Hannah Aaron Lang

Even with the president's post today, it can be difficult to kind of restore the flow of oil and gas exactly as it was before this conflict began.

So we may not exactly be back to normal in the energy markets, and we might see more market volatility until we get there.

Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores.

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Hey, listeners, it's Saturday, March 21st.

I'm Hannah Aaron Lang 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 to it.

The vibes in financial markets did not get much better this week.

There were a lot of big losers, including gold and the companies that mined the precious metal, chipmaker Micron Technology in spite of its eye-popping earnings, and Supermicrocomputer, whose co-founder got on the wrong side of U.S.

prosecutors this week.

But more on that later.

First, let's talk about oil, which is really all that anyone is talking about since the war in Iran began three weeks ago.

At the beginning of the week, US stocks shrugged off energy concerns, rising with hopes that perhaps a coalition of countries would work together to open the Strait of Hormuz, the key thoroughfare for a fifth of the world's oil supply.

But the mood shifted on Wednesday when the Federal Reserve announced its latest move on interest rates.

Policymakers opted to leave rates unchanged, which is pretty much what Wall Street expected.

But then, at a press conference after the decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell made remarks that investors didn't find very comforting.

He highlighted the inflation risks posed by the war in Iran and said the central bank was in a, quote, difficult situation, end quote.

That really weighed on stocks, and investors slashed their bets that the central bank would cut interest rates at all in 2026.

Combine that with news of attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East, and it just wasn't a very good week for markets.