US stocks rise after oil prices ease and SpaceX soars in its debut on Wall Street

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising Friday after oil prices fell again, and SpaceX soared in its highly anticipated debut on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 added 0.4% and was heading toward the finish of its third winning week in the last four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 382 points, or 0.8%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.

Stocks got a lift from a 3.4% drop for the price of Brent crude oil to $87.29 per barrel, deepening its loss for the week. Oil prices have come down since President Donald Trump on Thursday called off his threat to launch strikes on Iran and said a potential deal with Iran may be imminent.

A deal to end the war could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to once again deliver crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. Its near closure since the war began has sent the price of Brent up from roughly $70 per barrel and caused a wave of painful inflation for the world.

Of course, financial markets have rallied in the past on hopes that an end to the war with Iran was near, only to get disappointed each time.

The bigger factor for Wall Street over the last week has actually been artificial-intelligence stocks, and how they have gone from roaring to records to suddenly turning lower. The concern is whether such stocks shot too high, too fast because of AI mania, and their careening moves have sometimes reversed direction by the hour.

SpaceX suggested plenty of demand still exists among investors for AI after its stock soared 24.3% in its first day of trading. That gave Elon Musk's rocket company a total value of $1.9 trillion, making it bigger than such behemoths as Broadcom, Tesla or Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook.

AI-related stocks otherwise were mixed following their roller-coaster moves over the last week. Broadcom's drop of 1.3% was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, but CoreWeave jumped 8.1% after learning it will join the Nasdaq 100 index later this month.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Adobe dropped 7.5% despite reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Its stock has lost 42% so far this year, and it announced its chief financial officer is leaving the company on Monday. Adobe 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.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose to regain some of their sharp slide from the day before, when oil prices dropped following Trump’s announcement. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.47% from 4.45% late Thursday.

High yields can slow entire economies and undercut prices for all kinds of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. They hit investments seen as the most expensive in particular, and some critics are calling the AI industry a bubble where investment inflated too far.

Yields got a boost after a report suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is not as bad as economists feared. The preliminary survey from the University of Michigan said sentiment improved by more than expected. U.S. consumers said they were feeling some relief after gasoline prices eased a bit early in the month.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied as they caught up to Thursday’s big gains on Wall Street.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.6% and trimmed its losses from earlier this month taken because of sell-offs for AI-related stocks. The Kospi has nearly doubled since the start of the year.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.8%, and France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.8% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.