Published May 23, 2026 Updated about 2 hours ago By Reuters NEW YORK: Wall Street’s main indexes rose on Friday ahead of a long weekend, with the blue-chip Dow hitting a record high for the first time since the Iran war began, as investors tracked progress in talks to end the nearly three-month-old conflict. The S&P 500 is on track for an eighth consecutive weekly gain, which would mark its best winning streak since December 2023. Most megacap and growth stocks traded higher, with Apple up 2 percent, hitting a market capitalization of more than USD4.5 trillion for the first time. Semiconductor stocks, a key driver of recent Wall Street gains, were broadly up with the Philadelphia chip index rising 2.4 percent. Qualcomm led the pack with a 12 percent jump. PC makers Dell Technologies and HP Inc surged over 15 percent each after China’s Lenovo Group reported a better-than-expected 27 percent jump in quarterly revenue. In the latest on the Iran situation, Reuters reported that a Qatari negotiating team arrived in Tehran in coordination with the United States to try to help secure a deal to end the war and resolve outstanding issues. “The market has been working under the assumption that there’s going to be relatively near-term resolution,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC. “If that assumption proves to be wrong, the market will catch down very quickly. The market has been trained that there’s an embedded Trump put in the market.” Global stocks have whipsawed since the conflict began in late February, but hopes of an eventual resolution to the war, optimism in the AI trade and…