Oil climbs on Iran escalation as equities rally broadly

Oil prices rose Wednesday as U.S. pressure on Iran intensified, with Reuters reporting that sanctions and a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz are "starting to tell" on Tehran's position. The escalation followed earlier U.S. airstrikes inside southern Iran, which Washington said targeted threats to shipping corridors after attempted maritime attacks.

U.S. equity indexes advanced broadly. The S&P 500 (SPY) rose 1.01% to $772.92 and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) gained 1.14% to $717.33, according to Finnhub data. The Russell 2000 (IWM) added 0.46% to $295.35, trailing the large-cap benchmarks by roughly 55 basis points.

Mega-cap technology names led the advance. Tesla (TSLA) surged 7.08% to $382.30, the largest move among major tech and growth names tracked. Meta Platforms (META) rose 3.54% to $613.84 and Microsoft (MSFT) gained 2.65% to $509.97. Nvidia (NVDA) rose a more modest 1.57% to $227.94, while Apple (AAPL) added 0.89% to $327.85.

Separately, Nvidia's planned acquisition of Hugging Face drew attention on Hacker News, where a discussion thread scored 236 points. On the same platform, a 145-point thread questioned why OpenAI, Claude and Grok experienced simultaneous outages, with users debating whether the disruption reflected a coincidence or a shared infrastructure failure.

On trade policy, Bloomberg reported that President Trump met with U.S. oil executives to press domestic refiners to boost gasoline and diesel output ahead of midterm elections, and questioned industry leaders on capacity to process heavier Venezuelan crude grades. Trump also said the U.S. will seek back payment from Europe for Ukraine aid, according to Reuters. CNBC reported automakers are lobbying Congress for a permanent ban on Chinese connected vehicles in the U.S.