Market On Open, Monday 2 March

Last updated on Mar 2, 2026

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Absolute Calm Required

by Alex King, CEO, Cestrian Capital Research, Inc.

So what happens now? If anyone tells you they know the play, they’re deluding you and/or themselves. The situation in the Middle East doesn’t have the look of something that will be over in a couple days, but it might be. It could drag on for years, but it may not. I truly don’t think anyone knows.

At the time of writing, about 5.40am Eastern, oil is down from its highs, equity futures up from their lows, the Vix is fading, crypto is thinking about moving up, and only gold is saying more uncertainty to come. But this is before another night of bombing and it is before it is clear whether the Europeans are dragged fully into the war. No-one knows.

I think this is actually the best way to approach markets right now; even if you did know the next sequence of events, you can’t know how each asset class will respond.

For our Inner Circle members, as always when markets are volatile, we will be posting constant updates in Slack, and we’ll review markets overall in some depth today in our weekly Inner Circle webinar.

Sector Rotation, Done For You

I note that our SignalFlow AI algorithmic services have handled market volatility well recently. The SignalFlow model flipped to risk off in the S&P500 (ie. the model was saying “go to cash”) last Monday at the close, and its sector rotation strategy has been in industrials ( $XLI ), materials ( $XLB ) and emerging markets ( $EEM ) for about three weeks now, avoiding all the drama in tech and being set up solidly for the bull run in those sectors.

Since that rotation, here’s how it has performed vs. the indices.

This is not unusual by the way.

If you’d like to automate how you rotate between sectors - staying in the strongest and out of the weakest - you can learn more here.

Now let’s get into it.