NEW YORK – US stocks closed mixed on April 10, 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 Beirut.
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 civilization” if Iran failed to comply with his demands. But as a truce began to take shape, stocks rallied.
All three indexes scored weekly gains.
“Traders are pretty hesitant to have exposure going into a long weekend where there’s going to be an Iran-US negotiation,” said Mr 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,” Mr Ellerbroek added.
The Labour 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 gasoline 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 April 9, 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 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.
According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 6.76 points, or 0.10 per cent, to end at 6,817.90 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 78.64 points, or 0.35 per cent, to 22,901.06.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 282.62 points, or 0.59 per cent, to 47,903.18.
Chipmakers took the lead, touching a record high.
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 Mr Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls and Snyder in New York.
US-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , the world’s largest contract chipmaker, rose after it beat first-quarter revenue forecasts.
CoreWeave surged following its announcement of a multi-year agreement with Anthropic. REUTERS
