MARKET SNAPSHOT

U.S. stocks ended mostly higher Friday, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 closing at records, while oil prices finished mixed on optimism about U.S.-Iran peace talks, which wound up getting scrapped over the weekend. Treasury yields rose slightly Friday. Gold and silver also rose, while the dollar weakened.

MARKET WRAPS

EQUITIES

Intel helped brighten a market clouded by war anxiety, pushing the Nasdaq composite 1.6% higher to its fifth record close of the year.

Shares of the chip maker surged 24%, hitting a new record high for the first time since 2000 after the company reported higher sales and raised its guidance amid a resurgence in demand for its CPUs. The gain, Intel's biggest in 38 years, added to the U.S. government's windfall on its 2025 investment.

Intel was the best performer in the S&P 500, which rose 0.8% and also closed at a record. Other tech stocks also showed strength, with Nvidia rising 4.3% to its first record since October Amazon.com moved 3.5% higher.

Other parts of the market struggled. The Dow industrials slipped 0.2%, and six out of the 11 S&P sectors declined including financial and health-care stocks.

The Justice Department meanwhile said it would end its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

On Sunday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said he would support Kevin Warsh's confirmation as Federal Reserve chair, clearing the last significant obstacle to installing President Trump's pick to succeed Powell.

In economic data, anxiety about the Iran war contributed to the grimmest consumer sentiment on record in April, a long-running survey showed.

President Trump said he isn't sending U.S. envoys to Pakistan for peace talks with Iran and that negotiations could happen over the phone instead. "If they want to talk, they can come to us or they can call us, " he said Sunday on Fox News.

Asian markets were mixed on Friday. South Korea's Kospi ended flat while Japan's Nikkei Stock Average rose 1% to end at a record high, led by chip-related stocks. Taiwan's Taiex added 3.2%, led by gains in TSMC after regulators eased the limit on how much funds can invest in a single stock.

The Hang Seng Index ended 0.2% higher. China's Shanghai Composite closed 0.3% lower, the Shenzhen Composite fell 0.6% and the ChiNext Price Index lost 1.4%.

Chip stocks surged in China and Hong Kong after DeepSeek launched its long-awaited AI model update, boosting hopes for localization efforts.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 Benchmark Index dropped 0.1%, and New Zealand's S&P/NZX 50 Index fell 0.1%.

COMMODITIES

Oil futures finished mixed Friday but posted gains for the week on the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

"A continued stalemate could sustain upward pressure on prices as supply disruptions persist, while any meaningful diplomatic breakthrough may trigger a correction," Naga's Frank Walbaum said. "However, given the scale of current logistical constraints, any normalization in flows is likely to be gradual, limiting downside risks."

WTI settled down 1.5% at $94.40 a barrel for a 14% weekly gain. Brent edged up 0.2% to $105.33 and was 17% higher than a week ago.

Gold settled up 0.4% Friday, and silver rose 1.2%. For the week, both metals posted a loss, with gold snapping a three-week winning streak and silver snapping a four-week winning streak.

TODAY'S TOP HEADLINES

Aborted Pakistan Trip Leaves Trump With Tough Choices on Iran Talks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-President Trump scrapped a trip by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran, leaving himself tough choices over how to force Iran to make concessions the White House wants to strike a deal.

Trump said Iran can reach out to the U.S. if it wants to negotiate an end to the conflict. "They can call us," he told Fox News on Sunday, adding any talks would be conducted by phone.

On Saturday, Trump said he decided to cancel the trip by his envoys because an offer from Iran had fallen short of the White House's expectations, adding that U.S. officials had received a better one shortly after canceling the trip.

Tillis Drops Objection to Warsh's Fed Nomination

Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said Sunday he would support Kevin Warsh's confirmation as Federal Reserve chair, clearing the last significant obstacle to installing President Trump's pick to succeed Jerome Powell.

Tillis had withheld his vote for months, saying he wouldn't advance any Fed nominee while the Justice Department's criminal investigation of Powell remained open. The probe appeared to end on Friday, when U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said her office was closing its inquiry into Powell's testimony to Congress about the Fed's building renovations and referring the matter to the Fed's inspector general. The inspector general, who reports to Powell, had already been conducting an audit at Powell's request since July.

In a statement Sunday, Tillis said he took the Justice Department "at its word" that the investigation is closed and that any appeal of a federal judge's March ruling against the probe's grand jury subpoenas "will be with respect to legal principles and not for the purpose of reissuing subpoenas." He said that only a criminal referral from the inspector general would justify reopening the case. "With these assurances, I look forward to supporting Kevin Warsh's confirmation," Tillis said.

'I Don't Want to Die Here:' As Shots Rang Out, Guests Dived Under Tables

WASHINGTON-President Trump was ready to put on a show.

On his way to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Saturday evening, the president told associates that he was excited to deliver his speech, calling it the "hottest ticket in town," according to a person familiar with the matter. He and his advisers had packed his prepared remarks with jokes, including jabs at members of his own cabinet such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump's attendance, his first as president, marked an uneasy truce with a press corps that his administration had spent years antagonizing and sometimes even threatening with rhetoric and legal action.

Week Ahead for FX, Bonds: Major Central Bank Meetings Due as Middle East Conflict Continues

A string of decisions by major central banks are due, including from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England, while markets will continue to scrutinize tensions in the Middle East.

Rates aren't expected to be changed this month. However, investors will be looking to see how various central banks view the impact of the energy-price spike caused by the Middle East war and how likely it is that rates could move in the coming months as a result.

Key data include the first estimate of U.S. first-quarter gross domestic product and provisional eurozone inflation figures for April. In Asia, China's PMI readings will be closely watched for signs of momentum ahead of the May Day holiday.

April's Consumer Sentiment Is the Lowest on Record

Anxiety about the war in Iran has left Americans in the grimmest economic mood on record, according to a long-running survey.

The University of Michigan's consumer-sentiment index dropped to 49.8, from 53.3 last month. That is below the previous low of 50 seen in June 2022, when shoppers faced searing inflation, and the worst reading in the more than 50-year history of the Michigan survey. A preliminary April reading of 47.6 published two weeks ago suggested the survey would deliver bad news this month.

People across different ages, income levels and political opinions reported lower sentiment in April, the survey's director, Joanne Hsu, said. Responses later in April turned more positive after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire.

Ford, Geely Held Talks About Bringing Chinese Tech to America

Ford Motor and Chinese automaker Geely held talks as recently as this year exploring whether the European tie-up they are negotiating could extend into the U.S., a prospect Geely sees as a launchpad into the world's second-largest vehicle market.

Discussions, which involved Ford potentially licensing Geely's technology in the U.S., have stalled in recent months, according to people familiar with the talks. The two sides instead are focused on hammering out a deal to share technology and manufacturing capacity in Europe.

Geely, China's second-largest automaker behind BYD, is eager to expand in the profitable U.S. market, where Chinese automakers are effectively banned. But it faces major hurdles to doing so.

Google Expands Anthropic Investment With $40 Billion Commitment

Alphabet's Google, already a close partner to Anthropic, plans to invest as much as $40 billion in additional capital in the company, a spokesperson for the artificial intelligence company said.

Google will invest $10 billion in Anthropic at its current $350 billion valuation, and could invest up to $30 billion more if the company meets certain performance milestones.

Anthropic this month has secured up to $65 billion in new funding commitments as it races to keep pace with OpenAI ahead of a potential initial public offering.

Meta Signs Multibillion-Dollar Deal With Amazon to Use Its CPU Chips for AI

Meta Platforms and Amazon.com agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal over several years in which the social-media company will use tens of millions of Amazon Web Services' Graviton chip cores to support its AI agents and other AI initiatives.

The companies declined to disclose the financial terms and exact duration of the deal. Nafea Bshara, an Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer, said the length of the deal is between three and five years.

Bshara, a co-founder of AWS's in-house chip unit Annapurna Labs, said most of the tens of millions of AWS Graviton cores will be located in the U.S.

X-Energy's Shares Jump in IPO, Delivering Wins to Amazon and Ken Griffin

Nuclear-energy company X-Energy scrapped a public offering less than three years ago after investors showed little interest.

On Friday, X-Energy's shares closed up 27% in their stock-market debut, giving the company a market valuation of around $11.5 billion. X-Energy has benefited as artificial intelligence drives demand for new sources of electricity.

Its high-profile backers include Amazon.com and Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge-fund firm Citadel.

EU, U.S. Launch Partnership on Critical Minerals

The European Union and U.S. launched a partnership on critical minerals, the European Commission said Friday as the bloc's top trade negotiator visits Washington, D.C. to meet his U.S. counterparts.

The partnership will see both sides seek to cooperate on areas from minerals exploration and extraction to recycling under a memorandum of understanding signed by EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"It is encouraging to see EU-US cooperation on critical raw materials taking concrete shape," Sefcovic said in a statement Friday. "The vision is there-now the real test is execution, by turning shared ambitions into impactful projects," he said.