Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTSTAN CHOEFri, June 26, 2026 at 6:32 AM GMT+2 4 min readNEW YORK (AP) — Most of the U.S. stock market rose Friday after oil prices eased back to where they were before the war with Iran, but drops for stocks swept up in the mania around artificial-intelligence technology kept the market in check.The S&P 500 finished nearly flat and slipped less than 0.1% to close out just its second losing week in the last 13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 44 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.Stocks got a boost as the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, dropped 3.8% to $72.60. That's lower than it was the day before the United States and Israel attacked Iran, which eventually led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the curtailment of oil shipments worldwide.The easier oil prices helped stocks of companies with big fuel bills, and American Airlines Group climbed 1.7%.Health care stocks, meanwhile, were some of the strongest forces pushing upward on the market after a committee of the European Medicines Agency recommended several medicines for approval and the extension for another dozen of their therapeutic indications. That included one for Eli Lilly, whose stock jumped 7.1%.Besides Lilly, nearly two out of every three stocks within the S&P 500 rose. But more drops for AI stocks helped to overshadow them.After soaring to tremendous heights and leading the market for years, AI stocks have been under pressure recently because of worries their profits can't possibly keep pace with the tremendous rallies for their stock prices. And those drops have an outsized effect because AI stocks have become Wall Street's largest and most influential, giving movements for their stock prices more weight on indexes than others.Micron Technology's drop of 6.7% was the heaviest weight on the market, for example. The maker of memory for computers has been a big winner this year, with its stock roughly quadrupling, because the AI boom has created a surge of demand for its products.But investors saw the downside of that surge Thursday, when Apple said it had to raise prices on laptops and other products by significant percentages to make up for the increases in memory prices. The worry is that such higher prices could ultimately lead to lower demand.Highlighting the roller-coaster ride that AI stocks have been on, SpaceX briefly dropped 2.9% in the morning and fell below $149. It then erased the loss to swing to a gain of 3.5% before finishing with a modest rise of 0.2%.After initially selling its stock at $135 apiece in its ballyhooed initial public offering earlier this month, SpaceX's price briefly soared above $225 within its first few days of trading. Besides rockets, Elon Musk's company also owns the xAI artificial-intelligence business.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info