Welcome to Market Madness!

Trump is using the Iran war to manipulate the financial markets on an epic scale.

What do you have in your 2026 Market Madness bracket? A US attack on Iran’s energy grid? More exploding natural gas plants in the Middle East? US Marines on the ground in Iran? A sunk aircraft carrier or other US Navy ship? Oil at $150? Or maybe an end to the war and oil back to $70?

All of these possibilities and many others seem to be in play as President Donald Trump’s manic war strategy careens from one extreme to another. Investors are desperately trying to trade the Iran war Trump started on February 28, buying when Trump suggests the war might end soon, and selling when hostilities worsen. But these gigantic all-or-nothing trades, all pegged to one megalomaniac’s impulses, have plunged financial markets into a state of temporary insanity.

The latest Trump-driven gyration is a March 23 plunge in oil prices and surge in stock values, based on one de-escalatory social-media post. But that was nothing more than Trump backing down from his own escalatory threat of two days earlier.

[See 7 ways Iran can stop oil shipments]

Let’s examine the timing. On Saturday, March 21 at 7:44 pm, Trump said on social media that the United States would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it didn’t allow all ships safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. So his deadline would have been 7:44 pm on Monday, March 23.

A US attack on Iran’s energy grid would probably trigger an Iranian counterattack on energy facilities elsewhere in the Gulf region. That gloomy prospect set markets up for a wipeout on March 23. But at 7:23 am—two hours before US stocks started trading—Trump said on social media that he had postponed any strikes on Iranian energy facilities, for five days. Yay! Stocks soared!

More from Rick Newman: The Pinpoint Press

• Pencil in May 1 as the Hormuz Strait reopening date
• The Weekly WTF: Imaginary presents from Iran
• Where stocks will go after the Iran war ends

But again, look at the timing. Five days means Trump can reup the threat after markets close for the week on Friday, March 27. Then what? Another reprieve right before trading opens on Monday, March 30? And on and on, for how many weeks? Or years?

[See crazy shit that actually happened, in The Weekly WTF]

Plus, Trump said in the March 23 post he is having “very good and productive conversations” with Iranian officials about ending the war. Does anybody believe this? If you do, consider all the other times Trump has said similar things—clearly trying to calm markets—that turned out to be bogus:

Trump is perpetrating market manipulation on an epic scale. The pattern is familiar, from the way Trump, say, imposed tariffs, then rescinded them because of adverse market reactions, during his first presidential term and the first year of his second. But the scale of the manipulation now is almost unprecedented. Trump is using a major war affecting a huge portion of the global energy supply to drive markets up and down nearly everywhere in the world, affecting literally trillions of dollars’ worth of assets.

It’s difficult to find historical parallels in which a single man—the worst villains are always men—moved markets so dramatically in such a short period of time. Hitler and other elite warmongers destroyed far more value than Trump has (so far), over longer periods of time. So maybe that’s some consolation.

On the other hand, maybe Trump is just getting started. His power trip has metastasized from seizing one despot in Venezuela just a few months ago to seizing control of much of global commerce. You cannot overstate how dangerous this is.

Many whipsawed analysts are taking Trump at his word, as if he really did plan an attack on Iran’s energy grid on March 21, then changed his mind before his self-imposed deadline arrived on March 23. They seem to think Trump really is negotiating an end to the war with somebody in Iran.

More seasoned pros are basically throwing up their hands. “So much going on but so little to say at this point,” economist Peter Boockvar wrote in a March 23 newsletter. “It seems clear that the only way the strait will be fully safe to traverse will be when the war ends.”

That might be in one week, one month, or one year. Nobody knows, not even Trump. For now, the smartest move for investors might be turning off social media and paying no attention at all to anything Trump says.

Subscribe to The Pinpoint Press

Click Here: LINK TO PROMOTION PAGE