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The Nasdaq Composite about-faced mid-morning and resumed its upward march on Thursday, as tech stocks carry on in the face of war. All three main U.S. equity indexes spent time in the red before rising, keeping a bullish trend intact, despite multiple disruptions and continuing volatility in the crude oil market.
According to Bloomberg, leaders in the Middle East and Europe say it’ll take “about six months” to negotiate a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran and are calling for the parties to open the Strait of Hormuz immediately.
“Gulf states believe Iran is looking to build a nuclear weapon,” Bloomberg reports, “and that hasn’t changed in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli bombardment of the country.”
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The front-month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures contract was up 2.1% to $90.02, while Brent crude oil futures, a global benchmark, surged 3.4% to $98.11. WTI is up 34.3% since the war began on February 28, Brent 35.4%.
Here are three things you can do now to keep control of your portfolio as crude oil prices shake markets.
Semiconductor stocks stand out
By the closing bell, the Nasdaq Composite had added 0.4% to 24,102 — a new record high — and has now finished higher for 12 straight trading sessions, its longest winning streak since 2009. The S&P 500 was up 0.3% to 7,041, another new all-time closing high for the broad-based index. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 0.2% to 48,578.
“Strength in technology stands out,” LPL Financial Chief Technical Strategist Adam Turnquist writes. “This advance contrasts with prior retests of the 7,000‑point level earlier this year, when mega‑cap stocks weighed on overall performance.”
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ASML (ASML, -4.8%) sagged even after reporting expectations-beating first-quarter results, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM, -3.2%) was down despite doing the same and Nvidia (NVDA, -0.3%) was one of 13 Dow Jones stocks to give up ground today.
But Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, +7.8%) traded to another new all-time high, Intel (INTC, +5.5%) posted a big gain as well and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX, +1.0%) has added 23.5% so far in April.
Hard landing for NewBirdAI “Hail Mary”
Allbirds (BIRD, -35.8%) was up as much as 876.3% on Wednesday after the company announced a shoes-to-GPUs transformation into an AI stock. But it was down as much as 36.1% on Thursday as its move faced more scrutiny.
In fact, following a deeper look, William Blair analyst Dylan Carden is no longer covering the stock. “This is by any measure a Hail Mary,” Carden writes, “in part as indicated by the proposed allowance in the associated proxy for management to fully dissolve the business within 12 months of the planned special meeting for approving these measures on May 18.”
As Carden notes, BIRD traded “at an enterprise value around $140 million on the news from closer to $10 million prerelease.” The analyst explains that he has no basis to establish a valuation “with the wind-down of the footwear business and deep uncertainty about its new endeavors in cloud compute.”
Liquidating BIRD could generate 2 cents to $1.83 per share. “Meanwhile,” Carden concludes, “a $50 million investment is a drop in the bucket in the broader neocloud market, where most companies run capex budgets well into the billions of dollars.”
Can Pepsi challenge new highs?
PepsiCo (PEP, +2.3%) reported earnings of $1.61 per share (+8.8% year over year) on revenue of $19.4 billion (+8.5% YoY), beating a FactSet-compiled Wall Street estimate for EPS of $1.54 on revenue of $18.9 billion.
Management of the consumer staples stock forecast full-year organic revenue growth of 2% to 4% and a free cash flow conversion ratio of at least 80%. That’ll support a $1.0 billion stock buyback program and $7.9 billion in dividends.
“We are pleased with our first-quarter results, which featured an acceleration in both net revenue and organic revenue growth,” PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laquarta said, citing notable improvement in the beverage-and-snack outfit’s convenient foods organic volume as well as the resilience of its international business.
PEP lagged the S&P 500 over the trailing 12 months through Wednesday, 12.7% to 31.8%, but had gained 8.9% in 2026 vs 3.0% for the index. The blue chip stock is 8.2% short of its 52-week high of $171.48, established on February 12.
