Wall Street Today: DJIA, S&P 500, Nasdaq Comp Fall as Energy Prices Spike on Report Iran Hit Oil Tanker

The Dow-30, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all sank Thursday as the broad market declined on soaring petroleum prices, which rose after Iran claimed to have struck an oil tanker in the ongoing U.S.-Iranian military conflict.

The $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ shed 848.80 points (1.7%) to a 47,890.61 close, while the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ shed 55.02 ticks (0.8%) to 6,814.48 and the $Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC.US)$ lost 137.57 points (0.6%) to 22,669.91.

The three indexes had been down even more sharply earlier, with the Dow-30 off 1,162.3 points (2.4%) and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Comp losing more than 1% at their session lows.

Macro

The indexes fell as energy prices spiked on a report by Iranian state media alleging that Tehran's forces hit an oil tanker in the region.

$Crude Oil Futures (MAY6) (CLmain.US)$ shot up 7.5% to $80.24 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at last check on the news.

Iran has vowed to attack tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off of its coast where tankers carry 20% of global oil production.

The threat came response to U.S. and Israeli air attacks against Iran that began over the weekend over Tehran's alleged nuclear-weapons and missile programs.

The increased tensions particularly hit non-tech U.S. big caps. Those losing ground included $Goldman Sachs (GS.US)$ (off 3.7%), $Caterpillar (CAT.US)$ (down 3.54%) and $Walmart (WMT.US)$(3.52%).

All belong to the Dow-30 and the S&P 500, while Walmart is also a Nasdaq Composite component.

Select Big Techs eased as well, including $CoreWeave (CRWV.US)$ (down 5.9%), $SanDisk (SNDK.US)$ (5.6% lower) and $Marvell Technology (MRVL.US)$, which lost 3.1% ahead of after-the-bell earnings. (MRVL rebounded sharply in after-hours trading following its earnings release.)

Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies returned some of the significant percentage gains that they rang up on Wednesday.

$Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ shed 3% to $71,186.80 as of 3:30 p.m. New York time Thursday, while $Ethereum (ETH.CC)$ lost 3.7% to $2,087.42,$Solana (SOL.CC)$gave back 4.4% to $89.21 and $Ripple (XRP.CC)$ retreated 3.1% to $1.42.

Moo-vers

The "Magnificent Seven" stocks followed the broader market's lead and ended Thursday mostly lower.

Decliners included $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ (off 1.1%), $Apple (AAPL.US)$ (0.9% weaker), $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ (0.7% softer) and $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ (which gave up 0.1%).

That said, three Mag-7 stocks managed to end the day higher -- $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ (1.4% firmer), $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ (up 1%) and $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ (0.2% better).

Beyond the Mag-7, Thursday's significant percentage gainers included:

-- $The Trade Desk (TTD.US)$, up 18.4%. The adtech company rose on reports that it's held talks with privately held artificial-intelligence giant OpenAI about working together on advertising sales.

-- $Sea (SE.US)$, 8.2% higher. The Southeast Asian e-commerce giant partly rebounded from a 26.5% sell-off that it suffered on Tuesday following poorly received results.

-- $Broadcom (AVGO.US)$, up 4.8%. The tech giant rallied on well-received quarterly results.

-- $Credo Technology (CRDO.US)$, which added 11.9%. The bandwidth-solutions firm rose on comments Broadcom made related to its earnings indicating that the company favors copper for connecting large processor racks in AI data centers. CRDO relies on copper wiring for such uses.

Conversely, some of the day's major percentage decliners were:

-- $AST SpaceMobile (ASTS.US)$, which lost 10.5%. The satellite-telecom company gave back part of a 13.2% gain it scored Wednesday on word of a new investment from Canada's $TELUS (TU.US)$.

-- $IREN Ltd (IREN.US)$, down 8.5%. The AI- and crypto-friendly data-center firm fell after filing a prospectus expanding a planned secondary offering to $6 billion worth of new stock from a previously announced $1 billion. That prompted famed short-seller Jim Chanos to raise questions about the company.

-- Fiberoptic firms $Coherent (COHR.US)$ (down 7.6%) and $Lumentum (LITE.US)$ (4.4% lower). Both fell for a third day on a combination of Broadcom's comments favoring copper cables rather than fiberoptic ones, coupled with a continued give-back of big gains the companies saw Monday on word Nvidia had invested in them.

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