Stock futures tumble as war drives oil above $100 for the first time since 2022

Pain at the pump is intensifying as the ongoing war in the Middle East pressures supplies.

US average national gas prices rose to $3.45 per gallon on Sunday, according to data from the American Automobile Association, and are up more than 15% since the kinetic conflict started.

“Given Sunday evening’s data and the continued surge in oil prices, I believe there is roughly an 80% chance the national average price of gasoline reaches $4 per gallon within the next month- or sooner,” wrote Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, in a post on Substack on Sunday evening. “In the immediate term, the national average of $3.45 per gallon could climb to roughly $3.75–$3.95 this week alone.”

Prediction markets currently expect prices to end the month around $4.30 to $4.50. On Friday, the prediction market-implied likely range for prices was between $3.60 and $3.70.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The outbreak of the war in Iran has clearly rattled investors and created a few clear winners — mostly energy stocks — and losers — consumer staples, airlines, and, well, more or else everything else.

But there is one interesting outlier to that Manichaean market dynamic.

Software shares — often the same companies that the market was giving up for dead just a few weeks ago due to overexpectations of an AI-driven disruption — have been holding up remarkably well.

These companies, including Intuit, ServiceNow, Datadog, Snowflake, IBM, Workday, and Oracle, have actually had a pretty decent run since the war started with a combined US-Israeli attack on Iran last weekend.

A new note from RBC Capital’s Rishi Jaluria suggests this isn’t just a fluke. Looking at the performance of software stocks during periods of geopolitical stress and market volatility over the last 10 and 25 years, his team found that software shares appear fairly well insulated when these broader shocks hit. RBC wrote:

“The defensive nature of SaaS models and the mission-critical nature of many core software systems at the enterprise level (e.g., in the absence of mass layoffs that may create seat-based headwinds, geopolitical uncertainty and/or market volatility typically will not cause an enterprise CIO to consider ripping out their ERP, CRM, Cyber systems, etc.”

I briefly got Jaluria on the phone yesterday, and he explained a bit more about why he thinks investors might see software as a decent place to hide out from the current chaos.

“With everything in the Middle East, you have to think about not just oil and gas input prices but also supply chains,” he said. “With software, you’re not really thinking about that.”

In other words, there is no equivalent of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz that software investors have to worry about.

Others suggested that the near-term profitability of these giant software companies — aside from concerns about potential long-term disruption from AI — may look different in the face of the economic uncertainty that seems to be growing with the war, especially after a sell-off that has left them relatively attractively valued.

Mark Moerdler, who covers software stocks for Bernstein Research, says that while the AI worries are clearly real, software companies continue to be highly productive cash cows.

“Everyone is afraid that AI is a massive disruptor, and all these articles you read talk about AI as massive disruptor or the world is ending or whatever,” he said. “You don’t see it in the fundamental numbers of the companies I cover. They are delivering GAAP profits, free cash flow, and they’re good investment ideas.”