Apple Was the Heaviest Weight on the S&P 500

US stocks and oil prices flip-flopped Tuesday as uncertainty rose about what will happen following a two-week ceasefire in the war with Iran, which is set to expire Wednesday.

• The S&P 500 erased an early rise and fell 45.13 points, or 0.6%, to 7,064.01.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 293.18 points, or 0.6%, to 49,149.38 after erasing an earlier rise of 400 points.
• The Nasdaq composite fell 144.43 points, or 0.6%, to 24,259.96.

Oil prices also wavered, and the price for a barrel of Brent crude went from less than $95 to roughly $100 during the day. It settled at $98.48, up 3.1%. The moves were mostly more modest than the vicious swings that rocked Wall Street earlier in the war, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly topped $119 and the S&P 500 dropped nearly 10% below its record high, the AP reports.

Helping to limit Wall Street's losses were UnitedHealth Group and other big companies that reported bigger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected. UnitedHealth jumped 7% after also raising its forecast for profit over the full year of 2026. That's big because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and it's a double-plus when companies not only top earnings estimates but also forecast better growth ahead. Quest Diagnostics rose 4.4% after likewise reporting fatter profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected while also raising its profit forecast for the full year.

Amazon added 0.7% after Anthropic said it signed a new agreement and is committing more than $100 billion over the next 10 years to AWS technologies to train and run its Claude chatbot. But they were all overshadowed by a 2.5% drop for Apple, which was the day's heaviest weight on the S&P 500. It fell in its first trading after Tim Cook said he'll step down as CEO on Sept. 1 and become the iPhone maker's executive chairman. Cook is handing control over to John Ternus, a company veteran who rose through Apple's hardware engineering ranks. Tractor Supply, meanwhile, dropped 11.7% after reporting profit and revenue for the latest quarter that fell short of expectations.

Other signals are indicating the US economy may be doing OK despite sharp up-and-down swings for oil prices because of the war with Iran. A report on Tuesday morning showed that US retailers made more money in March, the first full month of the war, than analysts expected. Growth was even relatively stable for retail sales when not including those from gasoline stations. "It's become cliched to say that the economic hit will depend on the duration of the Middle East conflict, but that cliché does ring true," according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.