Stock Market Today: Stocks Rise as Big Tech Gains; Oil Prices Fall to Iran War Low

Stocks rose on Wednesday as tech stocks stabilized after a two-day sell-off and oil prices declined to their lowest level in months.

The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.9% in recent trading to lead the indexes higher. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and benchmark S&P 500 each rose 0.7%. The major indexes all declined yesterday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing sharply lower as memory and chip stocks sold off amid rising concern about interest rates and valuations.

Chip and memory stocks were wavering after tumbling yesterday. Micron (MU), which fell 13% yesterday, slipped 1% ahead of its earnings report after the bell. Sandisk (SNDK) and Western Digital (WDC) slipped 2% and 4%, respectively. The Magnificent Seven mega-cap tech stocks were mostly higher, with Amazon (AMZN) rising about 4% to lead the group as Tesla (TSLA) ticked lower. SpaceX (SPCX) stock rose 1% after eking out a small gain yesterday to snap a three-day losing streak.

Shares of Cerebras (CBRS) tumbled 16% after the AI chip designer, in its first earnings report as a public company, forecast its gross margins would narrow by up to 10 percentage points in the current quarter. FedEx (FDX) shares fell 1% despite its quarterly results beating Wall Street’s estimates.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced changes to its marquee stock indexes late Tuesday. Alphabet (GOOG) will replace Verizon (VZ) in the Dow, and Honeywell Aerospace, which is being spun-off from industrial giant Honeywell (HON), will replace food company Conagra Brands (CAG) in the benchmark S&P 500. Both changes will take effect on Monday.

Oil prices continued to slide, falling to their lowest levels since the war with Iran began. West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, dropped about 4% to trade at $70 a barrel, just a few dollars above their pre-war price. Brent crude, the global benchmark, also fell 4% to about $74.

The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences interest rates on a variety of consumer loans including mortgages, was recently 4.41%, down from 4.50% yesterday. The yield reflecting inflation expectations is well off its recent highs, but the yield on the 2-year bond, a proxy for interest rate expectations, remains near its highest level this year at 4.16%.

Bitcoin was recently trading at $60,500 after topping $65,000 earlier this week. Gold futures slumped 3% to $4,020 a troy ounce, putting the precious metal on track for its lowest close this year. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the value of the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies, was recently up 0.2% at 101.60.

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 04:18 PM GMT

Cerebras’ First Post-IPO Earnings Beat Wall Street Projections. The Stock Is Falling Anyway

Cerebras beat Wall Street’s estimates with its first report as a public company, but investors aren’t cheering the results.

Shares of Cerebras (CBRS) plunged 15% to around $192 in early trading Wednesday, hitting their lowest point since the stock began trading last month, despite posting quarterly sales that topped expectations and a narrower-than-expected loss.

Worries about costs squeezing Cerebras’ margins could be weighing on shares, as the chipmaker said after the bell yesterday that it expects adjusted gross margins of 36% to 38% in the current quarter, down from the 47% margins Cerebras posted in the first quarter.

Morgan Stanley analysts told clients in a note Wednesday they remain bullish on the stock, however, and raised their lifted their price target to $273 from $250, citing strong demand for the company’s chips. “Nothing in these numbers was disappointing,” they wrote, and suggested the Cerebras could be conservative with its outlook as it navigates its first few quarters as a public company.

For the first quarter, Cerebras said it generated $193.4 million, about $10 million above the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha, along with an adjusted loss of $2.48 million, smaller than analysts had forecast.

With Wednesday’s slump, Cerebras shares are down nearly 40% from where they closed on their first day of trading. They’re about 4% above their IPO price of $185.

–Aaron McDade

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 03:29 PM GMT

JPMorgan, BCA Raise S&P 500 Targets as Earnings Seen Offsetting Higher Rates

Wall Street firms are getting more bullish on stocks heading into the second half of the year.

JPMorgan on Wednesday lifted its year-end S&P 500 target to 7,800, citing the index’s “unprecedented” earnings strength and progress toward a U.S./Iran peace deal. JPMorgan’s new target represents about 6% upside from Tuesday’s close.

Earnings are the fuel JPMorgan sees driving stocks higher for the remainder of the year. Wall Street analysts have raised their S&P 500 earnings estimates for 2026 and 2027 by about 10% since the start of the year, according to JPMorgan. “This type of positive revision is unprecedented and is typically seen only after a shock or post-recession,” the analysts wrote.

The tech sector, specifically the parts of it most exposed to the AI data center buildout, has been the main source of growth so far this year. Hyperscalers—Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META) and Oracle (ORCL)—started 2026 forecasting a 40% increase in capital expenditures, but after a strong first-quarter, spending is now expected to increase more than 75% year-over-year. That investment is juicing the revenue and earnings growth of data center suppliers across sectors, including memory chip maker Micron (MU) and construction equipment company Caterpillar (CAT).

Consumer and labor market resilience, as well as the relatively contained impact of higher oil prices on corporate earnings, add to JPMorgan’s confidence that the U.S. economy is likely to continue growing at a healthy clip.

But the path to JPMorgan’s target will likely be a bumpy one, analysts warn. After the first quarter’s exceptionally strong earnings, expectations are high heading into the next round of reports beginning in July.

JPMorgan notes extreme crowding in shares with momentum, like chip and memory stocks, amplifies risk of a reversal or flash crash. Investors got a reminder of that on Tuesday, when chip stocks tumbled from record highs.

Investors also shouldn’t bank on any multiple expansion this year, according to JPMorgan. Multiples are likely to be pressured by elevated interest rates, which are unlikely to fall after oil prices pushed inflation to a three-year high last month. And with the impending IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as the end of SpaceX (SPCX) IPO lock-ups, valuations are likely to be pressured by a deluge of new shares hitting the market.

BCA Research on Wednesday raised its S&P 500 target to 8,100 from 7,700, citing the same forces as JPMorgan. Earnings growth in the first quarter was stronger and broader than BCA expected, and the firm expects growth to remain strong “as the economy has shifted into expansion.” BCA’s 8,100 target represent 10% upside from Tuesday’s close.

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 02:42 PM GMT

Oil Prices Fall To Lowest Since Iran War Began

Oil prices fell on Wednesday to their lowest since last February after President Donald Trump said Iran had assured him there would be no tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contracts dropped more than 4% on Wednesday to trade below $70 a barrel for the first time since February 27, the day before the U.S. and Israel launched the war. As of Wednesday, WTI is down about 40% from its wartime closing high of about $113 a barrel, and is down nearly 25% in the past month alone. Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell as low as $73.40 a barrel on Wednesday, bringing it within $1 of its pre-war price.

Oil prices fell to start the week after the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions on Iranian oil for 60 days while the two countries negotiate a lasting peace deal. According to global trade intelligence firm Kpler, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has picked up since the U.S. and Iran last week signed a memorandum of understanding to reopen the crucial waterway. “The Strait appears operational under the US-Iran MoU, but dark-route activity and uncertainty beyond the 60-day window keep the recovery cautious,” Kpler wrote on Wednesday.

Crude oil prices skyrocketed after Iran retaliated against U.S. and Israeli strikes by closing the Strait of Hormuz in early March, depriving the global oil market of about 20% of its pre-war supply. Soaring prices pushed consumer inflation to a three-year high last month, forcing central banks around the world to either raise interest rates or, in the case of the Federal Reserve, signal they might do so to control inflation.

The return of oil prices to their pre-war levels should relieve some of inflation pressure, but it could be a while before consumers see prices at the pump normalize. Crude oil prices are the main driver of gasoline prices, but the latter tends to move more slowly than the former, especially when prices are declining. The national average gas price was $3.93 a gallon on Wednesday, down about 15% from its recent high but still more than 30% above its pre-war level.

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 02:06 PM GMT

Why The Market’s ‘Moment of Pause’ Might Be The Breather Tech Stocks Needed

The record may be scratched, but the party in the U.S. stock market isn’t over, according to several experts.

Analysts are sizing up this slump in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 and calling it “healthy” and a necessary “gut check” that will keep things moving along. After a torrid rally that drove benchmark indexes to a series of records, a momentary break helps stocks avoid getting overheated, they say. To be sure much of the S&P’s and the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 2026 gains have come just in the last couple of months after the pair of indexes spent the early part of the year doing nothing.

This week’s sharp sell-off—taking down high-flying chip stocks and hyperscalers alike—was to be expected, because the tech trade had gotten “crowded,” according to Morgan Stanley Investment Management senior portfolio manager Andrew Slimmon, who describes the recent action as “good for the markets.”

“Ultimately what you don’t want to see is so much euphoria that it ends badly,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday morning.

Experts point to a variety of factors recently tempering what has mostly been a festive atmosphere for the market. Slimmon said changing expectations around the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy—from “for sure cutting to maybe raising” interest rates—likely caused the recent rout.

The Federal Reserve last week, as expected, left its benchmark interest rate unchanged, but new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivered an unambiguously hawkish stance following the meeting, vowing to tame inflation. That has led market participants to pencil in the likelihood of higher interest rates and all but eliminate expectations of a cut. Traders are pricing in at least one interest rate hike by year’s end from the Fed, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Wedbush tech analysts led by Dan Ives said the sell-off in the KOSPI, the benchmark index for stocks in South Korea, was spilling over to the U.S. tech sector. The country’s stock market, even after its big tumble, is still up about 90% year to date on the back of big chip stock gains.

“Taking a step back we continue to believe that in this market we will continue to go through a number of ‘gut check moments’ in the tech trade,” Ives wrote in a report published early Tuesday morning.

The other possibility: Investors are taking profits, Giuseppe Sette, co-founder of investment startup Reflexivity, said in an emailed statement on Monday, adding that this “moment of pause” in markets might not immediately turn into a recovery.

“It’s entirely possible that large drawdowns, like the one we’ve seen, could attract buyers,” he said, but that investors might be “more cautious” about jumping back into roiling markets.

–Crystal Kim

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 01:11 PM GMT

What To Expect From Micron Stock After Earnings

Micron Technology is set to report quarterly earnings on Wednesday in what could be the next major test of the AI rally.

Shares of Micron (MU) tumbled 13% yesterday after jumping to a record high to start the week. Shares closed at $1,051 on Tuesday, erasing all of its gains from the two prior sessions. Still, Micron shares are up 270% since the start of the year, making it one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500, behind only Sandisk (SNDK) and Western Digital (WDC).

After Micron’s torrid rally and spectacular fall, many investors may be wondering whether the stock can regain its momentum. Traders are betting on a big move after Wednesday’s results, with recent options pricing suggesting the stock could swing more than 11% in either direction through Friday. From Tuesday’s close, that could drive shares to $1,169, a few percentage points off a record high, or pull them down to about $934, a two-week low.

Analysts are broadly positive about the chipmaker’s prospects for its third-quarter earnings report, and beyond, as they continue to see upside in pricing for the company’s memory chips, amid an industrywide shortage and booming AI demand.

Wedbush in a report published Thursday said it now expects Micron to report earnings per share of $22.84, from $19.16 previously, with revenue of $38.5 billion, from its prior estimate of $33.5 billion, citing higher industry pricing in the second quarter than what the company previously guided.

The firm’s revised third-quarter expectations are higher than the Street average, with consensus EPS estimates tracking at $20.95 on revenue of $36.15 billion, according to Visible Alpha data. Brokers tracked by the research firm are overwhelmingly bullish, with seven out of eight brokers with current ratings calling Micron a “buy.”

Prices for Micron’s memory chips are expected to jump 20% through the three months ending in September, which is represented in the analysts’ revised fourth-quarter estimates that could likely prove “conservative,” Wedbush wrote.

Jefferies in a Sunday report said the firm’s memory prices are seen rising 40% to 50% in the third quarter, sequentially, and another 30% to 40% in the following quarter

Boosted earnings expectations for 2027 drove Wedbush’s price target to $1,300, more than double its previous target of $550. The firm’s $1,300 price target implies upside of about 7% from Monday’s close, substantially higher than the consensus around $1,179, per brokers tracked by Visible Alpha data.

–Crystal Kim

JUNE 24, 2026 AT 12:34 PM GMT

Stock Futures Stabilize After Tuesday’s Sell-Off

Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up about 0.1% in premarket trading on Wednesday.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.3%.

Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 0.6% premarket.

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