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 were little changed on Sunday, amid an escalation of fighting in the Middle East and as investors await key tech earnings this week.
After briefly popping into positive territory, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM00) were down 75 points, or 0.1%, late Sunday. S&P 500 futures (ES00) and Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ00) were about flat. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) was trading above $64,000, up about 4% over the past week.
West Texas Intermediate crude (CL.1) rose more than 2%, above $84 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, shot up more than 2.5% on Sunday, above $90 a barrel, after settling Friday at $88.10.
The U.S. military announced a ninth consecutive night of attacks late Sunday, saying "The strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz."
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 Iran on Saturday said it had formally withdrawn from the cease-fire agreement with the U.S., which Trump previously said was over.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.
However, "after an entire weekend of doom-scrolling, markets opened with remarkably little drama," Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said in a note Sunday night. "That does not mean the market is relaxed. It means investors are still treating the conflict as something they recognize and believe they can compartmentalize."
The renewed hostilities are "being priced primarily as an oil, inflation and regional-risk event rather than the beginning of a systemic shock," he said.
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
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 19, 2026 22:40 ET (02:40 GMT)
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