Your Evening Briefing

March 24, 2026

Stocks close lower after fluctuating as traders digest war updates

The S&P 500 fell, paring steeper losses after a midday report that Iran is willing to listen to proposals to end the war, but stocks were unable to keep their momentum as traders digested news that the US is deploying 3,000 troops to the Middle East. The Nasdaq 100 also closed lower, while the Russell 2000 gained.

Communications was the worst-performing sector, dragged down by losses in Meta and Alphabet, while energy was the best-performing sector as oil gained.

Moving higher:

The Fundrise Innovation Fund surged as retail investors clamored to get exposure to high-growth private companies.
Jefferies jumped on reports that Japan’s Sumimoto Financial Group is exploring a potential takeover.
NTGR soared after the FCC banned foreign-made routers over national security concerns.
AI buildout stocks Seagate Technology Holdings, Coherent, Sterling Infrastructure, MasTec, Western Digital, Ciena Corp., HP Enterprise, Corning, Lumentum, and Dell rose, shrugging off the broader market's Iran war slump.

Moving lower:

Coinbase and Circle plunged on reports of proposed legislation that would limit platforms from offering yield on stablecoins.
Software stocks Hubspot, Atlassian, Adobe, and Figma fell on news that Anthropic’s Claude can control computers via phone prompts.
Ares Management dipped on reports that it’s limiting withdrawals from a private credit fund.
The Trade Desk sank after AdAge reported that Omnicom is commissioning an audit of The Trade Desk’s fees.
Estée Lauder fell sharply on yesterday’s news that the company is in talks to purchase Puig Brands, a Spanish competitor with a market value of over $10 billion.

America is officially spending more on building data centers than offices

Data center construction spending climbed to a record $3.57 billion in December. Read more.

How much does oil matter for inflation anyway?

Energy is only about 6% of the Consumer Price Index, but that’s not the full picture.

Read more.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby expects oil prices to stay higher for longer and warned that airfares, which have already gone up by double digits in the past few weeks, will need to climb another 20% in order for the airline to “break even” on fuel. Read more.

Meta and ARM team up to build a new class of data center chips
The "Arm AGI CPU" is the first chip announced from the partnership, which focuses on more efficient AI inference tasks.
With New York’s acceptance law coming into effect, could cold hard cash stage a comeback?
Though digital payments are now the norm, most US adults remain opposed to the idea of a cashless society.
Tesla’s European sales rise for the first time in more than a year but still lag BYD
Tesla and BYD each represented 1.8% of all car registrations across Europe in February.
Analyst: Traders are itching for a reason to start buying bitcoin again
Investors are clinging to any bit of good news amid the conflict in the Middle East.
Amazon’s Zoox to increase San Francisco and Las Vegas footprint and expand service to Austin and Miami this year
The service is open widely to the public in Las Vegas and to limited public users in San Francisco.
Nintendo is reportedly cutting back Switch 2 production by 33% as US sales underperform
Bloomberg’s sources don’t think Nintendo’s target of 20 million Switch 2 sales this fiscal year will be impacted, but investors aren’t holding back from dumping the stock.
With Apple Business, Apple is packaging its ecosystem for the office
Apple is making its most coherent push yet to turn its ecosystem into a workplace platform.
“Fortnite” maker Epic is laying off 1,000 employees amid engagement downturn
The move follows Epic’s decision earlier this month to increase the cost of in-game currency in “Fortnite.”
Jensen Huang: We have achieved AGI now... sort of
Nvidia’s CEO hedged a bit when declaring that artificial general intelligence has been achieved.
NYSE teams up with Securitize to create 24/7 tokenized securities market
The platform aims to enable around the clock trading of digital tokens that represent securities.

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