Stocks Rip Higher as Iran Truce Hopes Sink Oil

The Close: A Sharp Relief Rally

What a difference a session makes. After Wednesday's bruising slide and a morning that opened with Iran declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed, the US cash session staged a broad relief rally and erased the prior day's damage. The S&P 500 closed up about 1.75 percent near 7,394, stopping just shy of the 7,400 zone flagged in this morning's June 11 analysis as the level dip buyers needed to reclaim. The Nasdaq Composite jumped roughly 2.54 percent, the Dow Jones added about 930 points, or 1.86 percent, to close at 50,848.75, back above the 50,000 mark, and the small-cap Russell 2000 led the field with a gain near 3 percent, per TheStreet. Breadth was strong, with technology, industrials and materials doing the heavy lifting, the textbook profile of a risk-on day where the worst fears of the prior session fail to materialize.

Story of the Day: Iran De-escalation Drains the Oil Premium

The single force behind the turnaround was a dramatic shift in the geopolitical backdrop. After two days of strikes and this morning's Hormuz closure threat, President Trump paused planned strikes on Iran and signaled that a deal was close, and markets seized on the de-escalation. The clearest read came from crude: WTI fell more than 4 percent toward $86 a barrel, its lowest since April, completely unwinding the morning's spike toward $92, per Trading Economics. That is a near-mirror image of the morning print, and it shows how thin the war premium can be once the headline risk eases. Lower oil also takes some pressure off the inflation story that rattled markets on Wednesday. Key reference zone: WTI is now testing the mid $80s, with the $85 area as the structure traders are watching on the downside and the high $80s as the level that capped the relief; a renewed flare-up in the Gulf would be the obvious trigger to rebuild the premium.

Chips Lead, Oracle Bucks the Trend

The rally had a clear engine: semiconductors. Intel jumped about 9 percent after a Bank of America upgrade tied to soaring CPU orders, while Lam Research and Applied Materials each surged around 8 percent and Micron and AMD added more than 3 percent, per TheStreet. The chip complex has been the market's swing factor all month, and today it swung hard to the upside, carrying the Nasdaq's outperformance. The notable exception was Oracle, which slumped about 12 percent after signaling it will take on more debt to finance its data-center buildout despite flat sales, a reminder that the AI-infrastructure trade still rewards demand visibility over capex alone. The split tells the story of the tape: investors chased the names with improving order books and punished the one asking them to fund growth on credit.

Crypto Check: Majors Ride the Risk-On Wave

Crypto joined the relief rally rather than leading it. Bitcoin trades around $63,271, up about 2.64 percent over 24 hours, clawing back some of the two-week slide from its May highs above $80,000, per TradingView. Ethereum is near $1,678, up roughly 1.2 percent, holding its recent role as the steadier of the majors. The move fits the broader picture: with the war premium fading and equities ripping higher, the same risk appetite that lifted small caps and chips flowed into digital assets. Gold told a parallel story in commodities, recovering to about $4,105, up 0.86 percent, after dipping to an intraday low near $4,024, its weakest since November, per Finance Magnates. Reference structure: Bitcoin's $60,000 zone remains the line traders are watching on the downside, while a push back through $65,000 would be the first sign the May downtrend is genuinely easing rather than just bouncing.

After-Hours and Overnight Watch

The biggest event still sits on the calendar. SpaceX priced its initial public offering today and debuts on the Nasdaq tomorrow, Friday June 12, under the ticker SPCX, in what would be the largest IPO in history near a $1.75 trillion valuation, with retail investors reportedly submitting more than $100 billion in interest, as we detailed in our SpaceX IPO explainer. How SPCX trades out of the gate will be the first read on whether today's risk appetite carries into the open. Two other items deserve attention overnight. First, the durability of the Iran pause: today's rally rests on a signal, not a signed agreement, so any reversal in the Gulf would put the oil premium and the volatility right back on the table. Second, the rate path. A fresh PPI print pointed to firming pipeline prices in May, keeping bets alive that the Fed could lean hawkish, and the FOMC decision on June 16-17, the first chaired by Kevin Warsh, is the next major macro hurdle, with a hold widely expected. Watch the 7,400 zone on the S&P: holding above it would confirm today's buyers are sticking, while a slip back toward Wednesday's 7,267 low would suggest the relief was a one-day affair.

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