Wednesday ended up being one of those days where the market basically said, “Okay, maybe we overreacted,” and then proceeded to rally as it meant it. After two brutal sessions to kick off the week, the bulls finally showed up with some conviction. The Dow added 238 points, the S&P 500 climbed 0.78% to close around 6,870, and the Nasdaq led the charge with a 1.29% gain. Not a bad bounce.
The catalyst, as with almost everything this week, was Iran. A New York Times report early in the session suggested Iranian operatives had quietly reached out to explore terms for ending the conflict. That was later contradicted by other sources, but it was enough to open the door for buyers — and once the S&P got its legs under it, the sellers stepped aside. Oil prices pulled back from their recent surge, which gave the inflation-obsessed crowd a reason to exhale. Treasury Secretary Bessent also floated the idea of measures to ease fuel prices, which didn’t hurt sentiment.
Chips were the story on the long side. Micron and AMD each popped more than 5%, while Broadcom and Nvidia added over 1% apiece ahead of AVGO’s earnings after the bell. The Magnificent Seven were broadly higher, with Tesla and Amazon leading with gains of better than 3% each. Tesla got a boost from a Bank of America upgrade — analyst Alexander Perry slapped a $460 price target on it and argued that robotaxi could be a real growth driver. Bank of America had been sitting on the sidelines with a hold, so the upgrade got attention.
Moderna had one of the more impressive individual stock moments of the day, surging more than 15% after resolving its patent litigation with Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences. The settlement clears a significant legal overhang, and the market rewarded it generously — the stock is now up something like 95% in 2026, putting it on track to snap a four-year losing streak. CloudWeave also popped 8% on a new multiyear deal with Perplexity AI to handle next-gen inference workloads.
After the close, Broadcom delivered. The company reported fiscal Q1 EPS of $2.05 adjusted versus the $2.03 estimate, on revenue of $19.31 billion versus the $19.18 billion consensus — a 29% year-over-year revenue jump. The big forward guide: AI revenue of $10.7 billion next quarter. That’s the number the bulls will be waving around Thursday morning. Shares edged up about 1% in extended trading, which honestly seems like a measured reaction given the setup. There’s been a lot of “beat and drop” in this market lately, so we’ll see how AVGO opens.
The macro backdrop hasn’t changed — war in the Middle East, oil threatening to fuel another inflation wave, and a Fed that isn’t going anywhere fast on rate cuts. But today was a reminder that markets can and will bounce hard when sentiment gets too washed out. The S&P is now sitting between its 50-day moving average on the upside and its 100-day moving average below as support. That’s your range to watch.
See you in the morning. I feel like we put in a bottom.