Wall Street closes slightly down on renewed tensions between US, Iran
By Chuck Mikolajczak and Purvi
Agarwal
Mon April 20, 2026
It was pretty predictable that after the ceasefire more or less fell apart over the weekend and the Strait of Hormuz closed again after only one day, that the market would drop and the only wonder was that it didn’t drop a whole lot more. But as we’ve seen, investors are taking the war news pretty much in stride and are staying a lot more optimistic than otherwise. Indeed, all the indexes did drop quite a lot this morning, the Dow down over 200 by 11 a.m., but then, though quite choppy, all three recovered throughout the session, to close with only minor losses.
Aside from the war with the ceasefire deal nearing an end (though it’s ironic that anyone has really considered this a ceasefire since the fire never did really cease), investors took their good news from continuing strong Q1 reporting and now sitting on the fence awaiting Lockheed-Martin and IBM coming later this week. But the big question is whether the war is bleeding over into the real economy and so far the answer appears to be no. 1/10 of the S&P has reported with 87.5% beating estimates and earnings growth projected at a healthy 14.4%. The number of gainers almost exactly equaled the number of losers which could explain the modest changes. With today’s volatility, volume came in quite a bit below the 18.54 average, closing today 16.42 billion.
DJ: 49,447.43 +868.71 NAS: 24,468.48
+365.78 S&P: 7,126.06
+84.78 4/17
DJ: 49,442.56 -4.87 NAS: 24,404.39
-64.09 S&P: 7,109.14
-16.92 4/20
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