Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ is rising as Iran conflict escalates. Here’s what investors should watch.

MarketWatch Published Updated Stocks
Sign in to save

Affected assets and topics

S&P EQUITY

Why it matters

The 'fear gauge' is rising as the S&P 500 and other major US equity indexes hit their lowest levels of the year, but a rebound occurred in the afternoon.

Expected market reaction

Bearish Confidence 70% How confidence is read Horizon: Short term Impact: Moderate

Market impact analysis based on bearish sentiment with 70% confidence.

Evidence trail

Evidence
Source MarketWatch
Claim Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ is rising as Iran conflict escalates. Here’s what investors should watch.
AI inference Bearish · 70%
Generated 2026-03-03 20:58

AI provenance

Analysed by Llama 3.1 8B Instant (Groq) Methodology v1.0 Generated
Technical identifiers
Provider tag
groq-llama-3.1-8b-instant
Analysis version
groq-llama-3.1-8b-instant
Article id
52830

Original source

Wall Street’s “fear gauge” was rising on Tuesday as the S&P 500 and other major U.S. equity indexes touched their lowest levels of the year, before an afternoon rebound caused them to recoup much of their earlier losses.

Read the full article on MarketWatch

Original article published by MarketWatch on March 3, 2026. Analysis and insights provided by AnalystMarkets AI.

Related coverage

This model on similar stories

Llama 3.1 8B Instant (Groq) · 37.9% correct across 177 scored calls on equities See the full record