Wall St ends mixed as investors parse Middle East negotiations

STORY: U.S. stocks closed mixed on Friday, with the Dow dropping more than half a percent, the S&P 500 ticking down marginally and the Nasdaq adding more than a third of a percent - its 8th straight day of gains.U.S. Vice President JD Vance departed for Islamabad for what Pakistan's prime minister called "make-or-break" ceasefire negotiations with Iran.The fragile two-week truce has been threatened by claimed violations of the ceasefire, including Israel's continued bombardment of Lebanon.Anna Rathbun is founder & CEO of Grenadilla Advisory.“As we've seen, the markets have been moving along with the headlines about the war. And certainly the ceasefire talks were welcome, and it seems to be holding, even though it's very wobbly and they're going into the talks this weekend. Today, some of the volatility and uncertainty comes from leading into the talks President Trump has said that the troops are ready to bomb Iran if it doesn't go well. And he sort of gave an indirect timeline of next 24 hours. So, of course, this type of rhetoric makes the market nervous.”Among the session's stock moves, tech shares led the gainers, with the Philadelphia semiconductor index touching a record high. Shares of Broadcom advanced more than four and a half percent, while Nvidia added 2.5%.U.S.-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world's largest contract chipmaker, rose about 1.5% after it beat first-quarter revenue forecasts.:: CoreWeaveAnd shares of cloud infrastructure firm CoreWeave surged nearly 11% following its announcement of a multi-year agreement with Anthropic.Also on Friday, the Labor Department's consumer price index, the first major inflation indicator released since the onset of the war, showed consumer prices logged their largest monthly jump in nearly four years due to an expected spike in energy prices.And a report from the University of Michigan showed consumer sentiment plunged this month to a record low, with near-term expectations dropping to their lowest level since May of 1980.