Stocks mixed as tech and SpaceX drag, Greenspan tributes mount

Technology shares and SpaceX pulled Wall Street in opposite directions Monday, leaving the major indexes mixed as investors weighed signs of progress in U.S.-Iran peace talks against a fresh selloff in high-growth names. The market’s weak tone was driven less by one headline than by a cluster of pressures, especially declines in tech and another leg lower in SpaceX.

The S&P 500 fell, weighed down by technology stocks and SpaceX, while the Dow managed to edge higher in a session marked by caution rather than conviction. Yahoo Finance said SpaceX stock dropped for a third straight day as traders focused on the stock’s unusual market status and its growing influence on index sentiment. The result was a split market that reflected both sector-specific weakness and broader macro uncertainty over the negotiations.

At the same time, tributes mounted for Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman who died Monday at age 100. Greenspan died at home of complications from Parkinson’s disease, and his career spanned nearly 19 years, from August 1987 to January 2006, under four presidents. Ben Bernanke called him “a great central banker,” while Mohamed El-Erian was among the early figures paying respects. Greenspan’s 1996 warning about “irrational exuberance” resurfaced as a reminder of an earlier policy era defined by steady expansion and deep faith in the Fed’s power to cushion markets.

That contrast between Greenspan’s long tenure and today’s nervous trading was hard to miss. His legacy was eventually shadowed by the 2008 financial crisis, but his imprint on the modern market structure remains enormous, especially as investors once again look to the Fed’s legacy of stability while parsing geopolitical risk and megacap weakness.

SpaceX’s outsized role in the day’s trading also underscored how quickly the company has become a market bellwether. It was expected to begin trading on June 12 at about a $2 trillion initial market value, a scale that would have made it the largest IPO in U.S. history. S&P Global declined to fast-track SpaceX into the S&P 500, even as Nasdaq agreed to do so for its own benchmark methodology, giving every move in the stock an importance that now extends well beyond one company.