Wall St closes mixed on ramped-up Middle East tensions

STORY: U.S. stocks ended little changed on Tuesday, with the Dow basically flat, the S&P 500 dipping marginally lower and the Nasdaq also flat.The indexes gave up early gains as investors weighed fading hopes for an earlier-than-expected end to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran against a backdrop of renewed military threats.Rising oil prices have also exacerbated investor worries about stagflation, explains Amol Dhargalkar, chairman and managing partner of Chatham Financial."The biggest driver of stagflation right now is likely to be the war in the Middle East. From what we see, it is really about oil prices. [FLASH] So I think the number one thing that we can keep an eye out for, and clearly that markets are focused on, is an end to hostilities, a reopening of the taps, so to speak, on the oil side. But if that war continues on, stagflation is going to be a term that is thrown around a lot more, and we're going to see meaningful market impacts from it."Stocks on the move Tuesday included Oracle, which climbed more than 7% in extended trading after the company beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue on robust demand for its cloud computing services. The results help to allay investor concerns that Oracle's multi-billion dollar push into AI will not generate profits quickly enough.Shares of chipmakers were higher on Tuesday, including Nvidia, Western Digital and SanDisk, which rose more than 5%.On the downside, shares of health insurer Centene plunged 16% after the company reaffirmed its 2026 profit forecast and said it is seeing fewer members in some Affordable Care Act plans, also known as Obamacare.