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Stocks were choppy Monday as market participants weighed a continued rise in tech stocks against reports that a potential peace plan in the Middle East is in peril.
Wall Street is also looking ahead to Friday’s key jobs report — the first of Kevin Warsh’s stewardship at the Federal Reserve — which lands two weeks before the June Fed meeting.
Nvidia (NVDA, +6.3%) wowed Wall Street over the weekend, with the artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether unveiling a new processor chip for PCs. The new superchip, RTX Spark, will integrate designs from Arm Holdings (ARM) — sending its shares soaring 15.7% to start the week.
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Fellow Dow Jones stock Microsoft (MSFT, +2.3%), who Nvidia is collaborating with on its new chip, also climbed on the news, while chipmaker Intel (INTC, -4.7%) slumped.
BofA Securities analyst Vivek Arya reiterated his Buy rating on NVDA following its appearance at the 2026 Computex AI exhibition this weekend and said it remains a top pick.
“Overall, we see a continued strengthening of NVDA’s systems moat and expanding [its] serviceable addressable market from GPU racks to CPUs, networking/optics, storage/security, enterprise software and now personal AI PC,” says Arya.
Trump responds after Iran calls off peace plan, shuts Strait of Hormuz
The big rally in the technology sector helped the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (+0.4% to 27,086), the broader S&P 500 (+0.3% to 7,599), and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average (+0.09% to 51,078) close at new record highs, but gains were contained on revamped geopolitical worries.
Iranian media reported on Monday that Tehran will stop negotiating with the U.S. via intermediaries and will close the Strait of Hormuz in reaction to Israel’s military attacks on Lebanon, which it says are ceasefire violations.
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President Donald Trump attempted some damage control this afternoon, posting on Truth Social that talks with Iran “are continuing, at a rapid pace,” and noting that after talking with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “there will be no Troops going to Beirut.”
Still, oil prices took a notable jump higher to start the week, with front-month West Texas Intermediate crude futures climbing more than 5% to settle at $92.16 per barrel.
Berkshire unveils its latest big buy
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Taylor Morrison Home (TMHC) surged 22.3% after Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, -0.9%) said it would buy the homebuilder for $72.50 per share — a 24% premium to its May 29 close.
The all-cash deal, which represents an enterprise value of roughly $8.5 billion, will combine Taylor Morrison with manufactured homebuilder Clayton Homes, which Berkshire bought in 2003, to create a top-five U.S. builder by volume.
UBS Global Research analyst John Lovallo views the acquisition as “a strong vote of confidence in the mid-long term outlook for the homebuilding industry, including what we estimate to be a market that is underbuilt by roughly 7 million units.”
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of this year.