The views expressed are Ed le Feuvre's personal market observations and do not constitute investment advice, a financial promotion or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Read the full disclaimer.

Dear Quay Financials,

Easter Sunday in Gran Canaria, and the Atlantic is doing its best impression of forgiveness. The trade winds are light, the surf below Maspalomas is full of families rather than freighters, and from a hotel balcony you could almost believe the world has remembered how to relax. Almost.

A few thousand miles to the east, nothing about the water looks forgiving. Hormuz remains a live combat zone masquerading as a shipping lane, WTI has stopped flirting with three digits and started testing how comfortable the world is with four, and the war premium has now bled from oil screens into yield curves, FX and corporate planning meetings. At the same time, the U.S. labour market has stepped back from the cliff edge without exactly restoring anyone’s faith, and Japan’s long bond continues to insist that the era of “free yen duration” is over.

So, café cortado in hand and Easter bells echoing through Anfi Del Mar, let’s walk through a week where three narratives did the heavy lifting: an oil market that finally traded like a regime change, a jobs report that steadied the ship without changing its heading, and a Japanese bond market quietly resetting the global cost of time.

Recap: Where Week 13 Left Us

Week 13 closed with markets priced for war but still hoping for policy rescue. Hormuz had been upgraded from headline risk to working energy tax, with WTI near 100 and Brent comfortably through the triple-digit line as Iran’s mix of drones, mines and missile threats turned the world’s key oil artery into a toll road.

The Fed’s March meeting had locked in “later and shallower” cuts: policy on hold at 3.50–3.75%, inflation forecasts nudged higher, and Powell openly acknowledging that the Iran shock had created a new, uncomfortable source of inflation risk. Markets finally seemed to believe him, marking the S&P 500 down for a fifth consecutive week while keeping 10-year yields pinned around the mid-4s and the 2-year near 3.9%.

In Tokyo, Ueda’s cautious exit from ultra-easy policy continued to express itself less in rhetoric and more in yields: 30-year JGBs traded up toward 3.7%, a level unthinkable a few years ago and deeply awkward for anyone who had built a career on cheap yen funding. We came into Week 14 with three live questions: would oil spike again or stabilise; would March jobs confirm February’s scare or contradict it; and would Japan’s long end keep pulling global term premia higher.

If you missed last week’s dispatch you can find it here: Week 13, 2026: War Premiums, Five Week Drawdowns, and JGBs on the Edge | LinkedIn

This Week: Week 14, 2026: $110 Oil, Fragile Jobs, and Japan’s New Gravity

Weekly Market Table

For reference, Week 14 closes are as of Thursday 2 April where markets were shut for Good Friday, and Friday 3 April where they traded.

US & Global Equities

US large caps snapped the losing streak – at a price. The S&P 500 finally broke its five-week slide, closing the week around 6,582.68, a solid rebound from roughly 6,369 seven days earlier as investors chose to lean into earnings resilience and policy patience rather than fixate on the oil tape. The rally felt more like a relief bid than a new regime: breadth improved, but leadership still clustered around cash-generative quality and the familiar AI-adjacent names.

The Nasdaq reclaimed some altitude. The Nasdaq Composite climbed back toward 21,879.18, erasing a chunk of the prior week’s drawdown as long-duration growth staged a respectable comeback. Higher oil and still-firm real yields mean the discount-rate debate is far from over, but for now, the market is willing to believe that earnings growth can outrun the energy tax – at least in the mega-cap layer.

Small caps joined the party, cautiously. The Russell 2000 pushed back above 2,530.04, a welcome rebound for an index that had spent much of March behaving like a leveraged bet on higher funding costs and a weaker consumer. The move felt more like a short-covering rally than a full endorsement, given that small caps remain the index most exposed to higher input costs and floating-rate debt.

Europe rallied into the energy tax. The FTSE 100 broke through 10,436.29 and the STOXX Europe 600 moved toward 596.63, as value-heavy, dividend-paying sectors and energy majors did the heavy lifting. Beneath the surface, the tape still reads like classic late-cycle Europe: a quiet fear that higher oil and higher yields will bite, tempered by a desire to own companies that at least benefit from the energy tax.

Japan’s Nikkei paused under a heavier sky. The Nikkei 225 ended the week just below its prior close, around 53,123.49, more digestion than disaster. The combination of record-level JGB yields and global risk-on made for a strange mix: plenty of foreign demand for Japanese equities on currency grounds, but a growing awareness that the domestic bond market now competes for capital.

Hong Kong clung to its quiet relative strength. The Hang Seng held just above 25,116.53, modestly ahead of the prior week, as policy support, better news from selected platform and logistics names, and a thoroughly de-rated China complex kept it from participating in the worst of Wall Street’s earlier wobble.

Gold, Digital Assets & Commodities

Oil became the hedge and the headline. Front-month WTI tore through the psychological line, settling near 111.54 by Thursday as the Hormuz blockade and wider Gulf tension forced markets to accept that this is a regime shift, not a scare. Brent followed suit, with several days of prints above 110 and commentary openly discussing the largest sustained supply shock in years once both Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab are accounted for.

Gold remembered its job description. After wobbling in late March, bullion rebuilt its credentials as policy-error and war hedge, climbing from the high-4,400s to end the week near 4,676.74 per ounce. The move was notable not for its size but for its character: a steady bid in the face of higher nominal yields and a firm dollar, suggesting that some capital is now accepting the cost of carrying insurance.

Bitcoin behaved like high-beta, not high principle. Bitcoin spent most of the week chopping in a tight range in the mid-60ks, ending around 66,959.99. In a world of $110 oil and record JGB yields, the fact that the flagship crypto asset cannot decide whether it is a safe haven or a speculative side-bet tells its own story!

Macro & Policy

US yields eased, but stayed elevated. Ten-year Treasuries drifted down to about 4.31%, from roughly 4.44% a week earlier, while two-year yields slipped under 3.8%, modestly loosening financial conditions without offering a full-blown duration party. The curve remains uncomfortably firm for an equity market that has just endured its first meaningful drawdown of the year.

The dollar stayed king of the defensive hill. The DXY ended the week around 100.19, barely changed but quietly reinforcing its role as the cleanest dirty shirt in a world where both war and policy are doing the tightening. For non-US risk assets and commodities, that translates into a persistent headwind: any local relief rally has to swim against a still-strong reserve currency.

Japan’s long end sat near its new plateau. Thirty-year JGB yields finished the week just under recent record highs, in the high-3.6s, extending a move that has taken them from roughly 2.5% a year ago to the edge of 3.7%. The BoJ has not hiked aggressively; instead, fiscal expansion, imported energy costs and the slow abandonment of yield-curve control have done the heavy lifting for it.

What’s Pertinent This Week (Week 14)?

Hormuz 2.0 : When $110 Oil Becomes a Regime, Not a Spike

The central story of Week 14 was the formalisation of an oil regime built on chokepoints and ultimata. Multiple reports confirmed that tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains heavily constrained, with escorts, insurance premia and outright cancellations turning what used to be a global throughput artery into something closer to a half-functional toll road. At the same time, skirmishes and drone attacks near Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea extended the geography of risk, forcing rerouting and adding days, not hours, to key shipping routes.

Markets stopped treating this as a tail risk and started trading it as baseline. WTI futures ripped above 110, Brent followed, and detailed coverage made clear that this was not just financial positioning: physical cargoes were being delayed, rerouted or priced at widening differentials as refiners and traders competed for safer barrels. The language from Washington and Tehran did nothing to calm those nerves. President Trump’s earlier threats to “obliterate” Iranian energy infrastructure if Hormuz stayed blocked were softened in tone but not in substance; in the same week, Iranian officials doubled down on the rhetoric that any Western attempt to “seize” control of Gulf shipping would be treated as an act of war.

The transmission into broader markets remained brutally simple. Higher oil lifted breakevens and headline inflation forecasts, pinned nominal yields at uncomfortable levels, and squeezed disposable income in energy-importing economies. Energy and resource equities were clear beneficiaries, particularly in Canada, the UK and parts of emerging markets, but for the global consumer, this was an uncompromising tax. Every extra week of constrained flows hardens the narrative that this is not an oil “shock” to be faded, but an energy tax to be managed.

US March Jobs: Stabilisation Without Salvation

The second narrative arrived via the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ March Employment Situation report, released on Good Friday into thin liquidity but thick anticipation. After February’s outright contraction, which saw payrolls fall and prior months revised down uncomfortably, March delivered a cleaner print: nonfarm payrolls rose by 178,000, beating expectations, while the unemployment rate held at 4.3%.

Under the hood, the report was a study in “good enough, but not great”. Job gains were concentrated in health care and social assistance, construction and parts of transportation and warehousing, while federal government employment and some information-sector roles continued to shrink. Average hourly earnings growth moderated slightly but remained north of 3% year-on-year, a level that does little to threaten inflation but equally little to restore the old, comforting narrative of disinflation on autopilot.

For the Fed, March jobs were a stay-of-execution, not an acquittal. The data gave policymakers cover to maintain their “later and shallower” easing stance: the labour market is cooling, but not collapsing, which means there is no immediate need to slash rates even as war-linked energy inflation bites. Markets took the hint. Two-year yields eased but remained firmly above 3.7%, while 10-year yields drifted lower but not low enough to invalidate the idea that the real cost of capital is structurally higher than in the 2010s. Equities interpreted the report as permission to continue the relief rally – especially in cyclicals and financials – but few serious commentators mistook it for a fundamental turn in the cycle.

Japan’s Duration Shock: The End of Free Yen, Part II

The third narrative remained off most front pages but firmly on every asset allocator’s dashboard: Japan’s bond market is still re-pricing a generation of assumptions. Thirty-year JGB yields held near record highs around the high-3.6s, extending a climb that has taken them from roughly 2.5% in early 2025 to their highest levels since the early 2000s. Ten-year yields, meanwhile, pushed above 2.2%, confirming that yield-curve control has been not just relaxed, but effectively abandoned.

The drivers are as much political and fiscal as they are monetary. Successive budgets have embedded large deficits and ambitious spending plans, while imported energy inflation and a weaker yen have pushed realised and expected inflation away from the zero line. Ueda’s BoJ has chosen a path of gradualism: modest rate adjustments, flexible bond-buying rather than hard caps, and rhetoric that stresses caution. Markets, however, are doing the rest of the work. At current levels, unhedged JGBs compete meaningfully with U.S. Treasuries and European sovereigns, especially once FX hedging costs and domestic investor preferences are taken into account.

The spillovers remain subtle but real. Higher Japanese yields encourage some repatriation of capital, put gentle upward pressure on global term premia, and force a more honest conversation about duration risk in everything from U.S. tech stocks to European infrastructure funds. The fact that the Nikkei managed only a small dip this week, hovering around 53,123.49, should not lull anyone into complacency. A sustained JGB yield in the high-3s is not just a local curiosity; it is a new gravity field that every long-duration asset will eventually have to respect.

Looking Ahead to Week 15

Three lenses still feel most useful as we move from Easter Sunday into the next leg of this uneasy year.

The duration of disruption. Every additional week of constrained Hormuz and Red Sea flows hardens the market’s belief that we are dealing with a structural energy tax, not a weather event. Watch the boring data – shipping schedules, insurance pricing, refinery run rates – more closely than the dramatic headlines. A credible, monitored corridor or verifiable mine-clearing could trigger a savage relief rally in risk assets. The absence of such evidence argues for positioning that respects higher oil as the new base case.

Policy patience versus political impatience. March jobs have given the Fed enough cover to stay patient, but not enough comfort to rule out harder choices if oil keeps feeding into inflation expectations. The real risk is not a surprise hike; it is a grinding refusal to cut into an election-season environment where gasoline prices and mortgage rates become blunt campaign tools. Any sign that political pressure is starting to leak into FOMC rhetoric – in speeches, minutes, or dissents – will matter more than the next decimal on core PCE.

Third, leadership and liquidity in a new yield world. The quiet story of 2026 so far is the rotation toward balance sheets, cash flows and shorter duration. Energy, financials and selected value-tilted names look like accidental beneficiaries of a world where war and policy both tighten conditions. High-multiple, concept-heavy growth is being forced to justify itself with earnings, not just narratives. On the fixed-income side, U.S. Treasuries and JGBs are telling the same story: the price of safety is rising, not falling. Allocations that assume a rapid return to the 2010s cost of capital are playing last decade’s game on this decade’s board.

Ed’s Closing Bell: Easter Light, Wartime Pricing

Easter Sunday in Gran Canaria has its own choreography. Children chasing each other between café tables, tourists drifting back from the beach with sand still on their ankles, the late-morning light turning the Atlantic into a sheet of hammered silver. If you did not look at a screen all day, you could easily convince yourself that the world is healing on schedule.

Markets tell a different story. Oil at 110 is not an accident; it is a price, and prices are how the world keeps score when politics refuses to. A labour market that can add 178,000 jobs without changing the Fed’s mind is not “strong”; it is a reminder that progress and fragility can coexist in the same line of a spreadsheet. And a Japanese long bond that demands a 3-handle after a generation near zero is not a curiosity; it is a warning that time itself has become more expensive.

The lesson, from the Atlantic to Hormuz, is simple enough. Chokepoints are no longer just geographic – they are also conceptual. Portfolios built on the assumption of cheap energy, cheap money and cheap duration are discovering that each of those “givens” was a temporary subsidy, not a right. Easter faith is about the possibility of renewal after rupture; portfolio faith, if it means anything, is about the willingness to accept that some ruptures are permanent.

So enjoy the light, but do not confuse it with a guarantee. Make sure your hedges are intentional, not accidental. Check that your dependence on low rates is a choice, not a relic. And remember that in a world where shipping lanes, labour markets and long bonds are all repricing at once, the most dangerous position is not being wrong – it is being certain.

As ever, these reflections are my own, not those of Quay Financials (Gibraltar) Limited, and they are no substitute for your own homework or a proper conversation with someone who knows your circumstances. Treat Easter as a reminder that renewal is possible, but also that it requires a reckoning first – with assumptions, with leverage, and with the price of time.

Further Reading

On the oil surge and Hormuz/Red Sea risks

• Crude Reality: Oil Pierces $110 as Strait of Hormuz Blockade Sparks Supply Jitters – detailed breakdown of the WTI move through 110, tanker disruptions, and the war premium now embedded in the curve.
• Oil Price Surge: U.S. Crude Tops $110 as Strait of Hormuz Tensions Escalate – broader market wrap on the supply shock, including Brent, equities and FX reactions.
• Oil Prices Surge Past $110 as Strait of Hormuz Blockade Triggers Supply Shock – global newswire treatment, useful for timelines and official statements.
• WTI prices surge as Hormuz closure tightens WCS – good colour on how Middle East chokepoints feed into North American benchmarks and differentials.

On the March U.S. jobs report

• The Employment Situation – March 2026 – the official BLS release; the only place to start for the hard numbers and revisions.
• U.S. payrolls rose by 178,000 in March, more than expected; unemployment at 4.3% – concise summary and market reaction.
• Employment Situation Analysis – March 2026 – a thoughtful breakdown of sectoral dynamics and what the report implies for policy.

On Japan’s bond market and global duration

• Japan 30 Year Bond Yield – Quote, Chart, Historical Data – daily JGB 30-year yields, including the move into the high-3.6s.
• Japan 30 Year Government Bond Interest Rate (I:J30YGBIR) – clean charting and historical context for how unprecedented current levels really are.
• Japan – 30-Year Government Bond Yield – alternative series and analytical notes on what the move means for global funding.

On broader markets this week

• Market navigator: week of 30 March 2026 – cross-asset look at how equities, FX and commodities digested oil, jobs and yields.
• Week #14 – Market Update for March 30 – April 3, 2026 – concise recap of index moves and key catalysts across US and global markets.