After-Hours % Advancers

After-Hours % Decliners

Closing Volume

- NYSE volume 3% below its one-month average

- NASDAQ volume 3% above its one-month average

- VIX index: up 25.64% to 29.84

Breadth

S&P 500 Sectors

% Movers

Nasdaq 100 Heat Map

Closing S&P 500 Heat Map

Here are today's things:

* Buy  (SPY)  at $670.50 (S&P cash -105 handles) and sold SPY calls (against on rally at -61 handles lower in S&P cash) for a nice profit.

* Buy  (QQQ)  at $599.90 (S&P cash -105 handles) and sold QQQ calls (against on rally at -61 handles lower in S&P cash) for a nice profit.

*  (APO)  bought at $599.90 at $104.98, sold at $109.58

*  (BX)  bought at $108.87, sold at $111.38

*  (C)  bought at $103.37, sold at $106.17

*  (MS)  bought at $156.83, sold at $159.89

*  (KKR)  bought at $89.51, sold at 91.72

*  (KMB)  bought at $104.21

*  (PEP)  bought at $157.73

*  (PG)  bought at $153.67

*  (VKTX)  bought at $31.11

* Shorted  (OIH)  at $375.55,  (XLK)  at $56.768,  (XOM)  at $151.78

With S&P cash -60 handles I have sold the following longs:

*  (SPY)  $675.61

*  (QQQ)  $604.01

*  (C)  $106.17

*  (MS)  $159.89

*  (KKR)  $91.72

*  (BX)  $111.35

*  (APO)  $109.58

* Audible...

Starting slow..

*  (XOM)  $151.78

*  (XLE)  $56.76

*  (OIH)  $375.55

It is a trite expression but the solution to high oil prices is high oil prices.

I plan to put on some trading shorts in energy.

Soon... but not yet.

I have begun to buy and I am working on a scale lower in consumer staples now —  (PG) ,  (PEP)  and  (KMB) .

* MSOS ($3.80) is my "Trade of the Week" for next week.

* I am further expanding my cannabis holdings. 

A senior advisor to President Trump tells us the president is “very disappointed with Bondi’s inaction on cannabis rescheduling.” According to the advisor, Bondi says the delay is due to the DEA’s need to ensure everything is done in a legally valid manner, while continuing to…

— Anthony Martinelli (@AMartinelliWA) March 6, 2026

I expect a rescheduling announcement momentarily.

I am generally in agreement with the above tweet.
However, I would add (to the tweet) that the additional "distractions" of Minnesota and the conflict in Iran have been materially responsible for the delay in following through on President Trump's instructions to move cannabis from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 3 drug. 

LIVE: Trump signs executive order reclassifying cannabis | NBC News

(MSOS)  is my Trade of the Week for next week.

From my perch, the upside reward vs. downside risk is most attractive.

I have been steadily adding to MSOS (common and options) and MSOX today and all week.

At 1:30 pm:

A look at large-cap stock % Gainers and Decliners at 1:06 PM:

Gainers

Decliners 

I have sold none of my trading long rentals.

Indeed, I have added on weakness.

Volume

- NYSE volume 3% above its one-month average;

- NASDAQ volume flat to its one-month average;

- VIX index: up 8.38% to 25.74

Breadth

S&P 500 Sectors

% Movers

Nasdaq 100 Heat Map

I have research meetings out of the office between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

From Peter Boockvar:

It's now time to be watching row crop prices/Other notables

It’s not just looking at oil, natural gas and aluminum prices in response to the essentially closed Hormuz Strait, it’s now time to be watching fertilizer and row crop prices in addition to the pricing and mining of copper and nickel. About 15% of global phosphates get produced in the Middle East and shipped out of the Strait. About 30% of urea, a nitrogen fertilizer flows through. Also, around 30% of ammonia supply the world gets from the Middle East, a key input into making phosphate and about 45% of sulphur gets made in the Middle East and is now disrupted. Sulphur is another key raw material in making phosphate and it is also used in the leaching process in mining extraction.

With respect to the row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat, understand too that we are just weeks away from the beginning of the important planting season.

Soybeans today are rising to the highest level since July 2024 at $11.87 per bushel, up 1.4% this week. Corn at $4.56 a bushel is at a two month high, up 1.8% this week. Wheat is up almost 2% today at the highest since last July at just under $6 a bushel, up almost 1% on the week. The overall CRB Food Stuff index has lifted to the highest since mid December, and as seen below has a lot of room to the upside chart wise.

We are still long some fertilizer stocks, along with other commodities like energy and precious metals, and remain bearish on long duration bonds where global yields are higher again today on the inflation concerns.

Soybeans

Corn

Wheat

CRB Food Stuff Index

As for inflation expectations in the TIPS market, the 2 yr breakeven is up for the 9th straight day, up by another 5 bps today and back above 3% at 3.05%, of course mostly driven by the rise in energy prices. The 5 yr breakeven is at 2.59% vs 2.45% to start the week. The 10 yr is at a more modest level of 2.34%, though up 9 bps this week.

2 yr Inflation Breakeven

To some earnings calls.

From Costco, little changed this morning after yesterday’s drop:

The very first topic discussed on the call by the CEO was how the company is handling tariffs, not just the existing ones but the refund situation on those struck down. On the latter, “It is not yet clear what the process will be, what refunds, if any, will be received, and when this will happen. Throughout the past year, we’ve taken action to reduce the impact of tariffs. In many cases, we didn’t pass the full cost on to our members. The complexity of the tariffs implemented over the past year, including the layering of different tariffs on top of each other and multiple changes in rates throughout the year, also made it challenging to track the exact impact to an individual item sold.”

While there is zero chance you and I will get any refunds directly, “As we’ve done in the past, when legal challenges have recovered charges passed on in some form to our members, our commitment will be to find the best way to return this value to our members through lower prices and better values.”

Ex gasoline and FX, comps rose 7.4%. “Traffic or shopping frequency increased 3.1% worldwide. Our average transaction or ticket was up 4.2% worldwide and 3.5% ex gas price deflation (of course no longer I add) and changes in FX.”

On the non-food side, “Top performing departments were gold and jewelry, tires, majors, health and beauty, and small electrics.” They also sold things like a $150,000 emerald cut 5.8 carat diamond ring, a $20,000 Babe Ruth autographed baseball and “nearly 200 luxury Whisper gold carts” at $9k a pop catering too to the upper end spender.

“Overall inflation decreased slightly in Q2 as we saw lower inflation in foods and sundries and fresh led by deflation in produce, eggs, and dairy. This was partially offset by slightly higher inflation in non-foods.”

They said supply chains were stable in the quarter but mentioned the potential disruption with some items coming out of the Middle East.

Weather was an impact last month as “our traffic visits were a little bit lighter in the US in February.”

On their customer, “I think as we look at the overall state of the consumer and our members and how they’re shopping, and I think it really is a generally big picture, a continuation of the trends that we’ve seen over the last few quarters where for sure members are very focused on quality and value, and newness and exciting new items are very important. But when you deliver on those things, we’re seeing members are willing to and have the capacity to spend.”

From Kroger and whose stock rallied 5% yesterday:

“Customers remain focused on value in the fourth quarter, which was consistent with the trends that we’ve seen throughout the year, and we’re continuing to invest in price to make sure we’re delivering the value customers expect.”

“Pharmacy had another strong quarter led by growth in both core scripts and GLP-1s.”

“Food inflation moderated further in the quarter, down approximately 90 bps compared to Q3, with egg deflation a significant headwind, partially offset by beef inflation.” I’ll add again, unfortunately food deflation is likely old news.

From Burlington Store, the value retailer and whose stock jumped 7% yesterday on strong 4% comp growth off a 6% comparison last year:

“On the external side, based on our trends in the fourth quarter, our view is that our customer looks quite resilient right now. Add to that, we expect that the current tax refund season is going to be more favorable than recent years. As we have said in the past, our core customer is very sensitive to tax refund payments, and the early signs and expert predictions are very positive. So we think there may be sales upside especially in the first quarter.” Higher gasoline prices are now going to eat into some of those refunds though.

Marvel Technology is jumping pre-market you know what drove the quarter:

“Revenue exceeded the midpoint of guidance driven by strong demand in our data center end market.”

“As we begin fiscal 2027, we are seeing very strong demand across our entire data center portfolio, with bookings accelerating at a record pace. This robust demand is reflected in our guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2027.”

From Peter Boockvar:

Smoothed out, no job growth

Payrolls in February fell by 92k, well worse than the estimate of an increase of 55k and the two prior months were revised down by a total of 86k. The household survey lost 185k and combined with a rise of just 18k in the labor force, the unemployment rate rose to 4.4% from 4.3%. The all in U6 rate though did tick down by 2 tenths to 7.9% as there was a drop in those working part time for economic reasons.

Part of the decline in hiring was due to a drop of 28k in the healthcare sector where “Offices of physicians lost 37,000 jobs in February, primarily due to strike activity.” Elsewhere, jobs were lost in leisure/hospitality totaling 27k, down 5k in professional business services led by a 7k person decline in temp help. The information sector shed 11k and 11k jobs were lost in transportation & warehouse. Job gains of 10k were seen in financial services but after a drop of 30k in January. Retail hired a net 2k, wholesale trade added 6k and utilities 1k.

On the goods side, after a 48k person jump in January, construction lost 11k people, maybe in part due to the bad weather. Manufacturing firing’s totaled 12k and mining lost 2k.

Of particular note and pointing to the slackening demand for labor, the average duration of unemployment rose to 25.7 weeks, the most since February 2022.

Hours worked held at 34.3 as expected while average hourly earnings rose .4% m/o/m after a similar gain in January and one tenth above the estimate. Combine both and average weekly earnings were up by .4% m/o/m and 4.1% y/o/y, still pretty good.

The participation rate was 62%, down one tenth m/o/m and that is the least since November 2021 mostly because of a drop for those aged 55+ to the lowest since 2005 due to the Boomer retirements. The key 25-54 yr old cohort also fell one tenth to 83.9 but that is just off the highest level since 2001.

Bottom line, diluted somewhat by the healthcare strike, the 3 average month job gain is now just 6k vs the 6 month average of -1k and the 12 month average of 13k. A clear change in the pace of job growth. For perspective, the US economy added an average of 165k jobs per month in 2019. How much of this slowdown is due to almost no population growth and what is the reduced demand for labor, I don’t know but certainly it’s a combination of both.

Treasury yields fell in response but just a touch, by 2 bps for 2s, 10s and 30s. The US dollar is weaker too and we see what’s going on in the S&P futures.

Participation Rate 55+ yr olds

Participation Rate for 25-54 yr olds

Average Duration of Unemployment in Weeks

I just took a long rental in the Indices:

*  (SPY)  $670.50

*  (QQQ)  $599.90

*  (APO)  $104,97

*  (BX)  $108.86

*  (C)  $103.37

*  (KKR)  $89.51

*  (MS)  $156.83

New buy, old friend - Viking Therapeutics  (VKTX.)

More on Monday.

A central banker's nightmare: inflationary pressure plus job destruction. pic.twitter.com/BQitHdAlXb

— Lisa Abramowicz (@lisaabramowicz1) March 6, 2026

Private Equity is so desperate to tap into retail they are offering UBS HNW distribution a cut of the carry pic.twitter.com/ZqjboBwyOZ

— Origo (@origoinvest) March 6, 2026

Upside:

-GCO +20% (earnings, guidance)

-JZXN +13% (agrees to $80M investment in the company at $2.00/shr)

-MRVL +12% (earnings, guidance)

-IOT +11% (earnings, guidance)

-OMDA +11% (earnings, guidance)

-SWBI +11% (earnings, color)

-PTRN +6.6% (earnings, guidance)

-DOW +4.2% (JPMorgan Chase and Co Raised DOW to Overweight from Neutral, price target: $40 from $26)

-GWRE +3.2% (earnings, guidance)

-PBR +2.0% (earnings)

Downside:

-NUTX -24% (earnings)

-INGM -16% (prices 8.99M shares at $22.25/shr in secondary offering)

-GPRO -11% (earnings, guidance)

-GAP -8.4% (earnings, guidance)

-WAL -7.4% (files lawsuit and charged off $126.4M in loan balances after Jefferies Financial Group failed to make agreed-upon payments under a forbearance agreement)

-JEF -4.2% (WAL files lawsuit and charged off $126.4M in loan balances after Jefferies Financial Group failed to make agreed-upon payments under a forbearance agreement)

-COO -3.9% (earnings, guidance)

-RUM -2.9% (earnings, color)

-CCL -2.4% (pressure from Iran war)

After seeing the weak jobs data, my view is ever stronger that "slugfation" (sluggish economic growth coupled with sticky inflation) lies ahead.

Fed Speakers:

9:50 a.m.: Fed Bank of Chicago President Goolsbee (Non-Voter) Television Appearance -- Bloomberg Television;

10:15 a.m.: Fed Bank of San Francisco President Daly (Non-Voter) and Fed Bank of Philadelphia President Paulson (Voter) speak before the 2026 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum sponsored by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Barclay Intercontinental, NYC (Daly: no prepared remarks, no group media interview; Paulson: brief talking points and slides available, no media Q&A). Audience Q&A expected. No livestream); www.chicagobooth.edu;

1:20 p.m.: Fed Bank of Boston President Collins (Non-Voter) delivers the keynote address at the Springfield Regional Chamber's Outlook 2026 event, Springfield, MA (Text available. No Q&A expected. Livestream available: youtube.com);

1:30 p.m. Fed Bank of Cleveland President Hammack (Voter) participates in "On the Safe-haven Status of the Dollar" panel before the 2026 U.S. Monetary Policy Forum sponsored by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Barclay Interconti nental, NYC (Text available. Q&A expected. No livestream); chicagobooth.edu/research/clark/events

Economic Calendar

Chart of the Day

I think if the $MAGS break below 60 ish, they will drag the rest of the market with them and there won't be a safe place to hide in equites.$TSLA $GOOG $AAPL $AMZN $META $MSFT $NVDA pic.twitter.com/9cI6RZ9HwK

— Jack (@alphacharts365) March 5, 2026

I'm old enough to remember when nobody would touch software stocks with a 10-foot pole.

The last 6 sessions $IGV the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has outperformed the $SOXX the iShares Semiconductor ETF by +17.3%, easily the largest percentage on record, according… pic.twitter.com/OQ1ozJJj5W

— Neil Sethi (@neilksethi) March 5, 2026

Biggest Vol Spikes for $SPY $EEM $EFA since the April Lows.

Shakeout. Pain Zone pic.twitter.com/COOJu1EsWo

— Ricardo Sarraf (@nullcharts) March 5, 2026

$XLV - Failed breakout...annoying....

I would avoid those who share the breakouts - then go radio silent when they fail.

It's called intellectual dishonesty... pic.twitter.com/OK82rfxZZU

— Larry Thompson, CMT CPA (@HostileCharts) March 5, 2026

While many anxiously await the markets resolution of one of the tightest trading ranges to start a year of all time, it's worth building lists of meaningful long-term consolidationshttps://t.co/vmgJqlzgJC

In this case, many Prop/Casualty stocks within the Insurance space fit… pic.twitter.com/BycgV4BpuV

— Mark Newton CMT (@MarkNewtonCMT) March 5, 2026

Reflation trade.. it's so hot.$XOP working on breaking out of a decade long cup and handle pattern.

Some of the most speculative energy stocks are just about to get going.. and you think this is over soon?

Not me. And either do the financial institutions. pic.twitter.com/q5SQWBBsN9

— Hamilton (@howtoswingtrade) March 5, 2026

The monthly crude chart now shows a bullish MACD cross, which typically signals the start of a bull cycle over the coming months. There is very little time left to reverse this signal. That said, higher crude prices driven by shut-ins may not be immediately accretive for all… pic.twitter.com/MgcN7YE8ks

— Kevin Green (KG), MSDA (@KGBULLANDBEAR) March 5, 2026

Bonus — Here are some great links:

Beware the Ides of March

An Historical Winning Streak

Rising volume on down moves is a negative "tell."

That was the case yesterday:

VOLUME: continued to accelerate on the down move that the PPT tried to mute pic.twitter.com/wApI2mu8yr

— Keith McCullough (@KeithMcCullough) March 6, 2026

Everyone talks about Iranian oil in barrels. Nobody talks about what is inside them. That difference is why Western refineries have been running shadow networks through Dubai for twenty years to get it despite the sanctions.

Crude oil is not a uniform commodity. It is a spectrum… pic.twitter.com/gabcdvvre7

— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 6, 2026

The S&P Short Range Oscillator has moved into a deeper oversold at -1.82% vs. -0.42%.

I remain long Amazon  (AMZN)  and short Costco  (COST)  and Walmart  (WMT)  — in a three-way "pairs trade."

In a few brief weeks it has been a home run — and I am sticking with it.

More on Costco's EPS report later today.

JUST IN: Reports are circulating, attributed to the Financial Times, that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar are discussing withdrawing from US contracts and canceling future investment commitments to alleviate economic strain from the Iran war. The report has not yet been… https://t.co/4ezmgdQMT8 pic.twitter.com/MChwtlAF4Y

— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 6, 2026

Day 6 of Iran vs. U.S./Israel conflict (focus on Iranian strategic narrative):

🔹Gulf states appear to be reassessing their exposure. The Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar are considering reviewing or reducing some overseas investments…

— Hamidreza Azizi (@HamidRezaAz) March 6, 2026

It was another volatile night for stock futures - with a 55 handle S&P range.
Now -35 handles (the low of the overnight) after being +20 in the early session a few hours after the market's close.
This action, for the third night in a row, provides opportunity for those who don't…

— Dougie Kass (@DougKass) March 6, 2026

I took a nice profit and neutralized my short index calls by purchasing  (SPY)  and  (QQQ)  common at around 415 AM with the S&P futures -31 handles.

I am now delta neutral on the index shorts.