North American stocks rally and oil tumbles 10% after Iran says Strait of Hormuz is open

Oil prices are falling by more than 10 per cent Friday, and Wall Street is rallying toward another record after Iran said the Strait of Hormuz is fully open, allowing oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf again and carry crude to customers worldwide.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.8 per cent as U.S. stocks run toward the finish of a third straight week of big gains, their longest such streak since Halloween. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 678 points, or 1.4 per cent, as of 9:35 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was one per cent higher.

Stocks have jumped more than 11 per cent since hitting a bottom in late March on hopes that the United States and Iran can avoid a worst-case scenario for the global economy despite their war.

The apparent reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is the clearest yet signal for optimism, and U.S. President Donald Trump said in a speech late Thursday that the war “should be ending pretty soon,” although the timing remains unclear.

The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude tumbled 10.8 per cent to $81.28 US. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 10.3 per cent to $89.13 US. To be sure, it remains above its $70 level from before the war, indicating some caution is still embedded in financial markets.

Several times since the war began, optimism on Wall Street has quickly swung to doubt about a possible end to the fighting.

That in turn has caused sudden swings of prices for everything from stocks to bonds to oil.

A strong start to the earnings reporting season for big U.S. companies has also helped to support the U.S. stock market, and several more financial companies joined the list Friday of companies delivering bigger profits for the start of 2026 than analysts expected.

State Street rose 2.9 per cent, and Fifth Third Bancorp added 1.9 per cent after both reported better results for the latest quarter than expected.

They helped offset an 11.5 per cent drop for Netflix, which fell even though it likewise delivered a better profit than expected. It did not raise its forecast for revenue growth for the full year, which analysts said may have disappointed some investors. It also said Reed Hastings, co-founder and chairman of the streaming company, will step down from its board of directors in June when his term expires.

In stock markets abroad, stock indexes leaped in Europe following Iran’s announcement about the Strait of Hormuz. France’s CAC 40 jumped two per cent, and Germany’s DAX returned 2.2 per cent.

In Asia, where trading finished for the day before the announcement, indexes were weaker. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.8 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.9 per cent for two of the bigger losses.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased sharply as falling oil prices took pressure off inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 4.24 per cent from 4.32 per cent late Thursday.