Stocks Are Climbing Again, but Oil Is Still Setting the Terms

Monday’s close gave investors a meaningful rebound. The S&P 500 rose 1.0% to 6,699.38, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8% to 46,946.41, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.2% to 22,374.18 as crude pulled back from its intraday highs and buyers returned to large-cap growth names. That rebound mattered because it showed the market could still rally when energy pressure eased, even with the Middle East conflict unresolved.

Tuesday morning has turned into a more complicated, and in some ways more constructive, test. By midmorning, the Associated Press reported the Dow up about 428 points, or 0.9%, with the S&P 500 ahead 0.7% and the Nasdaq up 0.6%, even as U.S. crude traded around $94.53 a barrel and Brent hovered near $102.15. That tells you the market is no longer reacting to every oil move with an automatic broad selloff. Investors are still willing to buy stocks, but they are being much more selective about which ones.

The stock-level action shows that selectivity clearly. As of about 10:05 a.m. ET, Uber was up 5.2% to $78.57, Delta was up 4.8% to $63.79, American Airlines was up 3.9% to $10.895, SoFi was up 1.6% to $17.92, and AMD was up 0.8% to $198.10. Nvidia, by contrast, had slipped 0.4% to $182.51, while Honeywell was down 0.3% to $233.91. The broad market is green, but leadership is narrow, and investors are rewarding very specific catalysts rather than treating this as a clean risk-on morning.

That is the right lens for this market going into noon. Oil is still elevated after renewed attacks on UAE energy infrastructure. Treasury yields are still high enough to keep pressure on valuation multiples, with the 10-year yield near 4.244% in early trading, and the Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting that investors expect to end with no rate change on Wednesday. The tape is holding together, but the cost of that resilience is that stock picking matters a lot more than it did when liquidity and falling yields were doing more of the work.

Stock of Interest Today: SoFi Technologies (SOFI)

Sometimes the clearest vote of confidence in a stock is not an upgrade or a price target. It is the CEO reaching into his own pocket. That is part of what makes SoFi stand out this morning. Barron’s reported that Anthony Noto bought 56,000 shares on March 2 at an average price of about $17.88, spending roughly $1 million in his first open-market purchase since 2024. With the stock trading at $17.985 around 10:10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, that buy still sits right in the neighborhood of the current price, which gives it a different feel than an insider purchase made far below the market. It looks less like a victory lap and more like a statement that management still sees value here.

That matters because SoFi is no longer asking investors to believe in a distant turnaround. The company’s own fourth-quarter 2025 earnings release laid out a 2026 target of about $4.655 billion in adjusted net revenue, roughly $1.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA, an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 34%, adjusted net income of about $825 million, and adjusted earnings per share of around $0.60. Those numbers do not remove execution risk, but they do make the case more concrete. In a market dominated by oil headlines and Fed anxiety, SoFi still offers a growth story with real operating targets attached to it.

There is also still room for a re-rating if those targets hold. MarketBeat’s analyst compilation shows a consensus 12-month price target of $26.34, well above the stock’s current level. That does not guarantee upside, but it helps explain why SoFi can keep attracting attention even when the broader market is trading on geopolitics. There are louder stories on the board this morning, but few combine insider conviction, rising profitability, and visible upside in quite the same way.

Current price: $17.985

Analyst target: $26.34 consensus

Five Market Themes

The market action this morning is notable because it is not a simple contradiction. Stocks are rising while oil is rising because investors are separating macro pressure from company-specific momentum. That makes this a harder market to read at a glance, but also a more informative one. The winners are telling you where investors still have conviction, and the laggards are showing you where macro stress is still overwhelming the story.

What follows are the five forces that look most important as the market moves through the morning and toward tomorrow’s Fed decision.

1) Oil is still the market’s first variable

The market may be coping better with oil strength than it did last week, but crude is still the most important macro price on the screen. Reuters reported earlier Tuesday that Brent had climbed to $101.94 and WTI to $94.73 after renewed Iranian attacks on the UAE, while AP later put Brent around $102.15 and U.S. crude around $94.53 by midmorning. The larger point is unchanged. Supply fears remain intense, and the Strait of Hormuz still sits at the center of the market narrative because it is such a critical energy chokepoint.

2) The rally is real, but it is not broad-based comfort

The most encouraging thing about today’s session is that the market is up at all after oil turned higher again. By midmorning, all three major indexes were in positive territory, which suggests investors are not pricing today’s oil move as an immediate growth killer. But the stock action under the surface shows a much narrower kind of confidence. This is not a “buy everything” tape. It is a tape where investors are still willing to pay for visible demand, earnings resilience, and credible catalysts.

3) Travel demand is doing more work than investors expected

One of the most important signals this morning is coming from airlines. Reuters reported that Delta raised its first-quarter revenue outlook thanks to accelerating demand, even as the jump in fuel prices is expected to add roughly $400 million in March costs. That helped airline stocks move sharply higher, and the live tape reflects it. Delta was up 4.8% and American was up 3.9% around 10:05 a.m. ET. The market is effectively saying that strong demand can still offset a lot of macro pain, at least for now.

4) AI is still leading, but even there the market is getting pickier

The AI trade is still alive, but it is no longer moving in one block. Reuters reported that Uber and Nvidia expanded their partnership to roll out robotaxis in 28 cities, a catalyst that helped push Uber up 5.2% by 10:05 a.m. ET. Nvidia remains a central market story after Jensen Huang’s bullish GTC presentation and his projection that Nvidia sees at least $1 trillion in AI chip revenue opportunity through 2027. Yet Nvidia shares themselves were down 0.4% at the same moment Uber was surging, while AMD was modestly higher. Investors still want AI exposure, but they are getting more selective about where they expect the near-term payoff to show up.

5) The Fed meeting matters more because yields are still elevated

The final piece of the puzzle is rates. Barron’s reported the 10-year Treasury yield at about 4.244% in early trading, up as oil rebounded and inflation worries returned to the foreground. Reuters also noted that Wall Street opened higher while investors weighed those energy-cost risks just ahead of the Fed. The base case is still a hold on Wednesday, but the market cares much less about the decision itself than about what Chair Jerome Powell says regarding inflation persistence and policy flexibility. When oil is above $100 and yields are back near the recent highs, the Fed’s tone matters more than usual.

Bottom Line

This morning’s market is stronger than a simple oil headline would suggest, but it is also more discriminating than a broad green screen implies. The indexes are higher, yet the real story is underneath them: airlines are rising on demand, Uber is rising on a tangible autonomy catalyst, SoFi is rising on insider conviction and a still-visible growth plan, and Nvidia is no longer automatically rallying just because AI remains the dominant long-term theme. That is what a more mature and more demanding market looks like. Oil is still the pressure point, but investors are no longer treating every company as equally vulnerable to it.

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