Wall Street indexes fall, with Iran and earnings season in focus

Wall Street indexes fall, with Iran and earnings season in focus

By Sinéad Carew and Ragini Mathur

Mon July 20, 2026  

The war rages on and now Yemen is threatening to open still another major front in the conflict which could add even more impact to global oil supplies. All three indexes thus took another dive with the Nasdaq and S&P spending most of the day in the black before closing very modestly down, all on the hope that an overture today from Iran to bring about de-escalation and another cease fire could well work out.  

The Dow, on the other hand, spent almost the entire day in the red closing down again a substantial 3-digits as investors sit on the fence awaiting more Q2 later this week especially from some of the bigger names in tech, energy and consumer-facing businesses. Earnings growth projections today got another boost to 26% vs 23.7 a few days ago and 19.2 in April.  Chipmakers will be closely watched after Friday’s plummet of the Philly index to 20% below the late-June record. Volume remains well below the 19.94 average, closing today at 15.5 billion. 

DJ: 52,146.42  -406.55         NAS: 25,520.24  -361.70       S&P: 7,457.69  -76.08           7/17

DJ: 51,839.26  -307.16         NAS: 25,508.07  -12.17         S&P: 7,443.28  -14.41           7/20

Mon 7-20-26 4:45 pm Wall Street indexes fall, with Iran and earnings season in focus | Reuters