The week opened on the back foot and ended at a record high. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,473.47, up 0.37% on the day and 0.9% for the week, notching its eighth straight winning week. That's the longest weekly win streak since late 2023.
The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,408.50, surrendering the historic 7,500 level it briefly breached Thursday and ending the week with a gain of just 0.3%. That Thursday intraday high of 7,517 now looks like a blow-off signal rather than a launching pad, and the week's full narrative explains exactly why.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed at fresh all-time highs for the second consecutive week, with the broader index adding roughly 1.4% to finish near 7,330. Markets were led by communication services, energy, information technology, and consumer discretionary, while materials, industrials, and health care lagged. The geopolitical overhang defining the prior ten weeks is now background noise, and the market is trading on what it always ultimately trades on: earnings
The S&P 500 closed at a fresh all-time high Friday, capping a week in which the market did something remarkable: it largely stopped caring about Iran. That wasn't recklessness. It was earnings. Five of the Magnificent Seven reported this week, and the results were, on balance, strong enough to shift the market's center of gravity from geopolitical fear to fundamental momentum. As we wrote in "Hormuz, Why The Markets Are Shrugging Off The Oil Shock," the market ultimately reprices around what matters most: earnings. We're seeing exactly that play out now.
Last week, we noted that after the sharpest rally since May 2025, a correction was likely. Notably, those corrections come in two forms: a price pullback or a sideways consolidation. We got the latter. The S&P 500 churned between roughly 7,080 and 7,140 for most of the week. But Friday, did make a push to all-time highs. That kind of tight, high-level consolidation following an explosive move is technically constructive. Historically, it suggests the market is digesting gains rather than distributing them.
The market didn't just recover this week. It made new history. Monday opened with the S&P 500 erasing all losses since the Iran war began. The market rose 1% to its highest close since late February. Driving that rally were reports that Iran had reached out to the Trump administration despite a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The buying accelerated from there. By Wednesday, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite closed at fresh all-time highs. With investors pricing in an increasingly credible path to a permanent peace deal, the bulls regained control.
Five weeks of losses, one ceasefire announcement, and the market exhaled — at least for now. The week opened on a knife's edge. Trump's self-imposed deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face escalation kept futures volatile and conviction thin. Monday churned with no direction, the S&P closing essentially flat. Tuesday was similarly tortured. The index swung by more than 1% intraday before settling with a 0.08% gain as Pakistan urged a two-week extension.
March closed as the worst quarter for the S&P 500 since 2022, with the index down roughly 7% on the quarter and every member of the Magnificent Seven finishing in the red. This past holiday-shortened trading week saw a sharp reflexive relief rally from the oversold conditions we discussed last week.
This past week was another disappointing one. Markets opened the week surging after President Trump posted on Truth Social that U.S.-Iran talks had been "very good and productive" and that he was halting strikes on Iranian power plants. Brent crude fell more than 10% in a single session, its biggest single-day drop since early March, while the S&P 500 gained 1.15%. It was the kind of relief rally that tempts investors into believing a corner has been turned. It wasn't.