Wall Street closed higher for a second straight session on Friday, with all three major indexes finishing in positive territory as investors cheered a massive initial public offering from memory chipmaker SK Hynix and kept an eye on fragile ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite notched gains for the week after a choppy stretch of trading.
What Moved Markets
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 149.60 points, or 0.29%, to close at 52,637.01. The S&P 500 added 31.75 points, or 0.42%, to finish at 7,575.39, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 74.72 points, or 0.29%, to end the day at 26,281.61.
The session’s biggest story was the Nasdaq debut of SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chip giant and key Nvidia supplier. Shares opened around $170, a jump of roughly 14% to 17% above its $149 offering price, after the company raised $26.5 billion in the largest-ever U.S. share listing by a foreign company. The debut reinforced enthusiasm around the AI memory trade and helped lift sentiment across chip stocks broadly.
Oil prices eased even as fighting flared again between the U.S. and Iran, with West Texas Intermediate crude hovering near $71 a barrel and Brent crude trading above $76. President Trump said the U.S. would continue talks with Iran but that he believed the ceasefire agreement had effectively ended, a comment that kept energy markets on edge heading into the weekend.
Notable Movers
Meta Platforms (META) jumped about 6.1% after Bank of America flagged an internal company memo suggesting Meta expects to build out its AI computing capacity at roughly half the cost Wall Street had modeled, easing concerns about the pace of AI-related spending.
Nvidia (NVDA) gained about 3.7%, riding the same wave of AI and chip-sector optimism sparked by the SK Hynix listing.
SK Hynix (SKHYV) surged as much as 17% in its Nasdaq trading debut, capping a $26.5 billion U.S. offering that ranks as the largest ever by a foreign company.
Delta Air Lines (DAL) fell about 4% despite beating Wall Street’s second-quarter earnings estimates, with adjusted EPS of $1.56 topping forecasts near $1.50. Net profit still dropped 25% from a year earlier as fuel costs hit a record high for the airline, narrowing its operating margin to 8.8% from 13.3%.
Looking Ahead
Investors head into next week focused on inflation data and the start of big bank earnings. June’s Consumer Price Index is due out July 14, alongside congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, and the first wave of second-quarter bank results from JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Producer price data and additional earnings from companies including Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock follow on July 15. Markets are also likely to stay sensitive to any further developments in the U.S.-Iran standoff, given its potential to move oil prices and broader risk sentiment.