S&P 500, Nasdaq notch record closes on optimism around US-Iran talks

STORY: U.S. stocks ended mostly higher on Wednesday. The Dow was the outlier, dipping marginally, while the S&P 500 gained eight-tenths of a percent to close at a record high, and the Nasdaq climbed about 1.6% to also notch a record high close.The Nasdaq's record finish came just 13 days after confirming that it was in a correction due to worries about the Middle East war.Equities have found strong support this week from investor hopes that Washington and Tehran could return to the negotiating table with a view to ending the war, which has caused widespread disruption in global oil markets, reignited inflation concerns and muddied the interest-rate outlook.Those remain an ongoing concern, notes Shana Orczyk Sissel, founder and CEO of Banríon Capital Management."Oil prices and food prices are not included in the inflation numbers that the Federal Reserve pay attention to. So while they are the largest pressures on the individual consumer, they don't necessarily show up in the numbers that the monetary policy decisions are made for. And that is problematic and it puts the Fed in a difficult position."Among Wednesday's stock moves, Bank of America rose nearly 2% after the second-biggest U.S. lender reported growth in first-quarter profit.And fellow Wall Street heavyweight Morgan Stanley rallied 4.5% after it reported a jump in quarterly profit. Elsewhere in the market, Broadcom advanced more than 4% after Meta extended its custom chips deal with the firm.And shares of Allbirds soared more than 582% after the footwear maker said it was raising capital and pivoting towards AI computing infrastructure.