U.S. Stock Market Reacts to Middle East Tensions and Tesla's Performance

The U.S. stock market showed mixed results as investors continued to monitor developments in the Middle East. According to RTHK, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the conflict with Iran would persist, dispelling expectations of a swift resolution and causing oil prices to surge. The Dow Jones Industrial Average initially dropped by nearly 670 points, reaching a low of 45,897 points, before recovering to over 46,000 points and closing at 46,504 points, a decrease of 61 points or 0.13%, ending a three-day upward trend. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices both rose for the third consecutive day, reaching over one-week highs. The S&P 500 closed at 6,582 points, up 7 points or 0.11%, while the Nasdaq closed at 21,879 points, up 38 points or 0.18%. Tesla's first-quarter delivery numbers fell short of expectations, leading to a more than 5% drop in its stock price. Ford and General Motors also saw declines of nearly 1% and over 3%, respectively. Among major tech stocks, Amazon fell by about 0.4% following reports from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of attacks on multiple targets in the Middle East, including Amazon's cloud computing center in Bahrain. Alphabet and Meta experienced slight declines of less than 1%, while Intel rose nearly 5%, and Nvidia and Microsoft increased by about 1% or more. The U.S. stock market will be closed on Friday for the Good Friday holiday. Over the four trading days this week, the Dow rose approximately 3%, the S&P 500 increased by about 3.4%, and the Nasdaq climbed 4.4%, marking the largest weekly gains in four months and ending a five-week losing streak. Additionally, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has raised its valuation target to over $2 trillion, potentially becoming the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. The company has reportedly filed for the IPO confidentially and, prior to the offering, acquired Musk's AI startup xAI, increasing its valuation to $1.25 trillion.