Pre-Market Up on Cooler Oil Prices, Data

Monday, March 16th, 2026

Pre-market futures are off the early morning highs right before 8:00am this morning, but still solidly in the green this week of St. Paddy’s Day. The Dow is +313 points at this hour, +0.67%, the S&P 500 +59 points, +0.89%, the Nasdaq +265 points, +1.09% and the small-cap +27 points, +1.11%.

The main reason for this new-found optimism? Crude oil futures are down. The WTI spot price is back below $100 per barrel (/bbl) to $95.82/bbl, down nearly -3%. Brent crude is also lower, but by a more stingy -0.57% to $102.55/bbl. There were no new calamities in the Middle East over the weekend (the already established calamities were enough, apparently), so investors come into a new trading week with an added dollop of hopefulness.

Empire State Manufacturing -0.2 in March

For the first time since December, the Empire State Manufacturing Survey came in with a negative headline for March: -0.2. Analysts had been expecting this to come in around +3 or +4, but with Shipments falling off and Delivery Times more than tripling for the month. This is the third negative print in the past nine months, with capital spending expected to pick up somewhat in the months ahead.

Dollar Tree Beats on Q4 Earnings

Ahead of today’s open, discount retailer Dollar Tree DLTR outperformed on Q4 earnings by 3 cents to $2.56 per share. Revenues of $5.49 billion improved over the expected $5.47 billion, and shares are up +1.4% on the news so far in today’s pre-market. This takes a modest bite out of the company’s -12% loss in share price year to date.

What to Expect from the Stock Market This Week

We’ve got around four weeks before the big banks start reporting Q1 earnings numbers, signaling the unofficial start of another earnings season. But this week, we have many big players reporting earnings, even if the overall amount of companies is low. Oklo OKLO and lululemon LULU report Tuesday, Micron MU and Macy’s M highlight Wednesday, and FedEx FDX and Alibaba BABA post numbers on Thursday.

In terms of economic reports, Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers — the wholesale inflation indicator, compared with the retail Consumer Price Index (CPI) which reported last week — will come out for February. In the last print, headline year-over-year PPI was +2.9%, +3.4% on core. These are among the warmest inflation reads we’ve seen of late, and we should also keep in mind they will reflect wholesale prices prior to the U.S./Israel invasion of Iran.

Also, a new Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell continues the final lap of his tenure and a 100% probability that the Fed will not move from its 3.50-3.75% rate established in December of last year. One more FOMC meeting, in late April, will mark Powell’s last — assuming nominated Fed Chair Kevin Warsh gets through the current friction on Capitol Hill regarding the Fed.
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