By Mackenzie Tatananni and George Glover
Stocks were falling sharply Thursday after Iran rejected the Trump administration's attempt to hash out a peace deal and a potential cease-fire hung in the balance.
These stocks were making moves:
Super Micro Computer tumbled 7.1%. A proposed class action has been filed in a San Francisco federal court accusing the company of securities fraud. Shares have been battered ever since Super Micro company's co-founder and two others linked to the company were charged with illegally smuggling chips to China. Super Micro has previously said it "maintains a robust compliance program" and has been cooperating with the government's investigation.
Meta Platforms fell 7.2% and Google parent Alphabet declined 2.5%. A young woman won a legal case against Meta and Google's YouTube after accusing the companies of designing their apps to be addictive. The jury ordered the companies to pay $3 million to the plaintiff.
Memory stocks Sandisk and Micron Technology added to the previous session's losses, slumping 9.3% and 5.7%, respectively. Google this week released TurboQuant, an artificial intelligence-compression algorithm that claims to reduce memory requirements by six times.
Coherent, Lumentum, Vertiv, and EchoStar were among the biggest decliners in the benchmark index, falling 9.1%, 9%, 7.5%, and 6.9%, respectively. All four stocks joined the index Monday as part of its quarterly rebalancing.
Olaplex Holdings surged 51%. The hair care brand will be acquired by German conglomerate Henkel for $1.4 billion, in a deal that's expected to close in the second half of the year.
Newmont declined 1.7% and Freeport-McMoRan slid 2.6% as gold extended a recent slump. Investors are worried that the war in the Middle East will drive up inflation, strengthening the case for central banks to raise interest rates. That would weaken bullion's appeal relative to interest-bearing assets like bonds.
Pony AI was down 16%. The Chinese robo-taxi company said it would partner with Uber Technologies and autonomous driving company Verne to expand to Europe by launching in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Pony AI separately reported a wider net loss for the third quarter, but its revenue jumped 72%.
Several software stocks were clawing their way back after slumping amid rekindled AI-disruption fears. Intuit and Autodesk each added 2.2%, and IT-focused consulting firm Gartner was up 3.5%.
Best Buy rose 5.1% to become one of the S&P 500's top performers. The gains put shares of the electronics retailer on pace for their largest same-day percent increase since a nearly 10% jump in October 2025, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
MillerKnoll plunged 24% after the office furniture maker missed earnings estimates for the third quarter and issued a weak outlook for the current quarter, which it blamed on the war in the Middle East driving up costs.
Navan soared 34% after the business travel and expense platform beat Wall Street's targets for fourth-quarter earnings and revenue.
Worthington Steel sank 15% after the steel processor reported that its third-quarter profit fell from a year ago as a tough macroeconomic environment weighs on demand.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com and George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 26, 2026 13:51 ET (17:51 GMT)
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