MARKET WRAPS
STOCKS: Stocks fell to end the week as Iran stepped up its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. planned to move warships and additional Marines to the Middle East.
TREASURYS: Markets remained volatile, but Treasury traders took a breather with yields little changed across the curve. Yields declined a bit at the shorter end, while longer yields rose slightly.
FOREX: The U.S. dollar strengthened.
COMMODITIES: Oil futures settled higher and posted strong weekly gains. WTI settled up 3.1% at $98.71 a barrel for an 8.6% weekly gain. Brent rose 2.7% to $103.14, up 11% from a week ago.
HEADLINES
More Marines and Warships Head to Middle East as Hormuz Mission Intensifies
The Pentagon is moving additional Marines and warships to the Middle East, as Iran steps up its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. prepares to escort tankers through the waterway.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved a request from U.S. Central Command, responsible for American forces in the Middle East, for an element of an amphibious-ready group and attached Marine expeditionary unit to head to the region, according to U.S. officials.
Two ships from the Japan-based USS Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit are now headed for the Middle East, one of the officials said. Marines are already in the Middle East supporting the Iran operation, and several more flights of Marines have moved into the theater in recent days, according to flight tracking data and U.S. officials.
Judge Throws Out Justice Department Subpoenas to Federal Reserve
WASHINGTON-A federal judge threw out a pair of subpoenas the Justice Department issued to the Federal Reserve, handing a victory to the Fed and dealing a heavy blow to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's criminal investigation into Chair Jerome Powell.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, ruled the subpoenas were improper, in a 27-page opinion unsealed Friday that highlighted President Trump's repeated public attacks on Powell.
"There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas' dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will," Boasberg, an Obama appointee, wrote.
Underlying Inflation Was Stubborn in January by Fed's Preferred Metric
The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge remained stuck above the central bank's target in January, evidence of the stubborn price increases likely to lead the Fed to keep interest rates on hold next week.
Inflation measured by the personal-consumption expenditures price index was 2.8% in the first month of 2026, a slight decline from December, the Commerce Department said Friday. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core PCE inflation, often looked at as a gauge of underlying price trends, was 3.1%, up slightly from 3% in December.
Month over month, PCE inflation was 0.3% in January, with a 0.4% rise in core prices.
Economy Was Even Slower in Fourth Quarter, New Estimate Shows
The economy was even slower in the fourth quarter of last year than previously reported.
The Commerce Department on Friday said that gross domestic product grew at just an 0.7% annual rate in the fourth quarter of last year, well short of the 1.4% pace it reported in its "advance" GDP report last month. Gross domestic product is the value of all goods and services produced across the economy.
The downward revision was driven by a variety of factors. Consumer spending and business investment were slower than initially reported. International trade, which had provided a slight boost in the advance report, instead weighed on the GDP calculation. Government spending, hurt by last fall's government shutdown, fell by more than previously reported.
Consumer Sentiment Declined This Month, Per Michigan Survey
Consumer sentiment declined to start March, according to the University of Michigan's monthly survey, one of the first readings on public opinion about the economy since the start of the Iran war.
The survey's sentiment index was 55.5 in its preliminary March reading, versus 56.6 in February. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected a reading of 55.3.
Interviews took place between Feb. 17 and March 9, so the latter half of the interview period covered roughly the first 10 days of the Iran conflict.
Musk Says xAI Must Be Rebuilt as Co-Founders Exit
One by one, the founding team of xAI is leaving the artificial intelligence company as Elon Musk pushes for a complete reorganization.
"Time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture," one co-founder wrote to announce his last day. "My next priorities: sleep for more than 8h," another wrote on Feb. 26. "Wild journey past three years but excited about next chapter," another posted Friday on X.
The departures are part of bigger changes in recent weeks that have shrunk the original team that helped Musk launch the creator of the Grok chatbot. The shakeup comes just over a month after Musk merged xAI into his rocket company SpaceX in a deal that valued xAI at $250 billion.
FedEx Overtakes UPS as the New King of Delivery
All hail the new king of packages.
For the first time in history, FedEx eclipsed United Parcel Service this week in market capitalization, a sign of how much Wall Street is rewarding the delivery giant that can shrink the fastest to boost profits.
FedEx shares have climbed nearly 40% in the past two years, while UPS shares have dropped by about the same amount. On Monday, FedEx was valued at $84.9 billion, about $44 million more than its rival, the first time that FedEx was worth more since UPS went public in 1999. UPS retook the top spot Tuesday, but FedEx was on top again by Friday's closing bell.
China's ByteDance Gets Access to Top Nvidia AI Chips
SINGAPORE-TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, is assembling computing power with high-end Nvidia chips outside China to fuel its ambition of becoming a global artificial-intelligence leader.
ByteDance is working with a Southeast Asian company called Aolani Cloud on plans to use some 500 Nvidia Blackwell computing systems in Malaysia totaling around 36,000 B200 chips, people familiar with the matter said.
Aolani is buying servers from Aivres, a company that assembles servers using Nvidia chips, the people said. If all the arrangements are completed, the hardware involved would likely cost more than $2.5 billion, they said. An Aolani spokesman said the company was currently operating with about $100 million in hardware.
Amazon Announces Inference Chips Deal With Cerebras
Amazon Web Services plans to deploy processors designed by Cerebras inside its data centers, the latest vote of confidence in the startup, which specializes in chips that power artificial-intelligence models.
Under the multiyear partnership, which the companies announced Friday, AWS will use Cerebras's chip, called the Wafer-Scale Engine, to help power so-called inference functions, which allow AI models to respond to user queries.
The companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
TALKING POINT Is War Good For the Economy?
War is a tragedy, costing lives and livelihoods. But can it also be good for an economy?
That question might seem coldhearted. But as fuel prices soar and shipping bottlenecks create shortages in the near term, the long view shows something more positive: military spending can create jobs, spark new technologies and spur investment.
Around the world, more countries are ramping up arms production and boosting investments in national security, if only to deter rivals. Those outlays promise to scramble government spending priorities and weigh on deficits and credit ratings.
The swing started four years ago, when Russian President Vladimir Putin bounced back from his humiliating failure to immediately conquer Ukraine by putting his country's economy on a military footing. Today Russia spends more than 7% of official gross domestic product on its military, avoiding economic free fall under the pressure of sanctions and war costs, analysts say.
Russia's reorientation is extreme, but Moscow isn't alone. From Washington and Ottawa to Europe and Japan, money is flowing into the apparatus of war and security on levels not seen in decades. Now, the consequences of war-shortages and inflation-loom for businesses and consumers globally.
To paraphrase Milton Friedman, we're all wartime economies now.
Is that inherently bad? For Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and large parts of Russia, the result of conflict is horrific tallies of death, injury and loss. Iran now faces a painful recovery-whatever comes next-in a country already struggling under violent repression and economic collapse.
--Daniel Michaels and Tom Fairless
Expected Major Events for Monday
00:01/UK: Mar Rightmove House Price Index
09:30/UK: S&P Global UK Consumer Sentiment Index
09:30/UK: Annual CPI Basket of Goods and Services annual review
11:00/FRA: 4Q OECD Quarterly National Accounts G20 GDP growth
12:15/CAN: Feb Housing Starts
12:30/US: Mar Empire State Manufacturing Survey
12:30/CAN: Dec New motor vehicle sales
12:30/CAN: Feb CPI
13:15/US: Feb Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
14:00/US: Mar NAHB Housing Market Index
All times in GMT. Powered by Onclusive and Dow Jones.
Expected Earnings for Monday
AEye Inc $(LIDR)$ is expected to report for 4Q.
Agenus Inc $(AGEN)$ is expected to report for 4Q.
Ampco-Pittsburgh Corp (AP) is expected to report for 4Q.
Annexon Inc $(ANNX)$ is expected to report $-0.32 for 4Q.
Bally's Corp $(BALY)$ is expected to report for 4Q.
CervoMed Inc (CRVO) is expected to report $-0.66 for 4Q.
Comtech Telecommunications Corp $(CMTL)$ is expected to report $-0.58 for 2Q.
Contango ORE Inc $(CTGO)$ is expected to report for 4Q.
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March 13, 2026 16:40 ET (20:40 GMT)
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