Proflex Market Update - Wk 11
War Jitters | Triple Witching | GTC Conference | Bitcoin Resilience
— Proflex Panel
The Iran-Israel-US conflict has entered its third week with Brent nearing $100 & a market trending upwards, reclaiming the crucial support of $6700.
With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, oil has surged past $100, and every asset class — equities, bonds, gold, crypto — is now being priced through the lens of energy disruption.
 This is not a garden-variety geopolitical scare. This is a structural supply shock, and the market knows it. The S&P 500 sits near four-month lows, bonds are failing their "safe haven" test as inflation fears override flight-to-quality flows, and the Fed is walking into its March 18 decision with almost no rate cut priced in till July. (Fed CMEWatch) At the same time, a massive triple-witching options expiry looms on March 20, NVIDIA's GTC conference kicks off today with Jensen Huang on stage, and Bitcoin is quietly outperforming risk assets despite the chaos. The signal-to-noise ratio has never been lower. Here's where the signal actually is. Insights from the Proflex Macro Call |
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A prolonged helium disruption could create multimonth pressure on the tech sector that "you cannot defend with any technicals."
Investors were also warned about the triple-witching options expiry on March 20, involving roughly $5 trillion in positions. Market makers have been "protecting" the market at the 6700 level, but this structural support could "unroll" after Friday's close.
If a geopolitical resolution isn't reached by then, the removal of that hedging floor could trigger a sharper leg lower.
You can watch the complete recording here:
Other Key Drivers This Week
NVIDIA GTC: Can AI Cut Through the Noise?
Jensen Huang took the stage at the SAP Center in San Jose today, and in a market dominated by war headlines and oil charts, the AI trade needs its own catalyst.
NVIDIA needs a narrative refresh. The stock has been grinding lower through the year's broader tech reset, weighed down by sector rotation into defensives. Energy, utilities, and consumer staples have led the S&P 500 year-to-date while tech and consumer discretionary have lagged badly.
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The narrative refresh is inference: the process where trained AI models do useful work at scale.
Rumored announcements include a dedicated inference chip, the open-source NemoClaw enterprise AI agent platform, and the next-gen Vera Rubin GPU architecture. Every hyperscaler capex plan and enterprise AI deployment still runs through NVIDIA's stack.
This week also brings Micron earnings, where analysts raised estimates significantly on memory pricing strength. The semiconductor complex is attempting a bottom, but the helium supply risk from the Hormuz closure adds a wrinkle that wasn't in anyone's model two weeks ago.
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Triple-Witching Friday: The Floor Could Drop
Trillions of dollars in stock options, index options, and index futures all expire this Friday, March 20.
Market makers have been defending current support levels with hedging activity that keeps selling orderly. Think of it as scaffolding holding a building in place. After Friday, the scaffolding can come down.
The Fed's decision on Wednesday (96% odds of a hold) matters less for the rate itself and more for the updated dot plot, which tells the market how many cuts are still on the table. Before the war, markets expected two. Now that's in question.
The sequencing creates the trap. Fed Wednesday, then Witching Friday. If the dots signal fewer cuts, that repricing hits right before structural hedging protection vanishes.
Proflex Macro Watch : The Stagflation Bind
Last week, Q4 GDP was revised down to 0.7%, half the initial estimate. At the same time, core PCE re-accelerated to 3.1%. Growth slowing while inflation rises. That's a stagflation setup, and oil is making it worse.
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February payrolls fell by 92,000. Unemployment ticked to 4.4%. The Fed faces a dual mandate conflict: cut to support jobs or hold to fight inflation. For now, the answer is hold.
The 10-year yield jumped 13 bps on the week to 4.28%, with the 30-year approaching 4.90%. Bonds are failing their traditional safe-haven role because this shock is coming through energy prices, not a demand collapse as Treasury auctions have been solid recently with high demand despite yield increase.
Bitcoin's Resilience and Gold's Speculative Reset
A notable divergence has opened between the two "alternative" stores of value, and it reveals exactly what's driving each asset right now.
Bitcoin is doing something different this time. It rallied from the low $67,000s to ~$74k today, up over 3% on the day alone. Unlike previous risk-off environments where BTC got crushed alongside equities, it appears to have bottomed in the $60,000-67,000 accumulation zone.
Long-term holder selling has collapsed, down 87% from February peaks. Strategy continues buying thousands of BTC weekly through its $84 billion capital plan. ETF outflows are stabilizing after four consecutive months of redemptions. The accumulation phase looks real.
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Gold, meanwhile, is under surprising pressure.
It slid from above $5,200 to the $5,000-5,040 range by Friday. In a war, you'd expect gold to rip.
Instead, high volatility is driving up margin costs and option premiums, flushing out leveraged players. Gold at $5,000 is still bullish on any historical basis, and the structural bid from central banks and de-dollarization flows hasn't changed. Once volatility cools, gold reasserts. But for now, expect chop.
🧭 Proflex Playbook – Discipline Over Direction
The market is caught between a geopolitical crisis it can't model and a structural expiry event it can time to the hour. This is a week for tactical discipline.
Our conviction stays anchored in the data:
- Focus on Structural Growth: Continue to overweight the secular AI theme, recognizing its multi-year runway.
- Anticipate Shallow Corrections: Use dips as accumulation opportunities, not reasons for fear, understanding that "none of the corrections stick."
- Diversify Thoughtfully: Recognize the "decorrelation" across asset classes; consider gold, silver and Bitcoin for portfolio resilience.
- Develop Mental Models: Prioritize long-term planning (6-12 months out) over short-term news, aiming for consistent, incremental gains.
If you're an All-Access or Managed Portfolio subscriber, our positioning has already shifted ahead of this moment—scaling up asymmetric hard asset plays while hedging for earnings volatility and geopolitical tail risks.
Until next week,
— The Proflex Team
Trusted Macro Insights. Calm Investing. Tactical Trades.
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