By Teresa Rivas
Monday Blues. It was a tough way to open the week, with tech worries continuing to hit stocks and investors seemingly tuning out President Donald Trump's positive spin on the Iran War.
Mondays have typically been up days for stocks since the war began, but that pattern fell apart today. Ultimately, the S&P 500 fell 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average scratched out a 0.1% gain.
Stocks opened the week on a high note, after Trump's early morning Truth Social post. "Great progress has been made," he said, while warning of further devastating strikes if Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz and make other concessions for a cease-fire.
But the rally fizzled by this afternoon, much as we saw last week, as "President Trump couldn't 'tweet' markets higher via cease-fire posts," President Tom Essaye wrote. It's "confirming fears that Trump cannot unilaterally de-escalate the situation which, if nothing changes, means higher oil prices for longer (and rising stagflation risks)."
Missile strikes have continued and little seems to have changed in terms of U.S. and Iran goals. "With this in mind, investors should prepare for the possibility that the war will escalate in the coming weeks before a path to de-escalation can become clearer," warned Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer for the Americas and global head of equities at UBS Financial Services.
"The economy was already dealing with uncertainty surrounding the balance of high inflation and a weakening labor market prior to the Middle East conflict," adds Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. "This increasingly delicate balance, coupled with mounting questions about the overall impact of AI and the debt levels used to fund its expansion, has further clouded the long-term outlook."
In fact, artificial intelligence worries once again weighed on stocks today. Even recent winners like memory makers were on the chopping block.
Later this week, the manufacturing index from the Institute for Supply Management and the March jobs report may offer some clarity to redirect stocks.
Penn Mutual Managing Director Scott Ellis says that policymakers remain "at the top of our watch list...the old adage that 'markets stop panicking when policymakers start to' still seems to resonate."
The Hot Stock: ServiceNow +5.6% The Biggest Loser: Sysco -15.3%
Best Sector: Financials +1.1% Worst Sector: Industrials -1.6%
Food Stocks Can't a Bite
Sysco was the worst performer in the S&P 500 today after the company announced it would buy Jetro Restaurant Depot for more than $29.1 billion. There seems to be little appetite for the deal on Wall Street.
The agreement will see Restaurant Depot shareholders receive $21.6 billion in cash, plus 91.5 million Sysco shares. The company will fund the acquisition primarily through new debt and hybrid debt.
As my colleague Nate Wolf writes, the family-owned Restaurant Depot operates 166 warehouse stores around the U.S. and generated around $16 billion in revenue and $2.1 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization in 2025. Still, not everyone is on board.
While the purchase "makes general sense" from a strategic standpoint, it comes with questions for Sysco, said Paul Nary, a professor of management at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
"These are different businesses, different business/distribution models, different customers," Nary wrote in a social media post. "Sysco has zero experience in this segment, and this is a large, complex transaction."
Brad Haller, senior partner of M&A at consultancy West Monroe, also found the size of the deal striking given Sysco's "already stressed balance sheet." The company had $1.2 billion in cash compared to $24.8 billion in total liabilities at the end of December.
Anyone who's dined out or bought groceries in recent years knows how quickly the price of food has gone up; food-related stocks are a different matter.
Sysco's selloff today comes after a 7% decline over the past year, and the shares are down 11% in the past five years. McDonald's and Starbucks have also fallen over the past five years. The AdvisorShares Restaurant exchange-traded fund is off nearly 7% in the past 12 months.
Defensive staples stocks have done better amid the Iran War, but they're basically break-even over the past year, with companies like General Mills and Kraft Heinz down over the past one- and five-year periods.
The Calendar
FactSet Research Systems, McCormick, Nike, and PVH report earnings tomorrow.
S&P Cotality releases its Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index for January. Home prices rose 1.3% last year, the slowest annual rate of growth since July 2023. Chicago and New York both saw prices rise more than 5% to lead all metro markets. The laggards included Tampa and Denver, where prices fell more than 2%.
The Conference Board releases its Consumer Confidence Index for March. Consensus estimate is for a 88 reading, about three points less than in February.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Economists forecast 6.8 million job openings on the last business day of February, 100,000 fewer than in January. There are currently 0.9 job openings for every unemployed person.
What We're Reading Today
-- Tech Investing Seems Broken. Our Roundtable Pros on 15 Stock Picks to Fix
Your Portfolio.
-- Nvidia Chips Are Going Into New Data Centers -- and Space
-- LVMH and These 6 Other Luxury Stocks Are a Buy Despite the Iran War
-- Eli Lilly Ramps Up AI Ambitions With This $2.8 Billion Deal. What It
Means for the Stock.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 30, 2026 19:55 ET (23:55 GMT)
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