Iran, Oil at $113, and a Market That Can't Decide If It's Scared: Your Weekly Chaos Recap
US-Iran tensions dominated every screen, but healthcare, storage, and private credit told their own stories
Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNH UNITEDHEALTH GROUP INC | buy | $310.04 | — | — | — |
| HUM HUMANA INC | hold | $198.30 | — | — | — |
| CVS CVS HEALTH Corp | buy | $78.59 | — | — | — |
| STX Seagate Technology Holdings plc | buy | $491.69 | — | — | — |
| WDC WESTERN DIGITAL CORP | buy | $328.47 | — | — | — |
| AVGO Broadcom Inc. | buy | $346.50 | — | — | — |
| APP AppLovin Corp | buy | $429.80 | — | — | — |
| DAL DELTA AIR LINES, INC. | sell | $69.28 | — | — | — |
| LEVI LEVI STRAUSS & CO | hold | $21.40 | — | — | — |
| KMB KIMBERLY CLARK CORP | sell | $94.50 | — | — | — |
| TSLA Tesla, Inc. | hold | $361.65 | — | — | — |
| HOOD Robinhood Markets, Inc. | buy | $74.55 | — | — | — |
| BK Bank of New York Mellon Corp | buy | $126.51 | — | — | — |
Let's start with the elephant — or rather, the entire circus — in the room. WTI crude hit ~$113/barrel, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and President Trump spent the week issuing escalating deadlines that had markets doing a full Olympic gymnastics routine. The Dow swung from -400 to -85 in a single session. The VIX sits at 26 — and PNC's chief strategist thinks that's actually too low given a worst-case scenario (think: Kharg Island strike, Gulf refinery damage) isn't fully priced in. Markets are rational until they aren't, folks.
Meanwhile, the week's cleanest trade hiding in plain sight: managed care. $UNH ripped +9.4% after CMS agreed to boost 2027 Medicare Advantage payments by 2.5% above initial proposals — its best single day since August. $PARA was the top S&P 500 gainer at +11% after locking in equity syndication deals with sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar for its Warner Bros Discovery acquisition. Sovereign wealth money chasing media assets during a war week is a sentence I didn't expect to type.
On the storage front, Morgan Stanley upgraded $STX with a new price target of $582 (from $468), citing AI-driven hyperscaler demand — shares jumped 5.6%. Jim Cramer's key thesis remains intact: the March 30th bottom was rate-driven, not fundamentals-driven, after Powell's Harvard speech killed rate-hike bets. Until Iran resolves, every rally is a short squeeze wearing a trench coat pretending to be a bull market.