Weekly Report 13/2026

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed

Since the start of Operation “Epic Fury”, various stock indices have been losing their resilience. The Nasdaq tech index (-4% since the start of the month, -6% since the start of the year) had long proven to be relatively resilient. The broad Dow Jones has already lost 6.9% at a time when oil prices have risen by around 50%. The Strait of Hormuz is the bottleneck.
In Europe, where prices for some distillates have nearly tripled, the situation looks worse: The Euro Stoxx 50 (-10.4% since the start of the month) is still faring better than the DAX (-11.5%) and the SMI (-12.1%).
The SMI fell from 14’014 (end of February 2026) to 12’321 points in a very short time. This means that the market is not pricing in a quick end to the Middle East conflict.
The 200-day moving average has been clearly broken to the downside by all major stock indices. These are negative technical signals. However, as seen most recently after “Liberation Day” (April 2, 2025), the market has repeatedly demonstrated how quickly a recovery can occur in response to positive news.
In the U.S., pressure on the president is mounting. There, the sharp price increases—gasoline to $3.70 per gallon (+$1.00) and diesel to $5.20 (+$1.50)—are immediately passed on: higher Uber and Uber Eats prices, higher FedEx and airline prices, etc. This is fueling inflation fears on Main Street as well as on Wall Street.
The more important and far-reaching question, however, remains the negative impact on potential demand growth if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened soon. Money spent on additional energy is money that is not available for other consumer goods. Stocks such as Nestlé’s (-10% since the start of the month) have therefore come under heavy selling pressure.
Governments’ fiscal leeway will narrow if higher yields driven by oil prices make borrowing more expensive in the long term. Fast-growing economies like Spain are certainly in a better position to finance fiscal relief packages in response to rising energy prices.
Expectations of an interest rate cut by the Fed have been wiped out. The market currently expects an interest rate hike in the fall of 2026. By December 2026, there are expected to be key interest rate hikes: three in the eurozone and two in Switzerland. This has significantly influenced the yield curve.
At the short end, there have been massive increases since the start of the month, e.g., in two-year government bonds in the U.S. (+55bp to 3.9%) and in the U.K. (+100bp). Yields on 10-year government bonds have also risen, albeit only moderately in Switzerland (+14bp), while increases were significantly stronger in Germany (+33bp), the US (+34bp to 4.3%), France (+46bp), and the UK (+62bp to 5.0%). Bond indices fell accordingly. The global bond index therefore quickly lost 3.0%, but, as expected, is proving more resilient than the global equity index (-6.6%).
The positive correlation between bonds and equities is reminiscent of 2022, but at present the macroeconomic differences are so numerous that we caution against simplistic analogies.