Wall Street ends lower as Middle East conflict fans inflation fears

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The US stock market closed lower due to concerns over the Iran conflict's impact on inflation, but showed a relatively tame reaction to the geopolitical news, with some stocks like Pinterest and Target experiencing significant gains.

Market Impact

Market impact analysis based on neutral sentiment with 80% confidence.

Sentiment
Neutral
AI Confidence
80%
Time Horizon
Short Term

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STORY: U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all dropping roughly one percent or less.Investors are concerned about the effect of the Iran conflict on inflation as oil prices extended sharp gains.Still, stocks came back from losses of more than 2% earlier in the day.That surprised Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, who expected to see a steep selloff of the year's most volatile stocks, including shares of AI-related companies. "What we see instead is a rotation from the stocks that have performed best year to date. Those ones are our worst today. And what's been worst over the first two months of the year are actually performing best today and this week. So software is at the top of the leaderboard today. [FLASH] And then you see some of those big year to date winners like the materials stocks, consumer staples too, not keeping up with the market. So it's a surprise. It's a surprising market reaction. I think really a fairly tame reaction to some really big geopolitical news.”Winners on the day included Pinterest. Shares of the image-sharing platform popped more than 9% after the company said activist Elliott Investment Management is investing $1 billion that would help fund a new $3.5 billion share buyback. The move marked a vote of confidence for Pinterest's efforts to tackle uncertain ad spending.Shares of Target gained nearly 7% after new CEO Michael Fiddelke pledged to restore annual sales growth, betting on a plan to spend billions to turn around the struggling retailer.Blackstone, however, shed almost 4% after its flagship credit fund, BCRED, saw a surge in redemption requests.

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Original article published by Yahoo Finance on March 4, 2026.
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