Been looking back at that wild week in early March when markets were all over the place. You had everyone worried about the Iran situation over the weekend, but honestly the panic didn't really stick around. By Wednesday the major indexes were closing in the green — Dow up about 0.5%, S&P 500 up 0.78%, and the Nasdaq really outperformed with a 1.29% jump. The whole geopolitical anxiety just seemed to abate pretty quickly, like traders decided we weren't heading into another long-term conflict.

What was interesting that day was the mixed signals on the jobs front. ADP reported 63K new private-sector jobs, which beat expectations, but when you look at the rolling 4-month average it was pretty weak — just 24K per month. So the labor market's not falling apart, but it's definitely not firing on all cylinders either. The ISM Services data was kind of a mixed bag too. February productivity came in hot at 56.1%, but the S&P Services PMI dropped hard month-over-month, so the economic momentum seems to be starting to abate.

Earnings-wise, Broadcom crushed it with their fiscal Q1 results — beat by 2 cents and revenues came in right where they needed to be, all riding on that AI infrastructure wave. Stock barely moved though, still down 8% YTD. American Eagle had a solid quarter too, crushed earnings estimates and same-store sales were up 8%, but couldn't hold the gains in after-hours trading. Feels like the initial enthusiasm was already starting to abate by then. Anyway, that earnings season had a bunch of big names reporting — Kroger, Costco, Marvell all came through that week. Market concerns about geopolitics seemed to abate, but the economic data was telling a different story underneath all the noise.