March 2026: Oil's Biggest Monthly Surge Since 1990, Gold's Worst Month Since 2008

Oil: A Record That Stood for 36 Years, Broken

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, climbed 51 percent since the start of March 2026, according to LSEG data cited by The Guardian. That beats the previous record monthly gain of 46 percent set in September 1990 — when Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait triggered the first Gulf War.

Brent closed at $112.57 per barrel on Friday, March 27, per the Guardian and CNBC. That is up from $72.48 per barrel on February 27 — the day before the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began — representing a 55.32 percent total increase since the war started, according to Wikipedia's economic impact summary of the conflict. During March, Brent briefly traded as high as $119.50 per barrel, its highest level since June 2022, per the Guardian.

U.S. crude prices also surged. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained 48 percent in March, on track for its strongest monthly gain since May 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was disrupting the global economy, per the Guardian.

Analysts at BloombergNEF estimate that 9 million barrels of oil per day have been knocked off global supply by the Middle East conflict, per the Guardian. For context, global oil demand runs at roughly 100 million barrels per day; a 9 million barrel daily shortfall is roughly equivalent to losing all of Iran and Iraq's combined normal output.

Gas at the Pump: Americans Pay More

The oil price surge has filtered through to U.S. retail gas prices, though with a lag. The national average price for regular gasoline stood at $3.98 per gallon as of Thursday, March 26, up roughly 33 percent from one month ago, according to AAA, per CNBC. Fox Business cited the same AAA figure, noting it was up about $1 from a month ago.

The rise is substantial in dollar terms but has so far stayed below the psychologically significant $4 barrier. For comparison, U.S. gasoline hit a national average of $5.01 per gallon in June 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, per historical AAA data.

Higher gas prices are already affecting consumer behavior. The Guardian published accounts from multiple Americans describing cutting driving, delaying car purchases, and reducing household budgets in response. A Massachusetts-based librarian described her husband working 12 to 14 hour days across two delivery jobs just to cover housing, fuel, groceries, and utilities, telling the Guardian: "Despite having two full-time incomes, we still are barely covering the roof over our head and the food on our table… Forget retirement, I'm worried we won't even be able to make it through the next few years."

Fertilizer prices have also risen with energy costs, raising concerns about food price inflation later in 2026 that could exceed the immediate gas price shock — a dynamic Ranked has covered separately in the context of global supply chains.

The Reserve Release That Didn't Work

On March 11, the International Energy Agency announced the largest emergency release of strategic oil reserves in its 51-year history. The IEA's 32 member countries agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic stockpiles, per Al Jazeera and The Guardian. The Conversation reported that 32 countries will sell a combined 412 million barrels from reserves into the global market over four months, beginning in late March.

It wasn't enough. Oil prices rose through the rest of March despite the announced release. The Guardian observed that earlier in the month, Trump's claims of progress in ceasefire negotiations had briefly pushed crude prices down — but by late March, Trump's declaration of a 10-day extension for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was met with a rising oil price and falling stock markets.

Fawad Razaqzada, an analyst at City Index, told the Guardian: "Markets appear to be placing less weight on White House jawboning and focusing more on the underlying supply risks."

IEA chief Fatih Birol described the Iran war energy crisis as comparable in severity to the 1970s twin oil shocks and the energy market disruption from Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine — combined, per the Guardian's reporting from March 23.

Stocks: Correction Territory Across the Board

U.S. equities have suffered their worst month in years. The Nasdaq Composite fell into correction territory — defined as a decline of more than 10 percent from a recent peak — on Thursday, March 26, per the New York Times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also confirmed a correction by end of week, per Reuters and CNN. The S&P 500 fell 1.74 percent on Thursday alone — its worst single day in two months — per CNN.

The S&P 500 had its longest weekly losing streak in four years as of March 27, per CNN. Stocks fell even on the days Trump announced pauses or extensions on planned strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure, as investors appeared to be pricing in sustained disruption rather than near-term resolution.

The FTSE 100 in the United Kingdom fell more than 8 percent in March, on track for its worst monthly performance since March 2020 (COVID-19), per the Guardian. The FTSE ended last week back below 10,000 points, wiping out nearly all of January and February's gains.

Gold: The Safe Haven That Wasn't

Gold's failure to perform its traditional role as a war and inflation hedge is one of the more surprising market developments of the month. Spot gold fell approximately 15 percent since hostilities began on February 28, and 22 percent below its January record high, per Reuters as of March 23. The Guardian reported that gold's decline of almost 15 percent since the start of March put it on track for its worst monthly performance since 2008, and the fifth-biggest monthly fall in the past 50 years.

Several factors appear to be driving gold's unusual behavior:

Forced selling: Investors who took leveraged positions in other markets — stocks, bonds, currencies — facing margin calls or losses may have been selling gold to raise cash, per the Guardian.

Turkey's gold dump: The Turkish Central Bank sold approximately 50 tonnes of gold in a single week, cutting its reserves from roughly 822 tonnes to 772 tonnes — its largest weekly reduction since August 2018, per Reuters. Bloomberg reported that Turkey sold and swapped approximately 60 tonnes of gold worth more than $8 billion in the two weeks after the Iran war began, as the Turkish central bank sought to stabilize the lira under pressure from energy price inflation.

Rate expectations: Gold performs poorly when real interest rates rise — and the Iran war's inflationary impact on energy has pushed traders to reprice higher for longer interest rates, per Reuters. UK 10-year government bond yields rose 17 percent in March to nearly 5 percent, per the Guardian — the biggest monthly percentage rise in UK borrowing costs since the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng "mini-budget" crisis of September 2022.

Historical Context: What Oil Shocks Do

The previous record monthly oil surge — September 1990 — provides an instructive comparison. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 led to a sudden removal of both Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil exports from global supply, spiking Brent crude 46 percent in a single month. That shock contributed to a recession in the United States in 1990–1991, though the recession's severity was moderated by relatively quick military resolution (Operation Desert Storm began in January 1991) and a rapid restoration of supply.

The current shock has several features that make the historical comparison imperfect:

The Hormuz closure is broader in scope than the 1990 Kuwait disruption. Hormuz normally carries approximately 20 million barrels of oil per day — roughly 20 percent of global supply — whereas the 1990 disruption primarily affected Kuwaiti and Iraqi exports, estimated at roughly 4–5 million barrels per day combined.

The IEA did not exist in its current form for crisis response in 1990. The fact that a record-size reserve release failed to contain the current price spike suggests the supply disruption is larger relative to available buffer capacity than in prior crises.

The duration is unknown. The 1990–91 Gulf crisis resolved militarily within months. The Iran war's trajectory — with active ground invasion speculation, expanding Houthi involvement, and ongoing Iran hardliner pressure toward nuclear capability — introduces more uncertainty about when supply could normalize.

What to Watch

Several market-specific data points will indicate whether the situation stabilizes or deteriorates further in April:

The Strait of Hormuz passage rate — currently down approximately 90 percent, per Al Jazeera — is the single most important variable. Any material increase in vessel transits would signal easing supply pressure and likely trigger an oil price pullback. The Pakistani flag deal (20 ships through the strait) announced March 28 is a small but potentially significant first data point.

U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for March, expected in mid-April, will be the first official measure of how the war's energy price spike has translated into broader U.S. inflation. The Federal Reserve's rate path for 2026 depends heavily on that data — and whether it sees energy-driven inflation as transitory or sticky.

Gold's recovery trajectory — or lack thereof — will signal whether institutional investors see the Iran war as a manageable short-term disruption or a structural shift that warrants traditional safe-haven positioning. Gold's current behavior is anomalous by historical standards; it cannot remain anomalous indefinitely.