Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq surge after Trump indicates flexibility on Hormuz, says war won’t last ‘much longer’

Surging energy costs driven by the war in Iran are leaving US households increasingly vulnerable to price pressures, analysts from Goldman Sachs and Moody’s said in reports released this week.

“Although US households’ finances are generally intact, spending growth remains modest and increasingly uneven, leaving consumption more exposed to renewed energy price pressures stemming from the Middle East conflict,” the Moody’s analysts wrote.

Recent retail sales data show modest growth in spending, with core retail sales increasing by 0.3% in January even as the headline figure ticked down by 0.2%, according to Goldman Sachs. That said, “spending headwinds from higher inflation due to the recent energy price surge are likely to weigh on spending growth for the rest of the year,” Goldman’s analysts wrote.

The bank is forecasting 2026 real PCE spending growth forecast at 1.3% on a fourth quarter-over-fourth quarter basis, compared to 2025’s growth of 2.1%.

Moody’s analysts also note that energy price hikes impact middle- and lower-income households disproportionately, which will “exacerbate consumption’s dependence on affluent households.” The analysts said that the dynamic may be problematic for spending growth, since affluent households’ confidence can “quickly erode” during equity market volatility, like the swings driven by the war in Iran.

“While household consumption remains the primary driver of US economic growth, the ongoing Middle East conflict and resulting surge in oil prices are testing its resilience,” the Moody’s analysts wrote.

Consumer sentiment data released Tuesday morning by the Conference Board surprised to the upside, though the report still showed that concerns of higher prices coming down the pike are weighing on American households.

Many individual stocks saw large moves on Tuesday as markets staged a comeback amid seemingly de-escalatory rhetoric from the White House about the war in Iran.

Volatility, as measured by the CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX), retreated to 27 but still remained well above 20 — a reading that indicates elevated fear levels.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest movers Yahoo Finance users were viewing:

Apellis Pharmaceutical (APLS) stock skyrocketed 135% after pharmaceutical giant Biogen (BIIB) agreed to buy the company for $5.6 billion, or $41 per share, a 139% premium to Apellis stock’s Monday closing price. As part of the acquisition, Biogen will gain access to Apellis’ bestselling immune disorder treatment, Syfovre, and a drug that treats rare kidney and blood diseases called Empaveli.

CoreWeave (CRWV) stock jumped more than 5% as the Nvidia-backed (NVDA) company secured $8.5 billion in ‌financing to expand its artificial intelligence cloud platform, bringing CoreWeave’s total debt financing over the past year to $28 billion.

Marvell (MRVL) held on to gains of over 7% following the announcement of a $2 billion Nvidia investment.

Constellation Energy (CEG) disappointed investors on Tuesday by not announcing new data center deals at an investor event as widely expected, sending the stock 8% lower. The purveyor of clean energy products and services gave two reasons for the caution: greater scrutiny on data center development from communities and changes to hyperscalers’ power purchase agreements due to a pledge they signed with the White House.

Consumer confidence ticked up in March, rising over the previous month and outperforming economists’ expectations, according to data released by the Conference Board on Tuesday.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence gauge rose to 91.8 from 91.2 the previous month, against expectations of 87.9. The reading on the present situation also rose month over month to 123.3 from 120, outperforming economist expectations of 118.

Bucking the trend, readings on consumer expectations, a forward-facing metric, fell to 70.9 in March from 72 the previous month. Though the gauge still outperformed expectations of 68.4.

The readings are a positive sign for consumer sentiment, which tends to suffer during oil shocks that raise gas prices. On Tuesday morning, the national average for gasoline crossed over $4 per gallon, according to AAA data.

In a client note on Tuesday, Goldman Sachs strategists noted that consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan, has fallen below levels seen during the 2001 tech bubble and during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.

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February saw the lowest hiring rate since April 2020 in the depths of the pandemic, at 3.1%, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday. US hires for the month fell to 4.8 million, down 387,000 year over year.

Yahoo Finance’s Emma Ockerman reports:

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US stocks turned up at the opening bell on Tuesday after President Trump told administration officials that he was considering winding down military presence in Iran without resolving control over the Strait of Hormuz, per the Wall Street Journal

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) ticked up by 1.1% and 0.9%, respectively. The tech-exposed Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose by a stronger 1.3%.

In a social media post Tuesday morning, the US president seemingly signaled his willingness to wind down aggressive military action, counteracting previous escalatory language on Monday.

“Iran has been, essentially, decimated,” Trump posted on Truth Social, addressing other countries. “The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”

Oil rose Tuesday morning despite the president’s comments. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) crude climbed above $103 per barrel as the US-Israeli war against Iran entered its fifth week, while the international benchmark crossed $117.

Investors will get the March consumer confidence reading and the February Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on Tuesday, in what should be a read on US consumer health. In a bearish sign for consumer sentiment, US gas prices at the pump crossed $4 per gallon nationally early Tuesday morning, according to data from AAA. Diesel prices averaged $5.45 per gallon.

Home prices rose slightly to start the year, but the latest reading was taken before fallout from the Iran War began pushing mortgage rates higher.

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, which measures prices in the nation’s largest metro areas, rose 1.18% in January from a year earlier, and 0.16% from December.

The meager gains reflect the housing market’s low-supply, low-demand dynamics. First-time homebuyers continue to struggle with affordability, while many would-be sellers put off moving and hang on to their ultra-low mortgage rates.

The data reflects home sales that closed between late 2025 and early 2026, when mortgage rates were hovering near multiyear lows in the low 6% area, a worrying sign for future housing activity. Since then, mortgage rates have climbed rapidly over the last month and averaged around 6.55% on Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Marvell Technology (MRVL) stock jumped 8% in premarket trading after the data center infrastructure company announced it was joining Nvidia’s (NVDA) web of partners.

Nvidia will invest $2 billion in Marvell as the companies collaborate on building AI factories and silicon photonics technology. Marvell will build custom accelerator chips (XPUs) compatible with Nvidia’s rack-scale infrastructure platforms to scale-up networking.

“The inference inflection has arrived. Token generation demand is surging, and the world is racing to build AI factories,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. “Together with Marvell, we are enabling customers to leverage NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure ecosystem and scale to build specialized AI compute.”

Nvidia stock rose 1.5% half an hour before the opening bell.

Consumer goods giant Unilever will merge its food business with the spice maker McCormick in a deal valued at $44.8 billion, the companies confirmed on Tuesday — marking the latest tie-up in the consumer goods and food-and-beverage space.

Our Brian Sozzi reports:

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Investors often shrug off sentiment data for a variety of reasons: people think in messy, irrational, and contradictory ways. But on Monday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell explained why public opinion still matters for the central bank — and the markets by extension.

Yahoo Finance’s Hamza Shaban writes in today’s Morning Brief newsletter:

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Gas prices crossed a national average of $4 per gallon early Tuesday morning as the war in Iran has continued to wrack the energy market, driving up oil prices around the globe.

The average price at the pump across the US hit $4.02 on Tuesday, its highest level since August 2022, according to AAA data, after climbing more than $1 over the past month from $2.98

This rise comes as the US-Iran war enters its fifth week and is the latest milestone to be reached by gas prices, which are now up about $1 on average from one month ago.

Underlying oil prices on international Brent crude (BZ=F) and US West Texas Intermediate crude (CL=F) have surged by roughly 50% each over the past month since the war began. Futures on the two energy products were trading around $107.80 per barrel and $102 per barrel, respectively.

On March 25, the Trump administration eased federal ethanol restrictions by issuing an emergency waiver for E15 gasoline, a move designed to increase the supply of a less expensive blend of fuel ahead of the warmer weather driving season. The White House also issued a temporary 60-day waiver on so-called “Jones Act” requirements that make domestic shipping more expensive.

Neither move, however, has managed to truly pull gas prices back across the country.

While consumers have had to shell out more money to fill up their vehicles over the past month, truckers have been paying even more. The national average for a gallon of diesel reached $5.45 on Tuesday.

Bloomberg reports:

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Bloomberg reports:

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