The war in Iran is still going on.
President Trump has suggested that the conflict will soon come to an end, although he did so without explaining the reasons behind that comment or any timeline. Meanwhile, the US military is increasing its bombardment of Tehran and its infrastructure.
Conflict takes on a life of its own, and on that basis, markets are reluctant to forecast their outcome or how long they will go on for.
In their briefings, the White House has indicated that this will not be another Iraq or Afghanistan, and there is a school of thought among some analysts that the longer the fighting goes on, the better it is for the Iranians, and the worse it is for the Americans and their allies. Simply because of the energy crisis an extended war, and limited navigation in the Strait of Hormuz would create.
Though we can’t be certain that the war will end quickly, we can at least prepare for that eventuality by doing some research and looking for opportunities and set-ups that would benefit from an end to hostilities, to create a watch list of stocks, so that we're ready for when and if it does end.
Near-term performance
The table below shows the S&P 500 index and sectors, and the percentage of stocks in each that are trading above key moving averages.
The heat map provides an at-a-glance guide to what’s sold off and what’s held up.
Financials and Consumer Staples have both seen sharp declines in the number of stocks trading above their 5 and 20-day moving averages.
Source:Barchart.com
However, if we look further to the right in the table, we see that Consumer Staples stocks have held up rather better, in the medium to long-term MA percentages. For example, 72.0% of Consumer Staples stocks are trading above their 100 D MA lines.
Whereas, in the Financials sector, that figure is just 25.00%. Which suggests that the pressure on the Financials has been more persistent and deep-seated.
Reading between the lines, we might think that Consumer Staples could rally more quickly on good news, whereas the Financials might need a more substantial, longer-term catalyst.
That said, JP Morgan wrote on investment banks today, saying that the volatility in markets that the Iranian war has created, should benefit the trading businesses of the banks, and with Q1 26 earnings season not that far away, their share prices might see a pick up
As part of that commentary, JP Morgan raised its price targets on Morgan Stanley by $6.00, and by $11.00 for Goldman Sachs.
What about stocks that may have started to bounce already?
We had something of a test run of the market's potential reaction to good news when President Trump tweeted (on 9/03/2026) that the war would soon be over. The S&P spiked dramatically, moving out of the red and into the green just ahead of the close. However, there was no further information or follow-up to support that statement.
Source:Barchart.com
With that possibility in mind, I thought it might be interesting to look at large-cap US stocks that have underperformed, but are now showing some signs of life. And so I ran a screen ofS&P 100 stocks that have underperformed the S&P 500 index by -5.0% or more, year to date.
But which have been positive over 5 days, as of the close 09-03-2026.
I have also included the number of new 5-day highs posted and the date when the most recent new 5-day high hit the tape.
Of course, the first thing you will notice is that all of the stocks in the table below are in technology and or software-related sectors, which are, of course, facing their own set of problems unrelated to the war in the Middle East, although data centres have come under attack there.
Source:Barchart.com/ Darren Sinden
A real-time test case
Interestingly and quite by chance, Oracle Corp ORCL US is right in the middle of that table.
And it reported earnings last night. What’s more, those earnings came in ahead of Wall Street expectations.
Oracle also raised its guidance and moved to reassure the market that it has the capital and cash flow necessary to meet its AI spending / capex commitments.
Oracle reported +22.0% growth in revenue, year over year, and $8.90 billion in cloud revenue, a figure that was up+ 44.0% on the prior period.
Source:Barchart.com
Oracle stock rallied by as much as +11.0% in the after-market, having fallen more than -54.0% in the previous 6-months. The way that Oracle trades from here will be a barometer for both the technology sector and market sentiment as a whole.
Of course, I touched on this very scenario in the article Software Stocks Slide Despite Rising Earnings Forecasts published on Feb 26th.
I said then that earnings could be the deciding factor in the battle between software and AI stocks, and the same could be true for those stocks involved in the data centre boom, of which Oracle is one.
I am a great believer in letting the market show you what it wants to do, and we now have the perfect opportunity to do just that.
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