ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: March 2 - 6

Nothing upends the economic game board like a sudden war few had in their bingo cards a week ago. Granted, the coordinated US-Israel attack on Iran over the weekend wasn’t a complete surprise. But the scale of the bombardment that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was impressive. Tehran’s wave of retaliatory missile and drone attacks aimed at US bases and allies around the region, and threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, have economists scrambling to calculate the fallout.

As traders assess what all this means for energy and other commodity prices, this week features a couple of key data reports that could influence the timing of any future Federal Reserve rate cuts, namely, February employment (Fri) and January retail sales (Fri).