Liquid Gold, LFG Daily - March 9th, 2026

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Luke Lloyd, CEO Lloyd Financial Group

With more happening over the weekend in the Middle-East, I’ll leave it to the investment team today.

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Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

Friday was discouraging for the bulls, with Iran troubles sending oil up 35% on the week and our first bad jobs report in quite a while. Over the weekend, we were treated to pictures of oilfields on fire and more talk of $150 oil. Is it time to take down risk?

As always, you should think about your time horizon. It’s very different being a day trader versus a long-term holder. As someone who’s generally trying to hold for a year, I’m not yet taking down risk, though I’m certainly paying attention.

First, oil is still likely to be a short-term issue. Yes, this has gone on long enough to be a problem, but it should get solved sooner rather than later. Even if it takes a month, that’s not like the Russia situation. The oil curve, below, shows how the concern is front-end loaded. It’s largely considered a question of how far into 2026 does it cause problems. Oil seems like a very solvable problem.

As for the employment situation, I wouldn’t yet consider it that big of a deal. No doubt, the payrolls print of -92K jobs is a weak one. I would, however, point out that we got a worse number in October (-140K) and the world didn’t cease. There were distortions in that October report (government shutdown) and there are potential distortions in here (bad weather.)

One bad datapoint isn’t bad enough to cause the brakes to be hit. Every other jobs datapoint has been pretty constructive, whether you look at jobless claims, ADP data, or whatever.

Further, we’ve been talking about a jobless recovery and slow-motion slowdown for a while, here. Productivity remains great and the Fed has talked about how, in part due to the exodus of illegal aliens, a weak payrolls report isn’t as meaningful.

You can see a relative lack of worry in the market, with far more focus on oil fears over employment. For instance, TS Lombard said the report just corrected the overstated strong report from January. Instead of an overheating economy, we merely have something a bit less exciting. We shouldn’t have been too excited about January and shouldn’t worry too much about February. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.

So how much trouble are we in? Probably not too much, assuming the Iran war goes on for days rather than months. That said, the recent macro news does reinforce the possibility that the trend in the economy may be more down than up.

I don’t want to downplay that this is a dangerous environment. The market is still trying to assess just how bad problems get, particularly in Iran. Initial assessments were too benign and now it’s a question of how far markets go with pricing in fears. At the same time, good news can launch markets up a long way in a very short period of time. Assuming nothing materially changes between now and Monday morning, it’s easy to imagine markets start off on their back foot. It’s also going to take very little for that stance to change dramatically, with a very fearful, hedged market.

As the months go on, we should see a pretty accommodative government help support the economy. Often, the market does well with bad economic data, as the government steps in. It only really represents a problem if the slowdown lasts. I’d say the odds of real problems down the road has risen, but for now there’s still a fair amount to look forward to.

Eventually, worry about the Iran war should slow, tax refunds have been strong and should continue, a friendlier Fed should show up later in the year, and so on. We may or may not have seen the end of markets pricing in worries, but those worries still seem more localized than systemic.

NFP was surprisingly bad, at -92K vs. est. 50K, and the Unemployment Rate went from 4.3% to 4.4%. On the plus side, prime age employment is holding up, as is labor income growth. Cold weather probably made this worse than it otherwise would have been and is moderated a bit by a good report last month.

Retail Sales were -0.2% m/m vs. exp. -0.3%, and Core Sales were 0%, as expected. Control Group sales were 0.3%, as expected. Not as bad as feared, at least, but more bad than good.

All that sent the Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimate from 3.2% to 2.1%.

WTI Oil touched $110 as futures opened, which asset markets didn’t love. Oil then went up a whopping 31%, at $119, the biggest one-day rise since 1998, as producers cut output, and is currently at $101, after G7 nations talked of releasing strategic reserves. Stagflation is the current name of the game. Worth noting that even long-dated oil futures, like December, were up 8% at the worst levels overnight.

With that, the oil-sensitive Nikkei was -7% overnight but has since recovered to -4%.

Also interesting to note the crypto space seems pretty unfazed by all this, with bitcoin over $68K, currently.

SPX is down -1%,well off of the worst levels overnight.

Blackrock (BLK) was -7% on Friday after capping fund withdrawals in a private credit fund, also impacting the financial sector in general.

Consumer Inflation Expectations, today.

What does it all mean? Lots of movement overnight. Where do we settle?

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