Wall Street was higher on Wednesday, with strong gains in Alphabet and other heavyweights, after US President Donald Trump suggested an end to the Middle East conflict may be near.

The US would be “out of Iran very quickly” and could come back for “spot hits” if needed, Trump told Reuters, hours before he was scheduled to address the nation about the war.

“We have Trump’s comments, which vary quite a bit,” said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Global Investments. “Everybody is trying to guess what he really means by what he’s saying. The markets want it to be positive, they want the war to end.”

Technology-related heavyweights rallied, with Alphabet up 3.4% and Meta Platforms and Amazon each up more than 1%.

Wall Street rallied for two straight days as investors speculated that the US-Israeli war over Iran would end soon. Energy prices have risen in recent months, fueling fears of global inflation, as the conflict halted the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

With Wednesday’s gains, the S&P 500 is down 4% so far in 2026. The index is trading at less than 20 times expected earnings, its lowest in 10 months, according to LSEG data.

The PHLX chip index rose 2.82% for the second session.

SpaceX filed for a confidential initial public offering, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, sending space stocks higher.

Intuitive Machines rose 9%, Planet Labs rose 10% and Rocket Lab rose 2%. The Destiny Tech100 investment fund, which owns SpaceX shares, jumped 9.1%.

The US Eli Lilly rose 3.8% after the Food and Drug Administration approved the drugmaker’s weight-loss pill to sell under the brand name Foundayo.

It rose 8.8% after Intel said it would buy back Apollo’s stake in its Ireland factory for $14.2 billion.

The S&P 500 ended the session up 0.72% at 6,575.32 points. The Nasdaq gained 1.16% to 21,840.95 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.48% to 46,565.74 points.

The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street’s gauge of fear, slipped to its lowest level in more than a week.

Oil prices fell sharply, and the S&P 500 energy index fell 3.9% to its lowest level in a week. Airlines jumped, with the S&P Composite Passenger Airlines sub-index up 2.3%.

Nike fell 15.5% to its lowest level in a decade after the sportswear giant forecast a surprise drop in its fourth-quarter sales.

ADP’s National Employment Report showed that private payrolls rose steadily in March, while retail sales rose by the most in seven months in February. US manufacturing activity rose last month, according to gauges from the Institute for Supply Management.

Nonfarm payrolls data for March will be the focus on Friday, although US markets will be closed for the Good Friday holiday.

Due to rising inflation fears, traders now believe the Federal Reserve is more likely to raise interest rates by the end of the year than cut rates.

Within the S&P 500, the number of forward issues has increased by a 1.5-to-one ratio.

S&P 500 posts 6 new highs and 12 new lows; The Nasdaq hit 63 new highs and 102 new lows.

Volume was relatively light on US exchanges with 18.8 billion shares traded compared to an average of 20.2 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions.

(Reporting by Purvi Aggarwal and Tvesha Dixit in Bengaluru and Noelle Randwich in San Francisco Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Devika Saimanath and David Gregorio)