NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks and oil prices flip-flopped Tuesday as uncertainty rose about what will happen following a two-week ceasefire in the war with Iran, which is set to expire Wednesday.
The S&P 500 erased an early rise to fall 0.2% after U.S. Vice President JD Vance called off a trip to Pakistan, where he was expected to lead U.S. negotiators in talks with Iran to extend the ceasefire. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 148 points, or 0.3%,
after erasing an earlier rise of 400 points, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower, with less than an hour remaining in trading.
Oil prices also wavered, with the price for a barrel of Brent crude going from less than $95 to nearly $100 through the day. It settled at $98.48, up 3.1%, and then dipped back below $98.
The moves were mostly more modest than the vicious swings that rocked Wall Street earlier in the war, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly topped $119 and the S&P 500 dropped nearly 10% below its prior all-time high. The U.S. stock market remains near its most recent record, which was set Friday, indicating optimism still remains in financial markets that the United States and Iran will avoid a worst-case scenario for the economy.
UnitedHealth Group and other big companies also showed they’re making even bigger profits than analysts expected, which helped support the market.
UnitedHealth jumped 7.6% after also raising its forecast for profit over the full year of 2026. That’s big because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term. It’s a double-plus for investors when companies not only top earnings estimates but also forecast even better growth ahead.
Quest Diagnostics rose 6% after reporting fatter profit for the latest quarter while also raising its profit forecast for the full year.
They worked against a 12.9% drop for Tractor Supply, whose profit and revenue for the latest quarter fell short of expectations.
Other signals are also indicating the U.S. economy may be doing OK despite sharp up-and-down swings for oil prices because of the war with Iran. A report on Tuesday morning showed that U.S. retailers made more money in March, the first full month of the war, than analysts expected.
Growth was even relatively stable for retail sales when not including those from gasoline stations.
“It’s become cliched to say that the economic hit will depend on the duration of the Middle East conflict, but that cliché does ring true,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.
Much of the tension in financial markets has focused on what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s coast that oil tankers use to exit the Persian Gulf. A long-term closure would keep crude oil pent up in the gulf and away from customers worldwide.
On Wall Street, Apple fell 1.9% after Tim Cook said he’ll step down as CEO on Sept. 1 and become the iPhone maker’s executive chairman. He’s handing control over to John Ternus, a company veteran who rose through Apple's hardware engineering ranks.
Amazon rose 1.2% after Anthropic said it signed a new agreement and is committing more than $100 billion over the next 10 years to AWS technologies to train and run its Claude chatbot.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia. South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.7% for one of the world’s biggest moves.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.28% from 4.26% late Monday.
Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, said that he never promised Trump he would cut interest rates, even though Trump has consistently called for the central bank to do so.
He's facing a tightrope walk, as investors want him to maintain the Fed's independence from political meddling.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.
