US stocks have closed mixed, with investors pressing pause as they headed into the weekend and kept an eye on ongoing Middle East peace negotiations.
US stocks have closed mixed, with investors pressing pause as they headed into the weekend and kept an eye on ongoing Middle East peace negotiations.
A closely watched inflation report showed consumer price growth accelerated as expected, due to price pressures arising from the war on Iran.
The Dow and the S&P 500 ended lower while tech stocks boosted the Nasdaq to gains on the session as investors assessed unfolding developments in the Middle East.
The fragile two-week truce has been threatened by claimed violations of the ceasefire.
These included Israel's continued bombardment of Lebanon, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was seeking direct talks with the country's leaders.
The vital Strait of Hormuz was kept closed by Iran, which demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon and the unfreezing of assets as a condition to resuming negotiations.
The week began on an ominous note, with US President Donald Trump threatening to destroy "an entire civilisation" if Iran failed to comply with his demands.
But as a truce began to take shape, stocks rallied.
On a weekly basis, all three indexes scored their largest Friday-to-Friday percentage gains since November.
"Traders are pretty hesitant to have exposure going into a long weekend where there's going to be an Iran-US negotiation," said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management in St Louis, Missouri.
"Investors are expecting a lot of news and the market being closed for two and a half days is a long time for things to change."
"For that reason, there is this recent trend over the last month-and-a-half, where the market does well on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and it does poorly on Thursdays and Fridays," Ellerbroek added.
The Labor Department's consumer price index (CPI), the first major inflation indicator released since the onset of the war, showed consumer prices logged their largest monthly jump in nearly four years due to an expected spike in energy prices, which prompted a 21.2 per cent surge at the petrol pump.
Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, was cooler than analysts anticipated.
Still, the shock from spiking crude prices is likely to be felt more acutely in the coming months.
On Thursday, San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly told Reuters the oil shock from the Iran war would extend the timeline on bringing inflation back to the US central bank's 2.0 per cent target.
A separate report from the University of Michigan showed consumer sentiment plunged this month to a record low while near-term expectations dropped to their lowest level since May 1980.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 269.23 points, or 0.56 per cent, to 47,916.57, the S&P 500 lost 7.77 points, or 0.11 per cent, to 6,816.89 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 80.48 points, or 0.35 per cent, to 22,902.89.
Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, consumer staples were down the most while tech shares led the gainers.
Chipmakers took the lead, touching a record high.
Broadcom and Nvidia advanced 4.7 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively.
Financial stocks underperformed ahead of major US banks posting earnings next week, marking the unofficial start of first-quarter reporting season.
Analysts currently predict aggregate year-on-year S&P 500 earnings growth of 13.9 per cent, according to LSEG.
"Hopefully earnings season might switch at least some of the narrative back to corporate fundamentals, which is really what the stock market's all about," said Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder in New York.
US-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world's largest contract chipmaker, rose 1.4 per cent after it beat first-quarter revenue forecasts.
CoreWeave surged 10.9 per cent following its announcement of a multi-year agreement with Anthropic.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.13-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 165 new highs and 83 new lows on the NYSE.
On the Nasdaq, 1,874 stocks rose and 2,808 fell as declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.5-to-1 ratio.
The S&P 500 posted 23 new 52-week highs and 24 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 110 new highs and 144 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 15.83 billion shares, compared with the 19.18 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
