Wall Street Today: DJIA, S&P 500, Nasdaq Comp Rise as SpaceX IPO, Iran Peace Hopes Boost Big Techs

The Dow-30, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all rose Friday as Tesla chief Elon Musk's SpaceX gained nearly 20% following its eagerly awaited IPO and oil fell on fresh hopes for U.S.-Iranian peace. That helped clear the way for ARM, CoreWeave, Intel, Nebius and other tech stocks to rise on buoyant investor sentiment.

The $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ gained 353.51 points (0.7%) to a 51,202.26 close, while the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ added 37.16 ticks (0.5%) to 7,431.46 and the $Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC.US)$ gained 79.18 points (0.3%) to 25,888.84.

Macro

The three indexes rallied after SpaceX – Musk's space-launch company and the parent of his xAI artificial-intelligence firm – shot up following an initial public offering at $135 a share.

$SpaceX (SPCX.US)$ gained as much as 30.7% intraday before closing at $160.95, up 19.2% from its IPO price.

That put the company's value north of $2 trillion, instantly making it one of the world's most valuable firms. The IPO also made Musk the world's first trillionaire.

The well-received IPO helped push select Big Techs higher as well.

Tech stocks to see significant gains Friday included $Arm Holdings (ARM.US)$ (up 11.3%), $Intel (INTC.US)$(6.5% better), $SanDisk (SNDK.US)$ (5.2% stronger), $Nokia Oyj (NOK.US)$ (ahead 5%) and $Qualcomm (QCOM.US)$ (which added 4.3%).

Two tech stocks also rose on word late Thursday that they'll soon join the $NASDAQ 100 Index (.NDX.US)$. $CoreWeave (CRWV.US)$ gained 5%, while $NEBIUS (NBIS.US)$ added 4.6%. (A third stock, $Astera Labs (ALAB.US)$, eased 0.1% despite the news.)

Joining the Nasdaq 100 means managers of popular exchange-traded funds like $Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ.US)$ and $Invesco NASDAQ 100 ETF (QQQM.US)$ will have to buy shares of the three firms to include them in the ETFs' holdings.

Adding to Friday's market enthusiasm, signs pointed to Washington and Tehran closing in on an agreement to end the 3-1/2-month-old U.S-Iran War.

Although the two sides made conflicting statements over the past 24 hours about whether there's a peace deal, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media Friday that an agreement "has never been closer."

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has been mediating talks, also said that a "final, agreed-upon text of the peace deal has been reached."

Published reports indicate the two sides could sign a peace agreement on Sunday in Switzerland.

Such optimism helped push down oil prices, which soared during the war on disruptions to Mideast energy shipments.

$Crude Oil Futures (SEP6) (CLmain.US)$ fell 3.9% to $84.32 a barrel at last check on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Moo-vers

The "Magnificent Seven" stocks ended mixed despite the broader market's stronger finish.

Four Mag-7 stocks rose – $Tesla (TSLA.US)$(up 1.8%), $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ (0.5% better), $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ (0.2% firmer) and $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ (which inched up 0.1%).

However, three Mag-7 names fell: $Apple (AAPL.US)$(off 1.5%), $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ (1.2% weaker) and $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ (which gave up 0.3%).

Elsewhere on Wall Street, other stocks to fall by noteworthy percentage amounts included:

-- Select space stocks, which eased as SpaceX's IPO failed to drive the entire sector higher. Several space stocks rose by 10% or more Thursday in hopes of such a rally, but pulled back Friday when gains failed to materialize. Friday's decliners included $Virgin Galactic (SPCE.US)$ (down 31.8%), $AST SpaceMobile (ASTS.US)$ (15.5% lower), $Redwire (RDW.US)$ (off 11.5%), $EchoStar (ECHO.US)$ (which lost 11%), $Rocket Lab (RKLB.US)$ (10.8% weaker) and $Tema Space Innovators ETF (NASA.US)$ (9.4% softer). Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile tumbled even though word emerged late Thursday that they'll soon join the Nasdaq 100.

-- $Adobe (ADBE.US)$, down 6.8%. The digital-documents firm sank to its lowest levels in more than eight years after announcing a strategy shift to focus on "freemium" products to boost customer acquisition and engagement even at the potential cost of immediate monetization. That outweighed word of quarterly revenue and earnings beats.

Conversely, stocks to see significant percentage gains on Friday included:

-- $Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.US)$, up 4.7% to $511.57. The chip giant rose after Citi analyst Atif Malik upgraded the stock to "Buy" from "Neutral" and boosted his price target to $575 from an earlier $460. Bank of America Securities also reportedly raised its AMD price target on Thursday to $560 from a previous $500.

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