The S&P 500 closed Friday at 6,506.48, down 1.51 percent, marking the fourth consecutive weekly decline for the index and the third consecutive daily fall, a losing streak not recorded since late 2024.
The proximate cause of Friday’s accelerated selling was not the Federal Reserve, whose hawkish hold on Wednesday was already priced in, but Iraq’s declaration of force majeure on all oilfields operated by foreign companies, citing its inability to export through the Strait of Hormuz.
International benchmark Brent crude rose 3.26 percent, or $3.54, to close at $112.19 per barrel, its highest level since mid-2022, while WTI gained 2.27 percent to $98.32, with both benchmarks recording weekly gains as the Middle East conflict expanded in scope.
Drones struck two refineries in Kuwait on the same day, adding another layer of supply disruption to an already fragile market and sending oil equities surging as the only reliably green sector across the entire session.
The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.01 percent to settle at 21,647.61, led lower by technology stocks broadly and by the Super Micro Computer collapse specifically, which shed over 20 percent intraday on criminal charges against the company’s co-founder.
The Russell 2000 small-cap index fell more than two percent and entered correction territory, defined as ten percent below its recent high, becoming the first major US equity index to breach that threshold since the Iran war began in late February.
At the lows of the day, the Dow and Nasdaq were also briefly in correction territory before recovering, their final closes of 45,577.47 and 21,647.61 representing losses of 0.96 percent and 2.01 percent respectively, significant but not technically as damaging as the intraday moves suggested.
Nike hit a fresh 52-week low near $52 as the company cited a “challenging market environment” consistent with what every consumer discretionary analyst on the Street has been observing for the past three weeks, while DoorDash reached its lowest level since November 2024.
FedEx was the clear outlier on a brutal day for equity investors, gaining roughly 2.8 percent after the previous evening’s earnings report, a genuine positive datapoint in a session that struggled to find many of them.
The VIX volatility index is approaching 25, a level that historically signals meaningful institutional anxiety rather than the temporary fear spikes associated with one-day selloffs, and the combination of geopolitical escalation, energy inflation and Fed hawkishness has created conditions where investor confidence does not recover quickly.
