A small motorboat passes ships anchored in the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas, Iran, on June 11. (Amirhossein Khorgui/ISNA via AP)
| Update:
key takeaways:
- Oil prices fell after President Donald Trump claimed success in talks to end the Iran war.
- SpaceX began trading on Wall Street, the first of the Big Three companies in the AI industry to go public.
- Prices of AI and other tech stocks have been volatile over the past week, partly because massive investment and rising share prices are creating a bubble that is in danger of bursting.
New York – US stocks are falling after oil prices fell again on June 12 and Wall Street welcomed SpaceX’s much-anticipated debut.
SpaceX stock rose 11% shortly after trading began. It is the first of three giants in the artificial intelligence industry to begin selling their shares in the US market, and is being seen as a measure of how hungry investors are still for AI stocks after the wild swings and huge skepticism that have plagued them over the past week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.1%. As of noon Eastern time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 253 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.3% lower.
The price of Brent crude fell 3.4% to $87.29 a barrel, giving a boost to the stock, deepening its losses for the week. Oil prices fell after President Donald Trump on Thursday withdrew his threat to launch attacks on Iran and said a possible deal with Iran was on the way.
An agreement to end the war could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to once again supply crude from the Persian Gulf to customers around the world. The price of Brent has soared from nearly $70 a barrel since the war began to almost nothing and has caused a wave of painful inflation for the world.
Of course, financial markets have rallied in the past on hopes that an end to the war with Iran was near, but each time they have been disappointed.
$spcx. Now trading on Nasdaq. pic.twitter.com/2IRWdeSFpM
– Nasdaq (@Nasdaq) 12 June 2026
The big factor for Wall Street this past week has really been AI stocks, and how they’ve gone from hitting record highs to suddenly bottoming out. The worry is whether AI mania has caused such stocks to jump too high, too fast, and their cautious moves sometimes change direction by the hour.
Many people went back down the roller coaster on June 12 after the climb on June 11. Broadcom’s 1.9% decline was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.
Some of the pressure on AI stocks may come from investors pulling out their money in hopes of moving into SpaceX and other big AI-related initial public offerings.
As the rocket maker’s stock opened for trading, SpaceX jumped 11% to $150 a share, giving the company a market value of $1.96 trillion and making CEO Elon Musk the first trillionaire. SpaceX has also invested heavily in AI, which is why it had $29.1 billion in debt as of the end of March.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Adobe fell 6.9% despite reporting stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected in the latest quarter.
Its stock has fallen 42% so far this year, and it announced that its chief financial officer is leaving the company on June 15. Adobe is already searching for a CEO to replace Shantanu Narayan, who announced in March that he was stepping down after 18 years as Adobe’s leader.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose to recapture sharp losses from a day earlier, when oil prices fell after Trump’s announcement. The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose to 4.48% from 4.45% at the end of June 11.
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Higher yields could slow down the entire economy and cut into prices of all types of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. He particularly hit out at investments considered to be the most expensive, and some critics are calling the AI industry a bubble where investment has gone too high.
Yields rose after a report that sentiment among US consumers was not as bad as economists had feared. A preliminary survey from the University of Michigan said sentiment had improved more than expected. U.S. consumers said they were feeling some relief after gasoline prices fell slightly at the beginning of the month.
In stock markets overseas, indices rose and posted big gains on Wall Street on June 11.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.6% and pared its losses earlier this month on a selloff of AI-related shares. The Kospi has almost doubled since the beginning of the year.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.8%, and France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.8%, leading the world’s two biggest movers.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-Him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
