Monday, June 23, 2025

Market participants took today’s global headline of a thwarted attack from Iran on a U.S. Air Force base in the small country of Qatar as a form of good news for equities today. Calls for peace in the region from President Trump look to have been taken to heart — if not by the mullahs in charge of Iran, then by traders in today’s stock indexes.

The Dow closed up +384 points on the session, +0.90%, while the S&P 500 performed marginally better, +0.96%. The Nasdaq gained +224 points, +1.03% today, and the small-cap Russell 2000 rose +1.05%. All indexes ended regular trading at or near session highs. Bond yields remained steady (10-year +4.34%) or lower (2-year +3.85%).

Oil prices ratcheted down considerably today, helping equities improve their performance. At this point, any warlike shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz — which passes 20 million barrels of petroleum products per day, or nearly 30% of the world's oil trade — do not appear to be on the table. As a result, WTI spot crude prices fell -8% to $67.67 per barrel and Brent dropped -6.3%, to $67.73 per barrel.

KB Home Beats Q2 Earnings, Lowers Guidance

Shares of Los Angeles-based homebuilder KB Home KBH are down -3.4% in late trading today, directly following a five-cent beat on its bottom line to $1.50 per share (though down from $2.15 per share in the year-ago quarter) on $1.53 billion in quarterly sales, higher than the $1.50 billion in the Zacks consensus. Deliveries were slightly ahead of estimates, with the average price per home $488,700.

But full-year revenues (ending November) for the Zacks Rank #4 (Sell)-rated KB Home were reduced to a range of $6.30-6.50 billion from the $6.64 billion analysts were anticipating. The homebuilder has now outperformed on earnings estimates in nine of the last 10 quarters. Shares are now down roughly -20% year to date.

Other News Items from Today’s Stock Market

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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