Wall Street just had its best day in months, and the catalyst wasn’t an earnings beat or a Fed pivot. It was diplomacy.
The S&P 500 jumped 1.3% on June 15 after the US and Iran announced a tentative deal to end a conflict that has rattled global markets since late February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 607 points, hitting a record intraday high. The Nasdaq Composite outpaced both with a 2.2% gain, as tech stocks led the charge higher on renewed risk appetite.
Oil prices, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction. WTI and Brent crude fell more than $3 to $4 per barrel as traders priced in the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for energy supply. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes through that narrow waterway.
What the deal actually means
The US-Iran conflict began after American and Israeli military strikes on Iran around February 28. The resulting standoff, which lasted over 100 days, centered largely on Iran’s disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. That disruption sent oil prices spiking and injected a geopolitical risk premium into virtually every asset class.
