S&P 500, Nasdaq gain on report of Middle East peace deal progress
By Twesha Dikshit and Utkarsh Hathi
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose on Thursday after a report said the U.S. and Iran had reached a deal, while investors also digested key inflation data.
Axios reported that Washington and Tehran had reached an agreement to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, but President Donald Trump still needed to give final approval.
"Traders are on a hair trigger with the back and forth on deal news, and have been leaning long to avoid getting trampled by a better-than-expected outcome. The harder part is that the inflationary forces may not abate as fast as markets want," said Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group.
Economic data showed U.S. inflation increased at its fastest pace in three years in April, driven by higher energy prices amid the Iran war.
Meanwhile, U.S. GDP for the first quarter was revised lower to a 1.6% annualized increase, with momentum expected to slow this quarter.
At 11:31 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13.29 points, or 0.03%, to 50,630.99, the S&P 500 gained 36.98 points, or 0.49%, to 7,557.34 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 174.76 points, or 0.66%, to 26,849.49.
The S&P 500 healthcare index gained 1.2%. Eli Lilly advanced 4.2% after CVS Health said it would restore the drugmaker's weight-loss injection Zepbound to its coverage and add its newly approved obesity pill Foundayo.
Tech shares also moved 1.3% higher. Microsoft gained 2.8% after The Information reported the company would release a new coding model next week.
Marvell Technology dipped after first-quarter results. The company's shares have more than doubled so far this year.
Snowflake soared 36.3% after the data analytics firm lifted its annual product revenue forecast and announced a five-year AI infrastructure deal worth $6 billion with Amazon Web Services.
Peers Datadog , and MongoDB rose 2.7% and 9.8%, respectively.
Five of the 11 main S&P 500 sectors were in the green.
Renewed confidence in AI and earnings growth momentum have underscored the recent rally, with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq hitting intraday record highs.
"When we start to see a lot of the higher energy prices starting to feed through into other areas within inflation, the broader market will start to struggle quite a bit more than it has," said Timothy Chubb, chief investment officer at Girard, a Univest Wealth Division.
"Earnings growth and estimates have continued to outpace obviously a lot of those concerns. And I think the divergence between equities and rates is really one of the more important things happening right now."
Among other movers, Dollar Tree climbed 17.6% after the discount retailer lifted its full-year profit forecast, while Best Buy added 17% after the electronics vendor forecast second-quarter sales above estimates.
Drone companies rose after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was in talks to fund drone firms. Unusual Machines jumped 52% while AeroVironment and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions added 18% and 15%, respectively.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.41-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.48-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 13 new 52-week highs and 9 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 85 new highs and 55 new lows.
(Reporting by Twesha Dikshit and Utkarsh Hathi in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Devika Syamnath)
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 12:06 PM.