[Week 13/52]: 💰 Breaking Down the 7 Major Market Narratives in March 2026 to Help Educate
My investing style only includes minimal momentum, as I tend to favor value, it's still useful to track narratives. In a world of social media and instant-information, markets move on surprises.
Mar 16, 2026
Something I’ve been working on for a bit is launching a hedge fund for stocks and crypto. We’re launching in Q2 2026 (April 1st, ideally!) with $1.5M of capital. The vision is to find value. As Benjamin Graham says, “the ideal investment is one in which the future earnings are reasonably assured by established competitive position.”
And so over the last many years I’ve been developing my investment thesis. As Charlie Munger says, "fish where the fish are. You want to fish where the bargains are. It's that simple. If the fishing is really lousy where you are, you should probably look for another place to fish. We all do better hunting when we hunt where the hunting is easy."
I’ve made it my job to track both macro narratives, and pair this with heavy individual name stock analysis. It’s no secret right now, that things are extremely volatile. Both geo-politically, and economically from a narrative perspective. But as Warren Buffett says, “people behave in extreme ways in markets. Over time, that’s very good for people who keep their heads.”
So todays breakdown is a helpful guide for keeping your head on straight even while so much is swirling. I first wrote my Market Narrative post on X on March 8th. I noted 5 main narratives occuring at that time:
Ongoing US-Iran war
Midterm election dynamics
Technical levels of SPY
Private credit
AI uncertainty
Since that post, SPY is down about 1.4%, and we’ve added two more negative narratives to the mix.
GDP came in 50% lower than expected
We clocked in 3 weeks in a row of declines on the SPY which has not happened since Feb 2025. And of course, that was followed by a 15% drop before a fast recovery.
So in today’s convo, we will use data to discuss what happens if history repeats (or rhymes), how I’m thinking about risk, as well as what could turn this market up in a jiffy.
Scroll down to read more in today’s blog.
But first…
A word from our author in a Harry Potter style talking-painting
“Hey! Welcome to my blog, Don’s Daily!”
Hey, I’m Don! I’ve been building career memories for a decade. Over the last three years I’ve been reinvesting my own capital and time back it into my business. All the while learning and growing my net worth via public markets and crypto.
Over that same period, I also hosted 50+ virtual events with some of the world’s best VC investors and founders for our CEO group. Prior to all that, aside from my first job at Meta, I was lucky enough to raise $10 million in my twenties; doing my best to learn business, investor relations, and the startup mindset all at the same time. Maybe some of you can relate.
All that’s to say, I love business, I love money, I love to try and leverage my time.
This year, I set the goal to publish a thoughtful blog every Monday.. 52 of them! Don’ Daily is a recap of the entrepreneurship adventures I collect, as well as the new lessons I’m constantly learning from doing. My hope is that this entertains, inspires, and influences new creative ideas for you. Every Monday. If you enjoy the blog, please share!
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I’ve personally been cautious of Iran since February. And you can even see from my Feb 5th text messages I was worried about an escalating Iran conflict a full month before the USA made a move. This is one reason my portoflio performed well this past month, I was hedging against rising oil, fertilizer, and energy prices. The other risk I noted, Taiwan, still remains a black swan in my book. But for everyone’s sake, I hope the recent rumors of China moving ships near by the island are just continued military drills and posturing. I don’t expect an issue, but it’s worth noting.
Let’s first pull in some relevant data to put our narratives into context; Ongoing US-Iran war, Midterm election dynamics, Technical levels of SPY, Private credit, AI uncertainty, and Economy.
Ongoing US-Iran war: Brent crude surged to $90 a barrel by last Friday from roughly $70 before the strikes began.
Midterm election dynamics: Midterm election years historically delivers muted first-half returns and an average intra-year drawdown of 18%
Technical levels of SPY: In the past month, SPX saw it’s largest weekly decline in nearly 5 months, SPY closed below 100-day moving average for first time since April 2025 last week, and remains below this even still.
Private credit: Blackrock limited withdrawals this week a flagship debt fund after a surge in redemption requests, as investor worries mount around the $2 trillion private credit industry.
AI uncertainty: Adobe’s CEO is leaving in the midst of a rapid decline in stock price, and investor sentiment. As a result, their stock dropped 8% post earnings. Oracle on the other hand saw a 44% jump in Cloud revenue, throwing more mixed signals into this AI swell.
Economy: Worse-than-expected U.S. jobs data. The labor market is cracking: it’s the third negative print in five months, unemployment ticked to 4.4%, and long-term unemployment hit its highest since late 2021. The recent revision of the GDP was a sharp step down from the previous estimate of 1.4%
Market Signals: The last time we had 3 straight weeks of SPY declines like this, we dropped 15%, if we do the same here, then we would bottom out around $564 in April 2026. (Nobody can predict this, I surely cannot, this is only one pattern of many).
They say valuations are a great red flag but a HORRIBLE timing indicator. And this is true, given we’ve been over valued for years. So is anything about this particular month different? Nobody knows. But it’s worth noting, sectors are all trading above their 10 year TTM PE averages. Meaning, on a backward looking basis, in recent history, expectations for companies to deliver outstanding earnings remains an elevated risk. If earnings take a hit, then we're likely to see PE compression as well. However, the market has continued to handle external shocks (Ukraine, Iran, Deepseek) pretty well. With short term declines, but overall, earnings remain strong.
Here’s a snapshot of the TTM P/E for major sectors from FinViz, the ‘red’ zone is correlatd to higher-than-normal TTM PE levels.
Overall S&P 500 10-year average TTM PE is around ~20. The current 2026 market sits around 25+ TTM PE, and even on a FWD PE basis we’re still elevated over the 10 year average.
The margin of safety embedded in equity prices has eroded considerably given the market is pricing in a very optimistic future.
What I’m Watching
I’m watching to see if SPY remains below the 100-day moving average, that was my original sell signal when we lost that support. I’m also watching to see if it touches the 200-day moving average. The way the market reacts to the 200-day will be very telling. As Charlie Munger says, “if all you ever did was buy high-quality stocks at the 200-week moving average, you would beat the S&P 500 by a large margin over time. The problem is that few human beings have that kind of discipline.”
I’m also watching high-yield credit spreads. Rather than reading all the headlines around private credit, I feel this is a better indicator of fear. Credit spreads are a decent timing indicator. Although valuations are a bad timing indicator, I’d argue high-yield credit spreads are probably the best representation of systemic risk. During our last 3-week decline in SPY in 2025, HY Spreads sat around 3.7. Today, they’re rising, but still remain lower at 3.17. This is one number I’m watching closely.
What I’m Doing:
If I was buying-holding, I’d likely be a cautious buyer, nibbling on adding to positions. But since I need to invest my cash into my fund in the upcoming weeks, I felt it was smarter for me to sit on the sidelines to avoid getting crunched. Because I’m going to invest all of my liquid capital, I’ve been coincidentally looking for a good time to exit. On March 5th, I saw that opportunity as the SPY couldn’t reclaim the 100-day moving average, and so I moved to cash. I sold at $680, we’re hovering $665 today.
That turned out to be a wise decision, so far. But the risk is that I’m unable to get the Fund’s brokerage accounts open before things turn up again. However, that risk is easier to swallow than a market decline in which I’m forced to liquidate just before making my investment.
Getting out of markets March 5th to prioritize fund formation tasks.
Although I’m not worried about recession (yet), I am concerned with short term liquidity for myself personally. I didn’t want to get caught in a moment where risk was high, stock prices depressed, and I was required to move to cash so I could anchor the fund.
What I’m Hoping:
Best Case: SPY continues to downtrend slowly towards the 200-day moving average between March and April. I have new fund bank/brokerage/admin set up and operating by April 1st
Worst Case: Markets turn up (decidedly) before I’m operational and I miss a bit of the rally
I weighed by odds, and noticing smart investors are selling into rallies rather than buying dips, I felt things leaned 51% best case, 49% worst case, in the short term. So I’m sitting in mostly cash and moving as fast as humanely possible to launch this fund!
Thank you for reading!
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, DO NOT TAKE THIS AS INVESTMENT ADVICE. YOU SHOULD DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, CONFIRM ALL DATA FROM PRIMARY SOURCES, AND CREATE YOUR OWN THESIS. I write this purely as a way to hear myself think, to provide some level of education and insight, and share my thinking with our readers.
