Your Evening Briefing

April 14, 2026

Stocks rise as risk-on traders are hopeful for a peace deal

Stocks surged as the market took a definitively risk-on stance, driving the each of the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, and the Russell 2000 higher as Iran appeared not to escalate after President Trump's blockade order and the US and Iran could reportedly resume peace talks as early as this week.

Traders piled into retail favorites and drove crypto higher as bitcoin surged. The S&P 500 closed roughly a percentage point higher than it did on February 27, the last trading day before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran began.

Stocks that moved higher:

IonQ ripped higher after disclosing new contracts and hitting benchmark milestones, and quantum stocks D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantum Computing rose as well.
Bloom Energy spiked after massively expanding its partnership to supply power to Oracle.
Globalstar gained after Amazon struck a deal to acquire it for about $11.6 billion as it looks to take on SpaceX's Starlink, while AST SpaceMobile dipped on the news.
American Airlines jumped on reports that the CEO of United Airlines had floated the idea of merging the two airlines.
Vertiv Holdings popped after BNP Paribas initiated on the stock with an "outperform" rating due to its dominance in data center cooling.
Robinhood Markets surged as crypto and retail-oriented stocks rallied.
Novo Nordisk ticked higher after partnering with OpenAI to bolster AI drug discovery.
Credo Technology Group soared after announcing a deal to acquire a photonics company.
Disney rose as it reportedly began layoffs, with CEO D'Amaro citing need for more "technologically-enabled workforce."
Johnson & Johnson rose after beating on Q1 sales and raising its full-year forecast.

Moving lower:

JPMorgan Chase dropped after cutting full-year net interest income guidance to $103 billion from $104.5 billion.
Wells Fargo dipped after disclosing $36 billion of private credit exposure, net interest income misses estimates by 1%.
CarMax sunk after reporting Q4 results.
Lucid surged after announcing a new CEO and expanded robotaxi partnership with Uber, before retreating on news of a $300 million stock offering.

6 months after hiking Game Pass prices by 50%, Xbox determines it may be too expensive

Microsoft’s new Xbox chief, Asha Sharma, signaled that the subscription may be too pricey in an internal memo seen by The Verge. Read more.

Will a resolve to reduce screen time see a revival of landline telephones?

For parents trying to limit their kids’ exposure to smartphones, the answer could be yesterday’s tech.

Read more.

While the ceasefire between the US and Iran was intended to improve the flow of oil through this key choke point, the subsequent announcement of a US blockade of the waterway threatens to do precisely the opposite. Read more

Stanford AI report: Model capability accelerating, China has closed the gap with the US
Stanford’s annual AI Index Report says “leading models are now nearly indistinguishable” from each other, and benchmarks used to evaluate them are falling behind their accelerating capabilities.
Ethereum climbs to highest point since end of January
“We should probably view the current ETH price gains with caution,” said Jim Hwang, COO of investment company Firinne Capital.
Bitcoin flirts with key $75,000 level on hopes of an Iran deal
Several analysts argue that for bitcoin to have truly turned a corner and break from the tight range it’s been stuck in, a sustained rally above the $75,000 level is needed.

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