chains to commercial shipping insurance pricing. As an alternate route, Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is currently pumping crude to the Red Sea port of Yanbu at its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day. However, over the weekend, the Houthis in Yemen, who had recently returned to the fight, fired a missile in Israel’s direction and threatened to start attacking commercial shipping via the Red Sea, which had become the primary route around the Hormuz blockage. As a result, the already tight global oil market is being squeezed from several directions at once.

Observing all of this gives the impression that the market had priced in a brief, decisive conflict and is now forced to reprice for something messier and longer. In a recent analyst note, Capital Alpha Partners stated bluntly that there is only a 25% chance the war will end by the end of May, a 45% chance it will end in fall 2026, and a 35% chance it will continue into 2027. The chances of a six-week surgical procedure are not like that. They point to a market that, having embraced the initial optimism, must now deal with the real effects of a conflict lasting six months or more on inflation, consumer confidence, and corporate profits.

The tech megacaps known as the Magnificent Seven, which had driven index performance for nearly two years, had an especially difficult week, losing a total of $850 billion in market capitalization. A historic lawsuit that held social media companies accountable for addiction harms in ways that could have serious financial repercussions put Meta and Google at the center of it. War premiums, worries about an oil shock, and a Federal Reserve that has been maintaining rates while inflation data subtly fluctuates are now vying for attention with the AI trade, which had been the main market narrative going into 2026. Investors will be watching Jerome Powell’s speech on Monday for any indication that the central bank is closely monitoring the growing risk of energy-driven inflation.

While markets are closed for Good Friday, the jobs report, which is due on Friday morning, will be made public. Significant economic data dropping into a quiet market is an uncommon circumstance that sets up Monday, April 6th, as the likely pressure point where the week’s accumulated anxiety is expressed. After a shocking loss of 92,000 jobs in the previous report, estimates indicate a recovery to 45,000 new jobs in March. It will be crucial to see if the figure passes that threshold and what it means for the state of an economy already consuming more than $100 worth of oil.

It’s difficult to ignore the fact that every week these days has begun with the same tenuous hope—a diplomatic signal, a futures bounce, a feeling that perhaps the worst is priced in—before giving way to the same late-week erosion as reality reemerges. The Dow has now dropped for the past five weeks. Correction area. The market isn’t exactly in a panic. However, it is also not at peace.