A heavily damaged bridge which was hit by a U.S. airstrike is seen along the road connecting Roudan and Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on Saturday.
Oil prices rose while U.S stock-index futures declined on Sunday, amid an escalation of fighting in the Middle East and as investors await key tech earnings this week.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM00) fell about 95 points, or 0.2%, late Sunday. S&P 500 futures (ES00) and Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ00) were down fractionally. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) was trading above $64,000, little changed over the weekend.
West Texas Intermediate crude (CL.1) rose 2.8%, near $85 a barrel, as the U.S. ramped up strikes against Iran over the weekend following the deaths of at least three U.S. servicemembers since Friday. Oil prices jumped more than 15% last week after the U.S. and Iran intensified their tit-for-tat attacks and President Donald Trump said the U.S. was reimposing its naval blockade against Iranian ports. WTI settled Friday at $82.49, while Brent crude (BRN00), the global benchmark, settled Friday at $88.10 a barrel
Recent developments in the Persian Gulf are weighing on the market. While there had been assumptions that fighting would be short-term and relatively constrained, "That assumption is now being tested," Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said in a weekend note. "The tinderbox looks increasingly close to igniting in full force."
The U.S. has moved a number of warplanes, including refueling aircraft, to the Middle East, the New York Times reported, raising fears of a return to all-out war between the U.S. and Iran. Iran on Saturday said it had formally withdrawn from the cease-fire agreement with the U.S., which Trump previously said was over. Iran targeted sites in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain on Sunday, the Associated Press reported, adding that Iran said the U.S. struck a nuclear power plant under construction in southwest Iran.
U.S. stocks finished lower Friday, with the PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX closing in bear-market territory, typically defined as a 20% drop from a recent high. For the week, the S&P 500 SPX was down 1.6%, while the Dow DJIA lost 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP sank 2.9%, according to FactSet data.
Despite the sharp selloff in semiconductor and memory stocks, the "Magnificent Seven" group of megacap tech stocks have been rallying over the past two weeks, thanks largely to big recent gains by Meta Platforms (META) and Apple $(AAPL)$, which on Friday regained the title of most valuable U.S. company by market cap.
Some analysts are hopeful that a resurgence by those tech giants, whose stocks slumped over the spring, could revive the cooling bull market.
"Some of the semiconductor stocks could become quite big on their own, but not as big as the Magnificent Seven, so it's very hard for the stock market to rally without them for too long," Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told MarketWatch last week.
Innes said in a note over the weekend that the shift away from AI-chip stocks appears to be more of a rotation than a collapse, "but any rebound will need earnings to prove that the capex boom is producing revenue, margins and cash flow rather than simply a larger electricity bill."
Analysts largely expect strong earnings outlooks for the Magnificent Seven companies, and those high hopes will be put to the test this week, as Alphabet $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ and Tesla $(TSLA)$ report quarterly results Wednesday. Outside of those big names, investors will also be awaiting earnings reports from General Motors $(GM)$, AT&T $(T)$, Intel $(INTC)$ and Verizon $(VZ)$, among others, this week.
Also on tap this week: a pair of labor-market updates, manufacturing and services PMI reports, and new-home sales numbers for June.
-Mike Murphy
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 19, 2026 18:17 ET (22:17 GMT)
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