What’s News in Markets: Campbell’s Snack Problem, Centene Sinks, Petco Optimism

Speaker 0· Host0:00

Hey, listeners. Your Money Briefing is on a break, but it will be back with more personal finance information for you in the future. Until then, here's the news moving markets this week.

Xavier Martinez· Host0:10

[upbeat music] Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, March 14th. I'm Xavier Martinez for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get into it. This week, the oil markets largely determined where stocks went, and the direction kept changing. Oil hit $100 a barrel Sunday night for the first time in nearly four years, but it fell sharply after President Trump suggested that the war with Iran may be close to an end. That, in turn, lifted major indexes, which started the week on the upswing. But that optimism didn't last. Iran escalated its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, which effectively choked off traffic through the narrow waterway. Oil flows dropped to under a million barrels a day, a fraction of the roughly twenty million that pass through in normal times. Midweek, the International Energy Agency slashed its oil supply outlook and coordinated a record release of emergency reserves, four hundred million barrels from member nations, with the US contributing a hundred and seventy-two million from its strategic reserve. Oil briefly dipped on the news, then climbed right back above a hundred dollars a barrel by Thursday and into Friday, dragging down stock indexes. Even a relatively benign