Wall Street's rebound continued into early Friday and oil prices sank more than 3% after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed there was a breakthrough in talks to end the Iran war.
Futures for the S&P 500 were 0.6% higher before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7%. Nasdaq futures rose 0.5%.
Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere also were awaiting the Friday debut on Wall Street of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company,
which is set to become the largest IPO on record, raising around $75 billion. With a net worth that Forbes estimates at $982.6 billion, Musk is on track to become the world's first trillionaire.
If SpaceX shares hold at their offering price, the company's market value would be $1.77 trillion, making it equal to Broadcom, the sixth most valuable publicly-traded company. Nvidia, a maker of computer chips, is now the world’s most valuable public company at around $4.9 trillion.
In other trading, Adobe slid 7.3% after the software company beat Wall Street's sales and profit targets and raised its full-year guidance. Adobe, whose shares are down 42% since the beginning of the year, also announced that its chief financial officer is stepping down. The company is already looking for a CEO to replace Shantanu Narayen, who announced in March that he is stepping aside after 18 years as Adobe's leader.
Expectations that an agreement between the U.S. and Iran may help reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a key waterway for the world’s oil and gas transit- — sent oil prices tumbling.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell to $2.94 to $87.44 a barrel. That's still much higher than the roughly $70 a barrel level it was at before the war began in late February.
Benchmark U.S. crude shed $3.05 to $84.66 a barrel.
Global markets retreated earlier in the week as tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated.
The renewed investor optimism came after Trump said Thursday he had called off military strikes against Iran. He asserted that the U.S. had made “a great settlement of the war with Iran,” adding that an extension of the shaky ceasefire between the two sides could be finalized in “the next few days.” Few details were offered.
“Trump has said many times before that a deal is very close, only for hostilities to resume,” ING commodities analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note on Friday. “However, there does appear to be more positive noise around the deal this time.”
“(But) we would be cautious about assuming that the extension of the ceasefire is a done deal,” they added. “Even if it is, it could be fragile.”
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Germany's DAX picked up 1.6%, while the CAC 40 in Paris rose 1.8%. Britain's FTSE 100 added 1.1%, despite official data that showed its economy contracted by 0.1% in April.
Asian markets logged bigger gains.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.6% to 8,123.62, narrowing losses from earlier this month from sell-offs of shares related to artificial intelligence. The Kospi has nearly doubled over the past six months, with a record closing high of 8,801.49 on June 2.
Samsung Electronics, South Korea's most valuable company, advanced 7.9%. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix rose 2.3%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei’s 225 gained 2.8% to 66,020.04, also led by gains for technology stocks. SoftBank Group, a multinational investment holding company with a strong AI focus, was up 1.5%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron jumped 7.3%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.7% to 24,658.91 and the Shanghai Composite index rose 1.1% to 4,031.51.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 closed 2% higher at 8,804.00.
Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.4%, while India’s Sensex advanced 1.4%.
