The Power Index ranks five major capital buckets by relative performance for the short window ending March 17, 2026 (Monday close → Tuesday close), using close-to-close percentage change in USD. U.S. Equities are proxied by SPY, Treasuries by IEF, Commodities by DBC, Gold by GLD, and Bitcoin by BTC spot close.
The top of the table held. The rest did not. Commodities kept first place by a wide margin, but the more interesting move came below that: Bitcoin climbed into second, equities stayed positive in the middle, Treasuries only managed fourth, and gold dropped all the way to last. This was not a clean risk-on table, and it was not a clean defensive table either. It was a split table.
Ranked: The Split
Commodities stayed in first because money kept paying for the inflation-sensitive part of the market first. That is the simple read. The bucket did not win by a few basis points. It separated. The daily gain was large enough to keep the rest of the table from seriously challenging the lead. That matters because repeated leadership at the top is not just performance. It is priority.
The more unusual part is what happened underneath. Bitcoin jumped into second place while gold fell to fifth. Those two are often grouped together in loose market language as alternative stores of value, but the table does not care about market language. It only shows where money went. In this window, money did not treat them the same. Bitcoin rose. Gold fell. That is not a unified hedge bid. It is a break inside the hedge story itself.
U.S. equities finished third. Positive, but not dominant. Money was still willing to sit in equities, just not enough to outrank the harder inflation-linked bucket or the rebound in crypto. That leaves equities in the middle of the structure: not rejected, not in control. Third place is often where the table gets interesting, because it says participation exists but leadership does not.
Treasuries landed fourth, which keeps the same basic pressure on duration visible. Bonds did not collapse. They simply failed to become the preferred answer. If the market wanted a clean defensive reset, Treasuries and gold would likely have been higher together. Instead, one was mildly positive and the other negative. Even defense was divided.
That leaves the table with a clear leader and no clean agreement underneath it. Commodities are first. The rest of the ranking does not tell one story. It tells several at once. Money kept paying for the hard-asset side, tolerated equities, gave crypto more room than gold, and never fully embraced duration. The unresolved part is not who won the day. It is why the table still refuses to simplify around one clear risk posture.