Stock market today: S&P 500, Nasdaq notch fresh records as tech leads markets higher, oil falls

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) notched all-time record highs on Tuesday as the AI trade powered higher.

Semiconductor stocks led the gains within the tech sector ahead of chipmaker AMD’s (AMD) quarterly results.

Oil prices eased, though Brent and WTI crude futures remained well above $100 per barrel. Investors have looked past the US-Iran war as AI spending has led sharp recovery in stocks.

The US has spent the past two decades insulating itself from oil price shocks, especially those caused by events abroad, Deutsche Bank chief US economist Matthew Luzzetti wrote in a new note outlining the impacts of oil price shocks on the US economy.

That said, the US is not truly energy independent, as oil prices are set globally and events in one corner of the globe are felt worldwide. While the US is generally a net exporter of petroleum products, a category that includes crude oil and refined products, it is a net importer of crude oil, as the chart below shows.

Despite the US’s relatively strong position on energy reliance, gasoline prices have spiked to a national average of $4.48 per gallon at the pump as the war in Iran has stymied global oil flows.

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) isn’t public yet, but Wall Street is already preparing for blastoff.

The rocket company has confidentially filed IPO paperwork but has not been listed yet. Its private-market price has surged nearly 700% since 2023, giving it an estimated valuation near $1.5 trillion — and giving the ETF world a reason to move before the listing.

Todd Sohn, chief ETF strategist at Strategas, noted that there have been nine space-focused ETFs launched or filed over the past three months. One existing space ETF index is also changing its rules so a company like SpaceX could become eligible as early as the close of its first day of exchange trading after an IPO.

The race isn’t only about rockets. It’s about how quickly Wall Street can package private-market giants once they finally hit public markets.

Historically, new listings had to wait before joining major indexes. The Nasdaq 100 (^NDX) used to require three full months of trading, while S&P 500 (^GSPC) eligibility required a full year.

That clock is changing.

Nasdaq has adopted a fast-entry path that could allow a massive new listing into the Nasdaq 100 after only 15 trading days if it clears the size test. The S&P 500 is moving more slowly, with S&P Dow Jones Indices considering a shorter six-month waiting period for some megacap IPOs.

SpaceX could list as soon as June, with reports pointing to a potential IPO valuation of around $1.75 trillion and a raise of up to $75 billion.

This week’s headlines have been dominated by corporate earnings. But the reporting cadence, under which publicly traded companies must share financial results within 45 days of the end of their quarter, could soon become a thing of the past.

On Tuesday, Wall Street’s top regulator proposed ending that requirement in favor of semiannual reports. President Trump has been in support of the idea since his first term in office.

According to Reuters, the Securities and Exchange Commission wants ​to give publicly traded companies the option to file their earnings twice annually, a move that would end a 55-year-old requirement that U.S. public companies share detailed financial results four times a year, within 45 days of the end of their fiscal quarters.

“The rigidity of the ‌SEC’s rules has prevented companies and ⁠their investors from determining for themselves the interim reporting frequency that best serves their business needs and investors,” SEC chair Paul Atkins said in a statement.

Read more here.

Micron is crashing Nvidia’s AI party.

Micron (MU) has nearly doubled since the March 30 market low, adding more than $360 billion in market value as the AI trade moves deeper into the chip supply chain.

That puts the memory chip maker near the top of the large-cap semiconductor rebound — behind Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom (AVGO), and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), but ahead of Intel (INTC), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and most of the chip-equipment group.

Micron’s surge is now backed by more than momentum.

The stock is up more than 12% Tuesday, on track for its best day since the post-”Liberation Day” comeback surge on April 9, 2025, after booming memory chip demand and a Fitch credit upgrade put fresh weight behind the rally.

The broader point: Investors are no longer just chasing the GPUs that train AI models. They’re also chasing the memory and storage needed to keep those systems running.

That shift is showing up in ETF land too.

Todd Sohn, chief ETF strategist at Strategas, noted that semiconductor ETF trading volume keeps accelerating across both plain-vanilla chip funds and levered exposures. He also points out that the Bloomberg Global Memory Index, meanwhile, is up almost 500% over the past year.

The next tests are coming fast: Nvidia reports May 20, giving traders the next major read on AI demand, while Micron’s June results will show whether the memory boom is still catching up to the stock.

Consumer spending and the AI build-out are the “pillars of demand” in US GDP growth, according to Bank of America US economist Aditya Bhave.

Since the first quarter of 2025, Bhave said, final domestic demand — a clean reading on high-level spending in the US economy — has been driven by a mix of consumer spending and AI development. The other elements of final demand — residential investment, government spending, and non-AI capex — have largely contracted.

Data released on April 30 showed that business investments contributed more to the first quarter’s 2% GDP growth than consumer spending, the traditional driver of economic power. Though consumer spending remained stronger than other facets of demand, Bhave noted.

Bhave noted that BofA’s base case sees the consumer remaining resilient to price pressure, with the AI tailwind continuing through the end of the year.

However, BofA cautioned that the war in Iran could potentially derail both — consumer spending via inflation and the AI build-out via heightened energy capital expenditures requirements.

Over the long run, artificial intelligence is likely to deliver large productivity gains for the US economy, boosting growth and cutting production costs, according to Goldman Sachs. But right now, the AI build-out is pushing inflation higher.

US economist Manuel Abecasis highlighted three ways AI is boosting US inflation in a recent client note:

• Demand for AI infrastructure, such as data centers and chips, is boosting the price of electronics inputs, which is likely to put upward pressure on phone and computer prices.

• Software companies’ use of AI to quickly add new features to their products will likely boost the prices those companies charge for their offerings.

• Soaring US electricity demand, spurred by the rapid development of data centers, is raising US ratepayers’ utility bills.

Considering all of the above, Abecasis estimated that AI-related price pressures have raised year-over-year core PCE and core CPI inflation by roughly 0.3 percentage points and 0.1 percentage points, respectively. Abecasis also noted that he expects AI to raise them by another 0.3 and 0.1 percentage points over the next year.

Read more here.

Micron (MU) and Intel (INTC) surged to record intraday highs on Tuesday as booming chip demand lifted the PHLX semiconductor index (^SOX) to new highs.

Micron stock jumped about 10% after Fitch upgraded the memory chip maker’s credit rating from BBB to BBB+ and assigned it a stable outlook.

“The upgrade reflects Micron’s improved financial profile following significant debt repayments over the past 12 months,” Fitch Ratings said in a statement. (Read more about Micron’s move here.)

Meanwhile, Intel popped 13% after Bloomberg reported that Apple was exploring making chips in the US using Intel and Samsung’s services. According to people familiar with the matter, the iPhone maker has had early-stage talks with Intel but hasn’t yet placed any orders.

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates remained elevated in March, above 5% for the ninth consecutive month since July 2025.

The rate of unemployed 22-27 year-olds with college degrees fell to 5.6% in March from 5.8% in February, according to data released by the New York Federal Reserve, notching a small month-on-month improvement.

The unemployment rate for 22-27 year-olds without college degrees fell month-on-month to 7.2% from 7.7%.

The data comes as concerns have increasingly grown that AI could replace large swaths of entry-level white-collar work, the kinds of jobs that college graduates often walk into after finishing their schooling. Companies throughout the US economy have begun laying off workers in large numbers, citing the need for smaller, more efficient teams powered by AI.

While there are small month-on-month variations, the unemployment rate for 22-27 year-olds, both with and without college degrees, has been steadily rising since roughly May 2023, according to NY Fed data.

Yahoo Finance’s Emma Ockerman reports:

Job openings barely budged in March as the hiring rate reached its highest level in nearly two years, Labor Department data released Tuesday showed. But layoffs also crept higher.

Some 6.87 million jobs were open in March, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, slightly above economists’ expectations of 6.85 million openings and just below February’s revised number.

The hiring rate, which in February plummeted to its worst level since the early days of the pandemic, improved to 3.5%, matching levels last seen in May 2024.

Layoffs and discharges, meanwhile, ticked up just barely to 1.9 million, compared to 1.7, million in February. Still, though this year has brought a slew of job cut announcements from notable firms like Oracle, Meta, The Walt Disney Co., Snap, and others, the layoff rate remains low at 1.2%.

Read more here.

Energy is catching a refinery bid.

Crude oil (CL=F) is slightly lower today, but energy stocks and ETFs are perking up as the market looks past the barrel and into refined products. Marathon Petroleum (MPC), Suncor (SU), Williams (WMB), and the oil refiners ETF (CRAK) are all at intraday highs, helped by a Goldman note making the rounds on a refined-products shortage.

Here are this morning’s intraday record highs:

Indexes: Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), Nasdaq 100 (^NDX), Russell 2000 (^RUT), PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX)

Dow Jones Sectors/Industries: Large-Cap Technology, Telecom Equipment, Heavy Construction, Internet Services, Retailer, Broadline, Steel, Technology, Tech Hardware & Equipment

Large-cap sector ETFs: Technology (XLK)

Small-cap sector ETFs: Small-cap tech (PSCT)

Industry/Style/Country ETFs: Tanker Shipping (BWET), Oil Refiners (CRAK), Taiwan (EWT), South Korea (EWY), Semiconductors (SOXX), High Beta (SPHB), Value (VLUE)

Utilities stocks: American Electric Power (AEP)

Consumer discretionary stocks: Amazon (AMZN)

Consumer staples stocks: Casey’s (CASY)

Financial stocks: Allstate (ALL), Cboe (CBOE), Interactive Brokers (IBKR)

Industrial stocks: Cummins (CMI), Emcor (EME), Comfort Systems (FIX), Johnson Controls (JCI), Powell Industries (POWL), Quanta Services (PWR), Rockwell Automation (ROK), Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN)

Energy stocks: Marathon Petroleum (MPC), Suncor (SU), Williams (WMB)

Materials stocks: Steel Dynamics (STLD)

Tech stocks: ASE Technology (ASX), AXT (AXTI), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Cisco (CSCO), ChipMOS (IMOS), Intel (INTC), Keysight (KEYS), Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC), MKS Instruments (MKSI), Micron (MU), MaxLinear (MXL), NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), Silicon Motion (SIMO), Sandisk (SNDK), Seagate (STX), United Microelectronics (UMC), Vishay Intertechnology (VSH), Western Digital (WDC), Wolfspeed (WOLF)

The US stock market turned higher on Tuesday as a fragile calm in the Middle East brought oil prices down, turning investor attention toward a wide slate of earnings.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) gained 0.6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose roughly 0.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained a stronger 0.9%.

In the oil markets, Brent (BZ=F) crude futures fell 2.7% to around $111.40 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) crude fell 3.5% to trade below $103 as tensions calmed after a round of Iranian attacks on Monday.

Palantir (PLTR) fell despite beating Wall Street estimates for first quarter revenue and profit. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Shopify (SHOP), Pfizer (PFE), and Occidental Petroleum (OXY) all report earnings on Tuesday. Ferrari (RACE) beat expectations and reaffirmed its guidance.

The US trade deficit widened in March as imports grew over exports, according to the Commerce Department.

The trade gap grew 4.4% over February to $60.3 billion from $57.8 billion, according to data from the Commerce Department released Tuesday. Economists had expected a $61 billion deficit, per consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Imports grew 2.3% month-on-month, undershooting estimates of a 2.7% increase. Exports rose by 2% over the same period, where economists had expected 1.9% growth.

Consumer goods, motor vehicles, and auto parts drove the increase in import value, while sales of US crude oil and refined products led the growth in exports.

As war in Iran has choked off global energy supplies from the Middle East, US oil companies have sent weekly exports of crude oil and other petroleum products to all-time highs, and put the US back into place as the largest exporter of crude oil in the world.

Oil prices fell after a strong rally yesterday as Tuesday morning brought relative quiet in the Persian Gulf region.

Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international benchmark, fell 2.3% to trade below $112 per barrel, while those on US WTI crude (CL=F) fell a steeper 3.3% to trade below $103.

A slew of conflict-driven headlines from the Middle East sent prices surging on Monday after President Trump’s weekend announcement that the US would “guide” vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, imperiling the fragile US-Iran ceasefire currently in place.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps said Monday morning that its rockets had struck a US warship, though US Central Command quickly denied those reports. Later in the day, the United Arab Emirates reported a volley of Iranian strikes, including on the critical oil terminal of Fujairah — marking the first major strikes against the UAE since April.

Audio shared widely online appeared to show Iranian naval leaders broadcasting a message to ships in the region that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely closed” once again, and several ships were reportedly struck by drones.

Satellite data on Tuesday showed hundreds of ships clustering near Dubai, per Bloomberg, edging away from the Strait of Hormuz as Iran has widened its sphere of influence.

Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and xAI have all agreed to give the US government early access to their leading artificial intelligence models for security testing and research, the Commerce Department announced on Tuesday.

The Center for AI Standards and Innovation will “conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to better assess frontier AI capabilities and advance the state of AI security,” according to a Commerce Department press release announcing the deal.

The Commerce Department has had similar agreements in place with OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) to evaluate their frontier models since August 2024, allowing the government to “receive access to major new models from each company prior to and following their public release.”

The news also comes as Anthropic’s newest Mythos model has renewed security concerns around AI’s ability to target security systems. Mythos, for which Anthropic has given access to only a small share of major companies for early evaluation, is reportedly capable of exploiting and gaining access to high-level security systems.

Uncle Sam’s longest-term debt is back above the stock market’s pain line.

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports:

The US 30-year Treasury yield (^TYX) jumped 6 basis points Monday to 5.03%, its biggest one-day move since March 20 and its highest level since July 2025.

That 5% zone has rattled stocks before. In last week’s Chart of the Day, the setup was already clear: The long bond had repeatedly run into resistance near 5% over the past three years, tightening financial conditions before yields backed off.

The question now is what happens if 5% stops acting like a ceiling.

The 30-year has neared or broken above 5% four times in the past three years. Each time, stocks took a short-term hit, then recovered as yields retreated.

Read more here.

Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) announced on Tuesday it plans to lay off 700 workers, or around 14% of its staff, in the coming weeks. The stock rose 4% in premarket trading.

Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith reports:

The move is intended to manage operating expenses “in response to current market conditions” and “optimize the Company’s operations for the AI era,” according to a regulatory filing.

“Two forces are converging at the same time,” CEO Brian Armstrong said about the restructuring in social media post on X, adding, “We need to be front footed to respond to both.” In addition to the cuts, Armstrong said Coinbase aims to have fewer “pure managers,” by shrinking its organizational structure to a maximum of five layers between top executives and all of the firm’s remaining 4,300 workers.

Coinbase’s stock has faced pressure so far this year as the crypto market has erased about $1.6 trillion in total market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Coinbase also said it estimates total restructuring costs of $50 million to $60 million, with “substantially all” of those costs from employee severance and other termination charges.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre writes in the Chart of the Day:

The Dow transports are pouring cold water on Wall Street’s latest record run.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average (^DJT) just closed under its February breakout zone, erasing the entire April push that briefly carried the index to fresh highs near 25,000.

Transports had recently been one of the rally’s better confirmation points — part of the “most hated rally” that was still gaining strength in April. Now the breakout is gone.

High to low, transports are now down more than 20% from that late-April intraday peak — and the closing drawdown is getting uncomfortably close to bear market territory.

Read more here.

Shares in Palantir slid almost 3% in premarket trading on Tuesday as investors scrutinized its Q1 earnings beat and raised outlook.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré reports:

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) reported Q1 revenue and profit that topped analyst estimates, driven by surging sales to commercial clients and the US government sector.

The company’s revenue jumped 85% in the first three months of this year to $1.63 billion, beating the consensus estimate of $1.53 billion, according to Bloomberg data. The majority of that revenue, or $1.28 billion, came from the US alone.

CEO Alex Karp pushed back against those who bet against Palantir’s success and questioned the impact of AI on its business.

“When the whole world said software had to be worthless, we built platforms that work,” Karp said during the company’s earnings call.

… Shares of Palantir have been recovering from an earlier sell-off as the software sector has been hit amid concerns about AI disrupting business models.

Read more here.

Reuters reports:

Apple (AAPL) has held exploratory discussions about using Intel (INTC) and Samsung Electronics to produce ‌the main processors for its devices, Bloomberg ‌News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the deliberations.

Apple executives ​have made visits to a Samsung plant under development in Texas and, separately, also held preliminary talks with Intel about enlisting the company’s chipmaking services, Bloomberg reported.

While ‌the move would ⁠offer Apple a secondary option beyond its longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the ⁠iPhone-maker is also concerned about using non-TSMC technology, the report said, citing worries about reliability and scale.

Read more here.