March 2026 in returns

March was the year's one genuine drawdown, and it was global. Every major equity index fell — the S&P 500 5.1%, the Dow 5.4%, the Nasdaq 4.8% and the Russell 2000 5.2%, with the FTSE 100 down 6.7%, Germany's DAX 10.3% and Japan's Nikkei a severe 13.2%. Breadth collapsed with them: just 144 of 870 stocks finished green, 17%, the narrowest participation in the two years of months we track and a full six points below the next-worst month in that record. The most diagnostic number, though, was gold — down 11.1% after two months of gains. When the defensive asset is sold alongside everything else, the market is not rotating; it is raising cash. Crypto, of all things, was the relative haven: Bitcoin rose 2.0% and Ethereum 7.2%, and 75 of 195 coins (38%) closed higher — better participation than in either of the two months when equities were rising.

One corner of the market worked, and it worked spectacularly. Energy went vertical: Brent crude gained 63.3%, RBOB gasoline 59.4%, heating oil 55.9%, the US Oil Fund 55.3% and WTI 51.3%, pulling LyondellBasell (+41.8%) and APA (+39.7%) up with them. Everything outside that complex was sold with little discrimination — Estée Lauder (-34.4%), Paramount Skydance (-32.9%), Supermicro (-29.7%), McCormick (-29.0%) and Centene (-27.1%) share no theme beyond having been widely held. A move of that size in crude is the kind of shock that reprices every other asset by arithmetic rather than sentiment, which is the simplest reading of why gold, equities and breadth all broke together. It did not last: the energy complex gave most of it back by May, with crude and gasoline futures down 17-19% that month — before returning with force in July. March was the first month of the year in which the oil price, not the AI story, set the tone for everything else.