Stock Market Update

[BRIEFING.COM] The major indices are all higher, but the broad-based buying interest seen at today's open has been dialed back. The bulk of today's gains are now concentrated in the small-cap and large/mega-cap names. The S&P Mid Cap 400 Index is down 0.4%, and the equal-weighted S&P 500 is down 0.1% versus a 0.4% gain for the Russell 2000, a 0.7% gain for the market-cap-weighted S&P 500, and a 1.5% gain for the Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF.

A relief trade took root at today's open, precipitated by President Trump's announcement after yesterday's close that he is extending the ceasefire with Iran to allow its fractured leadership more time to come up with a unified proposal for a lasting ceasefire. The president stipulated that he is only giving them a short time to do so, or the ceasefire will end and military hostilities will resume, according to Axios.

Traders appreciated the forestalling of a worse scenario; however, rising oil prices ($93.26, +3.59, +4.00%) reflect some lingering nervousness about the Strait of Hormuz remaining a chokepoint for energy supplies and other goods.

The energy sector (+0.8%) has been in a leadership post today, but it is the information technology sector (+1.7%) that has held the command post.

A $25 billion share buyback announcement by Adobe (ADBE 255.46, +8.28, +3.35%) has fueled some continued bargain hunting in the software space, but a solid gain in Apple (AAPL 272.46, +6.29, +2.36%) coupled with outsized gains in many semiconductor stocks like Micron (MU 485.42, +36.04, +8.02%), Broadcom (AVGO 417.80, +15.63, +3.89%), and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 297.15, +12.66, +4.45%) has fueled the outperformance.

NVIDIA (NVDA 201.24, +1.36, +0.68%) is up but is lagging the group after Alphabet (GOOG 334.97, +4.50, +1.36%) unveiled its TPU 8t and TPU 8i chips to power net-gen agentic training and inference at scale.

Separately, Boeing (BA 232.10, +12.94, +5.91%), Masco (MAS 75.39, +8.63, +12.93%), and GE Vernova (GEV 1112.52, +121.22, +12.23%) have outperformed on the back of their Q1 earnings results, but their gains haven't been enough to keep the industrials sector (-0.4%) in positive territory. Most sector components are lower.

The industrials sector is one of three sectors trading lower today. The other two are real estate (-0.7%) and financials (-0.2%).

There was no U.S. economic data of note today, although the MBA's Mortgage Application Index was up 7.9% wk/wk, with purchase applications up 10% and refinance applications up 6%.