Today’s Market Recap: US-Iran Ceasefire Talks Uncertain, US Stocks Edge Higher, Chinese Concept Stocks Shine, SpaceX Expected to List in June
TradingKey - Prospects for U.S.-Iran ceasefire negotiations dominated market movements on Wednesday. As Iran's stance hardened, oil prices rebounded from session lows to finish higher. U.S. equities and Treasuries did not mirror the reversal in oil, both closing with modest gains and marking a temporary divergence in their correlation.
Reports of the U.S. submitting a 15-point ceasefire proposal to Iran triggered a sharp market reaction, sending Brent crude down as much as 3%. After Iran rejected the proposal, stating it would not allow Trump to dictate the timing of a truce, and the Iranian Foreign Minister clarified that the exchange of messages did not constitute negotiations, Brent and WTI recovered all intraday losses. WTI ended up over 3%, while Brent rose more than 2%.
In individual stocks, policy signals from the Greater China region bolstered sentiment for the platform economy sector. Amid comments that "competition in food delivery should return to rationality," Meituan surged 14.43%, JD.com jumped 8.3%, and Alibaba rose 3.5%. Google's release of KV cache compression technology weighed on storage stocks, with SanDisk and Micron among the worst performers, falling 3.5% and 3.4% respectively.
Most of the Magnificent Seven stocks closed higher: Nvidia rose 1.99%, Amazon gained 2.16%, Tesla added 0.76%, Apple advanced 0.39%, Meta rose 0.33%, and Google edged up 0.17%, while Microsoft fell 0.46%.
Market Headlines:
Differences in US-Iran communications remain significant, and the path to a ceasefire is unclear. Iran rejected the U.S. ceasefire proposal and emphasized that it will not accept externally set ceasefire timelines; the White House, however, stated that communications between the two sides have been "productive." Iran proposed five conditions, including the recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and described the U.S. proposal as "detached from reality." It also warned that if regional countries support its adversaries, related infrastructure may face the risk of strikes. The Iranian Foreign Minister reiterated that current interactions are merely messaging through "friendly nations" and have not yet reached the formal negotiation stage.
Lagarde states interest rates could be adjusted at any meeting if necessary. The ECB President stated that the central bank will act swiftly if energy price shocks spill over further into inflation. Although no hasty decisions will be made before fully assessing the scale and duration of the shock, she emphasized that the commitment to the medium-term 2% inflation target is "unconditional," and policy tools remain highly flexible.
Evolution of AI technology disrupts storage logic, causing short-term market repricing. Google launched TurboQuant technology, compressing large model KV cache to 3 bits, achieving approximately 6x memory compression and up to 8x inference acceleration, which triggered market concerns over storage demand. However, Morgan Stanley noted that the technology primarily functions in the inference stage and may instead drive the expansion of AI applications by lowering costs in the long run.
SpaceX IPO process may accelerate. Market sources say SpaceX could file IPO documents as early as this week, aiming to complete its listing in June, with an expected fundraising scale exceeding $75 billion, higher than the previous market expectation of about $50 billion. The company's latest valuation has reached approximately $1.25 trillion. In this offering, the retail investor allocation may exceed 20%, and there may be no traditional six-month lock-up period.
Top 10 Most Actively Traded Stocks
The following chart lists the ten most actively traded stocks in the current market. Driven by massive trading volume and high liquidity, these assets have become key benchmarks for tracking global market dynamics.
