NEW YORK — The S&P 500 closed at 7,365.12 on Wednesday, an all-time record, as two unrelated forces — a collapsing oil market and a semiconductor earnings blowout — aligned to hand bulls the cleanest session they have seen in months.
The Nasdaq Composite added 2.02% to 25,838.94, also a record close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.24% to 49,910.59 — 20 of its 30 components advanced. The Russell 2000 set a new intraday record and closed at 2,886.77, up 1.47%, with 1,212 of its constituents advancing against 693 declining. Breadth was real, not narrow. This was not a one-stock or one-sector rally. For more on how the multi-index record dynamic has been building, see why three major indexes hit records while oil slides.
Two Catalysts, One Direction
The session opened at 7,233.62 on the S&P 500 and never looked back. By late morning, Axios reported that the United States and Iran were nearing a memorandum of understanding that could end the conflict and potentially reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The White House told reporters it believed this was the closest the two sides had been to an agreement since hostilities began, and expected Iranian responses on key sticking points within 48 hours. That was enough for markets to reprice risk across every oil-sensitive asset class simultaneously.
WTI front-month futures fell 6.96% to $95.19. The move cascaded immediately into airline and cruise stocks: United Airlines surged 8%, Delta gained 7.4%, and Royal Caribbean climbed 7.6%. Energy was the only sector with a meaningful negative print, falling more than 4% as the sector repriced a world where Hormuz supply constraints ease. The asymmetry is notable — travel stocks got a full repricing, while energy took only a partial hit, which suggests the market is not yet fully committed to the peace scenario. For an earlier take on whether geopolitical progress is sufficient to anchor a rally, see our analysis of the Iran ceasefire deal’s market staying power.
Simultaneously, AMD reported Q1 2026 adjusted EPS of $1.37 against the LSEG consensus of $1.27, a 7.9% beat, on revenue of $10.25 billion versus the $9.85 billion estimate. The company guided Q2 to approximately $11.2 billion, 6.7% above the Street’s $10.50 billion forecast. CEO Lisa Su cited strong and increasing confidence in the company reaching tens of billions in AI data center revenue in the next fiscal year. That is not incremental guidance language. It is a structural claim about AMD’s position in the AI buildout — one the market chose to believe.
The Semiconductor Bid Carries the Tape Again
AMD’s results did not just lift AMD. The PHLX Semiconductor Index has outperformed the Russell 2000 by 14 percentage points over the past three months, and Wednesday’s session reinforced that leadership. Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy on Nvidia, citing the company’s ability to retain dominant market leadership across both training and inference workloads in the medium term. That is a subtle but important qualifier — Goldman is not saying Nvidia’s moat is permanent, it is saying it holds for the foreseeable investment horizon. That framing gives institutional buyers cover to stay long without having to defend a forever thesis.
Supermicro Computer added 24.5% after reporting what management described as fantastic earnings — the company beat profit estimates despite missing on the revenue line. A beat-on-earnings, miss-on-revenue result that generates a 24% gain is a signal of how aggressively the market is rewarding AI infrastructure exposure right now. The question of whether AMD’s earlier surge signals a broadening of the AI trade appears to be answering itself in real time.
Sphere Entertainment posted Q1 2026 revenue of $386.4 million against the $368.2 million FactSet consensus, with adjusted operating income of $110 million — a 205% year-over-year increase from the prior year’s $36 million. An analyst at a firm not yet confirmed in this filing hiked the price target by $12 to $170 per share, implying 24.5% upside from the prior close and reiterating an Overweight rating. The entertainment segment’s improvement is a secondary read on consumer spending holding despite macro uncertainty.
What Wednesday’s Close Sets Up for Thursday
The S&P 500’s RSI has moved above 70, a technically overbought reading. That does not mean the rally reverses Thursday — overbought conditions can persist for weeks in trending markets — but it does mean the index needs a catalyst to sustain momentum rather than merely an absence of bad news. The 52-week high before today’s close stood at 7,273.26. That level, now broken, becomes the first technical support traders should monitor on any pullback.
Gold’s 2.89% gain to $4,700.50 deserves a second look. Equities rallied on peace hopes, yet gold — which typically softens when geopolitical risk fades — moved sharply higher. Bitcoin slipped 0.40% to $81,322.43, and the Dollar Index fell 0.60%. The bond market and commodity complex are not sending the same signal as equities. That divergence is not a reason to sell, but it is a reason to size positions carefully ahead of Thursday’s session. The VIX at 17.39 suggests the options market has not fully stood down from its defensive posture. Whether Iran progress can hold this rally together remains the live question heading into the overnight session.
On the earnings calendar, approximately 70% of S&P 500 companies have now reported Q1 2026 results. Blended earnings growth sits at +14% year-over-year, revised up from roughly 12% at the end of March. Full-year 2026 earnings growth is now projected at +18.7%, up from approximately 15% at the start of the year. Energy sector EPS estimates for the full year have been revised up approximately 40% — a figure that will need to be revisited if oil sustains Wednesday’s losses. Materials and Technology are each tracking roughly 11% upside revisions. The earnings revision cycle is still tilting positive, but oil’s move introduces a meaningful variable for the energy component of that calculation.
Bank of America analyst Craig Siegenthaler maintained a Buy on Blue Owl Capital, lowering the price target by $3 to $18 — which still implies approximately 85% upside from Thursday’s close — citing returns on the firm’s SpaceX investment of roughly 10 times the initial outlay. That is an aggressive implied upside for a publicly traded alternative asset manager, and it reflects how private-market exposure is increasingly being valued in public equity prices.
| Level / Event | Value | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 first support | 7,273.26 | Prior 52-week high; a close below this would signal peace-trade reversal |
| WTI crude oil floor | $95.19 | A bounce above $100 on any Iran deal breakdown would crush airline stocks and reverse today’s gains |
| AMD Q2 guidance midpoint | $11.2B | Beats Street by 6.7%; watch peer commentary from Intel and Marvell for confirmation of AI server demand |
| VIX level | 17.39 | Options market not fully standing down; a move above 20 would signal hedging demand re-entering |
| Iran MOU 48-hour window | ~May 8 | White House expects Iranian response by then; any breakdown would reprice energy, airlines, and risk assets simultaneously |
Wednesday’s session delivered record closes across the board, and the breadth was genuine. But the two drivers — oil geopolitics and AI earnings — have very different shelf lives. AMD’s data center trajectory is a multi-quarter story. A U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding is a headline that can be walked back before the overnight session ends. Traders who held through today’s gain have a clean choice to make before Thursday’s open: treat the records as a new baseline, or treat them as a selling opportunity into unresolved news flow. The market answered that question decisively on Wednesday. Thursday may not be as cooperative.
This article is published by PreMarket Daily for informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial advice, investment recommendations, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. Always consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.
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