S&P 500 snaps its 5-week losing streak. Here are 3 themes that caught our eye
The stock market finally lifted higher this week, buoyed by optimism that the Iran war would end sooner rather than later. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both snapped their five-week losing streaks Thursday during the holiday-shortened trading week. The broad-market index rose 3.4% and the tech-heavy gauge advanced 4.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 2.96%, also its first positive week in six. For most of the week, retreating oil prices gave stocks breathing room to run higher, reinforcing the inverse relationship seen since the war broke out on Feb. 28. The exception was Thursday, when oil prices surged higher but the S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite mounted a rally anyways, in an encouraging sign. With an 11.4% jump Thursday, U.S. oil benchmark WTI crude for May delivery rose almost 12% over the four-day stretch, its sixth positive week out of seven. The stock market was set up for a bounce on any hint of reasons for optimism after an awful performance last week. Uncertainty rocked the market as Iranian authorities and President Donald Trump sent mixed signals on where the conflict stood. From March 23 to March 27, the S & P 500 fell 2.1% and notched its worst week since last October. The Nasdaq’s 3.2% weekly decline was its worst since last April when Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. While Wall Street kept its gaze fixed on overseas developments in recent days, a wave of fresh labor data and monster IPO reports also caught our attention. As we wait to see what Monday brings, here is a breakdown of those three themes. Another week of war The market made it through its fifth week of the U.S-Iran war and turned in weekly gains for the first time during the conflict. Wall Street focused on the positive messaging – in a series of conflicting headlines – that made a resolution look more likely. The bulk of the market’s gains came from Tuesday’s session when an unconfirmed report said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was open to ending the war with guarantees. The run continued into Wednesday after Trump told reporters late Tuesday that U.S. military forces would leave Iran in “two or three weeks.” The rally simmered Thursday after Trump’s primetime address Wednesday evening was filled with escalatory rhetoric. Reports on Thursday that Iran and Oman drafted a protocol to “monitor transit” through the Strait of Hormuz , the vital oil waterway, helped the S & P 500 and Nasdaq overcome their sharply lower opens and eke out a modest gain. The blue-chip Dow lost 61 points, or 0.13%, on Thursday after being down over 600 points at its lows. “That is an incredible, unusual snapback that was highly unexpected and made us think that, maybe, the ‘bear’ is taking a brief vacation,” Jim Cramer said Thursday night. “Any other day when we have oil pop like this, and we should’ve been down perhaps 1.5% to 2%. It was stunning, surreal, and seemed foretell some good things at work. But we just don’t know what they are right now, and I’m not going to try to pretend like we do.” The Club on Thursday morning published an analysis on how investors should navigate this confusing, uncertainty-ridden market. A lot of labor data The week was filled with labor market updates and ended on a high note. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ so-called JOLTS report on Tuesday showed that job openings in February fell more than expected. In fact, businesses hired workers at their slowest pace since 2011, excluding the onset of the pandemic in 2020. ADP data told a slightly more encouraging story Wednesday. The payroll processor’s monthly looking at private-sector hiring for March showed job gains of 62,000 . Capping off the week Friday morning, the government’s official March jobs report showed payrolls rose by 178,000 last month , much stronger than the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 59,000. Revisions to the strong January report and the weak February release put the three-month average at roughly 68,000 jobs added. The health of the labor market plays a big role in the Fed’s interest rates decisions, along with inflation data. The central bank’s dual goal is price stability and maximum employment. While the war-driven spike in oil prices has the potential to rekindle inflation, the March jobs report may help tamp down near-term “stagflation” concerns because it suggests the labor market isn’t as soft as the dour February data hinted at. Traders are overwhelmingly pricing in zero cuts from the central bank for the remainder of 2026, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool. It’s unclear, however, what the rate cut path will look like if Trump’s Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh succeeds Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May. Warsh has been adamant about wanting to ease monetary policy. To be sure, Warsh hasn’t received Senate confirmation yet. Big IPO plans There were also a lot of IPO headlines this week. Elon Musk’s SpaceX confidentially filed for an initial public offering, CNBC’s David Faber reported on Wednesday. The rocket manufacturer is reportedly working with at least 21 banks for its public debut, which could value the firm at $1.75 trillion, according to Reuters . Anticipation around OpenAI’s potential IPO continues to build at the same time. The ChatGPT creator closed a $122 billion funding round this week at an eye-watering post-money valuation of $852 billion . Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude models, is also weighing an IPO this year, and so is the lesser-known Databricks, which was last valued at $134 billion . “We’ve never had deals like this,” Jim said Wednesday on CNBC. “We don’t even know how to analyze them [because] they’re so big.” Although the IPO pipeline is a notable story, it’s still secondary to the war. If the Middle East conflict is resolved soon, however, these mega IPOs and all the ripple effects they could have across the market will be impossible to ignore. On the positive side, it could be a financial windfall for our bank stocks, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, which would be much needed after a lackluster first quarter of 2026. As we wrote Wednesday, a pickup in deal activity could help reignite those stocks . At the same time, a flood of new supply coming into the market could end up being a risk for other corners. In order to buy stock in new and excited companies that debut, investors typically need to sell something else to raise cash and free up room in their portfolios. As Jim is fond of saying , the stock market is like any other market: supply and demand rule the day. If there’s more supply of a product than there is demand, prices are likely to fall. This dynamic will remain something on our minds as we monitor the timing of these potential monster deals. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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