Stocks just scored a trifecta of record closes for the first time in 2026. What to expect next.

By Joy Wiltermuth

Equities have been been prone to larger upswings when Trump has previously talked positively about ending the Iran war

Oil prices fell on optimism over Iran war ending, while the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all closed at new record high Wednesdays.

The big three U.S. stock indexes on Wednesday all finished at record highs together for the first time this year, drifting up on optimism around a potential end to the Iran war.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, the S&P 500 index SPX and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP booked gains ranging 0.02% to 0.4% on the day.

That isn't earth-shattering. Yet it's still a trifecta of record closes that hadn't been achieved by the three major indexes since Oct. 28, 2025, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

"When you are at a record high, you only need to close up a fraction," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. "Today is much more of a consolidation kind of day."

Perhaps more notable was that equities had been prone to larger upswings when President Donald Trump talked positively about the U.S. and Iran getting closer to ending the war.

The White House earlier in the day denied a Iranian TV report about an informal deal framework between the U.S. and Iran, but Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio later sounded optimistic about reaching an agreement.

"There's been a pretty reliable pattern," Sosnick said. "When something resembling good news comes out of the Persian Gulf, stocks will rally, and they won't sell off when those hopes don't come to pass," he said. "I think it's notable that we didn't get a ratchet effect."

Some bright spots did emerge Wednesday in travel stocks, as well as in the S&P 500's consumer-discretionary and staples sectors, which gained 1.9% and 0.1%, respectively, according to FactSet.

See: Investors betting the Iran war is ending are buying up travel stocks

The tech sector and other artificial-intelligence plays that have been driving the bull market took a breather.

It's also worth noting that the last time the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq all closed at record highs on the same day was late October. Back then, stocks had clawed back from Trump's "liberation day" tariff shock.

Furthermore, optimism around easing tensions between the U.S. and China on trade were credited with pushing the three indexes to records at that time. But shortly thereafter the rally began to sputter, as the below chart shows.

Stocks still drifted a bit higher into record territory into late October, but after that the Nasdaq didn't score another record finish until April 15, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

That was about seven weeks into the Iran war. Optimism around the AI spending spree has driven much of the record-setting rally this year, with particularly eye-watering gains seen in individual stocks like Micron, (MU) Western Digital (WDC) and Sandisk (SNDK), as well as in the semiconductor sector.

While some of the AI momentum paused Wednesday, good luck finding anyone who thinks an end to the AI spending spree lurks on the horizon.

Mike DeStefano and Abhirami Shrinivas contributed

-Joy Wiltermuth

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05-27-26 1831ET