Wall Street Today: S&P 500, DJIA, Nasdaq Comp Sink 1%+ on Iran Woes and SMCI, MU, MRVL, NVDA Losses

The S&P 500, Dow-30 and Nasdaq Composite all fell more than 1.5% Wednesday as the U.S.-Iran War threatened to re-ignite and Super Micro, Tesla, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Arm, AMD, Micron, Marvell and other Big Techs continued to fall.

The $Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC.US)$ sank 509.32 points (2%) to a 25,169.50 close, while the $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ shed 953.33 ticks (1.9%) to 49,918.78 and the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ lost 119.66 points (1.6%) to 7,266.99.

Macro

The key indexes fell in a large measure on continued woes for several tech giants, which have been trading up and down but generally sliding since many hit all-time highs last week.

$Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US)$ led Wednesday's Big Tech decliners, tumbling 28% after announcing plans to sell some $7 billion of new stock to raise funds needed to fulfill some $39 billion of artificial-intelligence-related orders. The new shares will reportedly dilute existing stockholders by some 27%.

Other tech stocks to lose major ground included $Applied Digital (APLD.US)$ (off 7.1%), $Qualcomm (QCOM.US)$ (down 6.9%), $Arm Holdings (ARM.US)$ (5.4% lower), $Marvell Technology (MRVL.US)$ (which gave back 5.4%) and $Broadcom (AVGO.US)$ (5.1% softer).

Big Techs to fall by lesser percentage amounts included $Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.US)$ (4.9% weaker), $Micron Technology (MU.US)$ (which lost 4.7%), $Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM.US)$ (off 4.5%), $Tesla (TSLA.US)$ (down 3.8%), $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ (3.7% weaker) and $Nokia Oyj (NOK.US)$ (which lost 3.3%).

Adding to Wednesday's woes, the U.S.-Iran War ceasefire seemed close to collapsing as U.S. President Donald Trump said "we hit them hard yesterday, and we're going to hit them hard again today."

The U.S. military conducted new air attacks Tuesday against Iranian targets after Iran shot down an American helicopter Monday over the key Strait of Hormuz, although both U.S. pilots survived.

Trump's comment pointed to even more American retaliation coming, with the U.S. military announcing fresh attacks late Wednesday after the market had already closed.

However, Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament's national-security commission, warned earlier on social media that "we're not afraid of fighting losers. ... this time, the war won't be limited to the region."

The saber-rattling sent oil prices – which typically go up on any tensions in the energy-rich Middle East – rising.

$Crude Oil Futures (SEP6) (CLmain.US)$ rose 3% to $90.84 a barrel at last check on the New York Mercantile Exchange – typically bad news for stocks, as heftier energy prices raise the risk of global inflation, higher interest rates and slower growth.

And in a fresh headache for stocks, the Labor Department reported before the bell that U.S. inflation rose to a 4.2% annual rate in April – in line with economists' forecasts, but up from March's 2.8%.

Excess U.S. inflation can prompt the Federal Reserve to boost interest rates, making bond and money-market yields more attractive than stocks to some investors.

Gold and silver fell to roughly six-month lows as fears of interest-rate hikes outweighed precious metals' traditional role as hedges against inflation and geopolitical instability.

$Gold Futures (AUG6) (GCmain.US)$ fell 4.4% to $4,099.40 an ounce on the New York Comex at last check, while $Silver Futures (SEP6) (SImain.US)$ eased 2.5% to $63.64 an ounce.

Higher interest rates can make bonds and money markets more attractive than metals for some investors.

Moo-vers

The "Magnificent Seven" stocks took their cue from the broader market Wednesday and mostly fell.

$Tesla (TSLA.US)$and $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ led decliners with their previously noted losses of 3.8% and 3.7%, respectively.

Other Mag-7 names to ease included $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ (down 2.5%), $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ (2.3% lower), $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ (which lost 2.2%) and $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ (off 1.5%).

Only $Apple (AAPL.US)$rose among the Mag-7 stocks, gaining 0.4%.

Elsewhere in markets, other noteworthy percentage winners included:

-- Select optical-networking stocks, which continued their recent run of up-and-down trading. Wednesday's gainers included $Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI.US)$ (7.5% better) and $Lumentum (LITE.US)$ (which added 3.8%).

-- $Cerebras Systems (CBRS.US)$, 4.6% stronger. The AI-infrastructure firm, which went public last month, has traded up and down ever since gaining 18.3% Monday after multiple analysts initiated coverage of the stock with buy-equivalent ratings.

Conversely, Wednesday's big percentage decliners included:

-- $Bloom Energy (BE.US)$, 9.8% lower. BE fell of reports that privately held cloud-infrastructure firm Crusoe is pausing work on a Wyoming data center that BE had planned to supply with fuel cells.

-- $Redwire (RDW.US)$, 5.6% weaker. The space stock fell for a second session after losing 15.2% on Tuesday after announcing a $500 million secondary stock offering that will dilute existing shareholders. $Rocket Lab (RKLB.US)$ (down 2.9%), $AST SpaceMobile (ASTS.US)$ (off 1.6%) and $Tema Space Innovators ETF (NASA.US)$ (1.1% weaker) all also eased on Wednesday in apparent sympathy.

-- $SPDR Gold ETF (GLD.US)$, off 4.2%. The gold ETF sank amid Wednesday's price decline for the precious metal.

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