New York's three major stock indexes ended mixed as hopes revived that a second round of U.S.-Iran armistice talks will be held.
On the 24th (U.S. Eastern time) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 49,230.71, down 79.61 points, or 0.16%, from the previous session.
In contrast, the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 rose 58.68 points to 7,165.08, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 398.09 points, or 1.63%, to 24,836.60 at the close. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both hit a record high during the day.
Earlier, the White House said Steve Witkoff, the White House Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's eldest son-in-law, are scheduled to go to Islamabad, Pakistan, on the morning of the 25th for talks with Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was also reported to be scheduled to arrive in Pakistan that night for the talks.
Islamabad was where the first face-to-face meeting between the two countries took place on the 11th and 12th. At that time, the two sides held 21 hours of armistice talks but failed to narrow differences, and the talks collapsed.
On the news, semiconductor stocks surged as hopes for an armistice grew. Intel's strong results fed into earnings expectations for the semiconductor sector. Intel jumped $15.79, or 23.64%, to $82.57.
AMD, which effectively splits the CPU (central processing unit) market with Intel, rose $42.48, or 13.91%, to $7.81, and Nvidia soared $8.63, or 4.41%, to close at $208.87. In particular, Nvidia surpassed the record high of $207.04 set on Oct. 29 last year, hitting a new high.
Big Techs were mostly strong as well. Alphabet rose $5.51, or 1.63%, to $344.40, and Microsoft (MS) gained $8.87, or 2.13%, to finish at $424.62. Amazon jumped $8.91, or 3.49%, to close at $263.99, and Meta Platforms added $15.88, or 2.41%, to $675.03.
Tesla rose $2.58, or 0.69%, to $376.30, and Palantir added $1.52, or 1.07%, to close at $143.09. Apple, by contrast, fell $2.37, or 0.87%, to finish at $271.06.