By Robert Teitelman

Markets: Hopes for peace in the Iran war receded after a three-week market rally. Oil rose again as Iran said it would close the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. lifted its blockade. President Trump threatened not to extend the Wednesday cease-fire deadline, then extended it indefinitely. With talks on pause, stocks retreated, then rallied on chip earnings. On Friday, the Department of Justice ended its investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, paving the way for Kevin Warsh to be confirmed. On the week, the Dow industrials fell 0.4%, the S&P 500 rose 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.5%, both closing at new highs.

Companies: Tim Cook stepped down as CEO at Apple; hardware chief John Ternus replaces him. The administration neared a $500 million rescue package for Spirit Airlines. Amazon.com said that it would invest $5 billion in Anthropic, which will buy $100 billion of Amazon cloud services. Tesla upped its 2026 capital spending to over $25 billion. Intel beat on earnings and offered a strong outlook. Meta Platforms is laying off 8,000 workers, and Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts.

Deals: Brad Jacobs' QXO agreed to buy insulation maker TopBuild for $17 billion...SpaceX secured an option for code-editing start-up Cursor for $60 billion, but not until after it goes public...Bloomberg said Deutsche Telekom was mulling a full merger with its 53%-owned T-Mobile US....Amazon-backed X-Energy rose 27% on its initial public offering.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 24, 2026 21:31 ET (01:31 GMT)

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