Weekend Reading
3/1/26
SEQH Capital Research
Weekend Reading, March 1, 2026
The Week That Was
S&P 500 closed at ~6,840, down ~1.0% on the week as tech led the selloff. The Nasdaq and S&P posted their worst month since March 2025. The 6,900 pivot we flagged last week failed to hold as resistance, and 6,730 (mid-December lows) is now the next downside target.
NVIDIA crushed estimates but the tape didn’t care. Q4 FY26 revenue came in at $68.1B (+73% YoY), well above the ~$65.6B consensus, with EPS of $1.76 (+98% YoY). Full-year revenue hit a record $215.9B. The Rubin platform was formally unveiled with a promised 10x reduction in inference token cost vs. Blackwell. Despite the beat, shares dipped after hours on “expectations fatigue,” as analysts note the market now demands outsized results every quarter.
OpenAI raised $110B at a $730B pre-money valuation, with $30B from SoftBank, $30B from NVIDIA, and $50B from Amazon, a massive signal on AI capex durability.
Trump delivered his 2026 SOTU on Feb 24, announcing a “Rate Payer Protection Pledge” requiring tech companies to build their own power plants for data centers rather than drawing from the existing grid. This is a direct policy catalyst for behind-the-meter generation and potentially bullish for SMRs and on-site nuclear.
Iran talks: Oman declares “breakthrough.” In the third round of Geneva talks (Feb 26), Oman’s FM said Iran agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium and to degrade existing stockpiles into fuel, calling it “unprecedented”. Trump remained skeptical, saying “we’re not exactly thrilled”. A deal could take ~3 months to finalize. The IAEA separately revealed Iran stored most of its 60%-enriched uranium in an underground tunnel at Isfahan that survived the June 2025 strikes largely intact.
SCOTUS tariff fallout continued. Trump’s new 10% global tariff under Section 122 took effect, replacing the struck-down IEEPA duties.
What’s on Deck: Week of Mar 2, 6
Monday (3/2): ISM Manufacturing PMI (Feb), a key read on factory activity amid the tariff regime change.
Tuesday (3/3): NY Fed President Williams speaks; Minneapolis Fed’s Kashkari gives interview, watch for any shift in rate cut rhetoric after hot January inflation data.
Wednesday (3/4): ADP Employment Report (Feb), ISM Services PMI, Fed Beige Book, EIA Crude Oil Inventories. A packed session, services PMI will indicate whether AI-disruption fears are bleeding into the real economy.
Thursday (3/5): Light calendar. Digest day before NFP.
Friday (3/6): February Non-Farm Payrolls, consensus ~70K, 80K new jobs, a significant step down from January’s 130K print. A weak number could revive rate cut expectations; a hot number likely kills them for the foreseeable future. Markets currently pricing two cuts in 2026, but some strategists say the real number may be zero.
Nuclear & Uranium: What Matters
Denison Mines (DNN) greenlights Wheeler River. The company made a positive FID on the Phoenix ISR uranium mine in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin, the first greenfield Canadian uranium mine approved in decades. Construction begins this month with first production targeted mid-2028, ramping to ~9M lbs U₃O₈/year over a 15-year mine life. This is a landmark supply-side development but still years from meaningful production.
Trump’s “Rate Payer Protection Pledge” is a policy tailwind. By telling tech companies to build their own power plants, the administration is effectively endorsing behind-the-meter generation at scale. SMR developers stand to benefit directly, as data center operators now have White House backing to pursue on-site nuclear as a viable path.
Iran nuclear deal momentum is a double-edged sword. A comprehensive deal would reduce geopolitical risk premium in uranium pricing, but Iran’s enrichment infrastructure is severely damaged and would take years to rebuild. The practical supply impact is negligible near-term. The bigger risk is sentiment, a deal headline could trigger a short-term pullback in uranium equities even if fundamentals remain unchanged.
IAEA confirms Isfahan tunnel complex largely survived strikes, with “regular vehicular activity” observed near the entrance. Iran’s 440.9 kg of 60%-enriched uranium remains a central sticking point in negotiations.
AI capex cycle reaffirmed. Between NVIDIA’s record quarter and OpenAI’s $110B raise, the power demand thesis for AI infrastructure has never been stronger. Trump’s grid comments at the SOTU, “we have an old grid, it could never handle the kind of numbers,” further validate the thesis that new baseload generation (read: nuclear) is the path forward.
Our Read
The NFP print Friday is the week’s main event. A soft number in the 70K range reopens the door for rate cuts and likely lifts risk assets broadly; a beat above 130K could push yields higher and pressure the tape further toward that 6,730 support level.
The SOTU’s energy policy direction is quietly one of the most constructive developments for nuclear in months. “Build your own plant” is a green light for co-located SMRs at hyperscale data centers, watch for corporate announcements in the coming weeks.
Iran talks remain fluid. Oman’s “breakthrough” framing is optimistic; Trump’s skepticism suggests we are far from a signed deal. We view any uranium pullback on deal headlines as a buying opportunity given the structural supply deficit.
New Month, Final Month of Q1
March is here. We’re entering the final stretch of Q1 2026, and the catalysts are stacking up: NFP, FOMC on the horizon, tariff escalation risk, and Iran talks all converging into quarter-end positioning. Expect volatility. We’ll be publishing through all of it.
What We Published This Weekend
Paid subscribers got three new research drops on Friday:
TerraPower’s Hidden Fuel Partner: Network Centrality and S..., a deep dive into the supply chain dynamics behind TerraPower’s sodium-cooled reactor program and the overlooked fuel fabrication partner at the center of the network.
Nuclear Energy Market Roundup, our end-of-month sector summary covering price action, policy developments, and positioning across the uranium and nuclear equities landscape.
NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR), Q4 & Full Year 2025 Earnings Review, a full breakdown of NuScale’s latest quarter, revenue trajectory, backlog, and what the Romania FID means for the forward outlook.
All three are live now for paid subscribers. If you’re reading this on the free tier, now is the time. March will be one of the most consequential months for the nuclear sector this year, and our paid research is where the edge lives.
→ Upgrade to Paid and don’t miss a single report this quarter.