Brent Crude Jumps 6.7% to $97.22 as Sp 500 Holds
Brent crude jumped 6.7% to $97.22 a barrel on Monday, but the sp 500 was virtually unchanged from its all-time high set on Friday at 10:15 a.m. Eastern time. Oil moved higher after renewed fighting threatened the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, while stocks held close to records.
Nvidia offsets Monday’s oil move
Nvidia rose 4.8% after Jensen Huang said at a conference that “the company’s next-generation artificial-intelligence platform, Vera Rubin, is ramping into full production.” The advance gave the market a large-cap lift even as other sectors absorbed the oil shock, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down 102 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite, which was flat.
Science Applications International Corp. jumped 12.8% after reporting bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected and raising forecasts for upcoming financial results after winning several contracts from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the army and other agencies. That gain helped show where money still had appetite on a day when the market’s strongest names were doing the heavy lifting.
United Airlines and Carnival sink
United Airlines lost 2.9% and Carnival fell 2.7% as higher fuel costs filtered quickly into the companies most exposed to oil. The Russell 2000 sank 1%, a weaker move that fit the same pattern: smaller companies face more pressure when borrowing costs stay high and oil keeps inflation elevated.
Thomas Carroll, an equity market strategist at Stifel, said the top 10 stocks control nearly half the S&P 500’s total market value, a 40-year high. He wrote that a key indicator he follows about market breadth “is signaling a rotation is coming.”
That concentration left the index able to hover near record territory even as parts of the market weakened. For readers watching expenses tied to energy, the immediate signal is narrower: airline and cruise shares took the first hit, while mega-cap technology and contract-driven government services absorbed the day’s attention.
