(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - Milano, 8 mag - US shares were trading mixed at midday following a hotter-than-expected jobs report as investors tracked developments in the Gulf for signs of a US-Iran peace deal. Chip shares continued to surge, lifting the broader tech sector.

Oil prices rose yesterday after American and Iranian forces exchanged fire in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that handled roughly a fifth of global energy flows before the US-Iran conflict broke out.

But comments from US president Donald Trump that the ceasefire between the two countries was still intact helped stabilise prices.

The moves followed comments from a senior Iranian official that Tehran was not willing to let Washington reopen Hormuz with an 'unrealistic plan'.

In comments today US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US was expecting a response on Friday from Iran on a proposal to end the war.

Today's payrolls report meanwhile showed 115,000 jobs had been created in April, blowing past expectations for 65,000 and pointing to a stabilisation of the US labor market.

Also on the data front, according to preliminary data from the University of Michigan, US consumer sentiment fell more than expected to 48.2 in May from 49.8 the previous month.

On the stocks front, chip stocks continued to surge with Micron, AMD and Qualcomm gaining 11%, 6.8% and 9.5%, respectively.

However, shares in Cloudflare was down 24.7% after the cloud services company said it planned to cut around 20% of its workforce and disappointed on second-quarter guidance. While CoreWeave dropped 11.8% after the cloud infrastructure technology company lifted its spending forecast for the year on higher costs.

At 1518 GMT, the Dow Jones was losing 3.94 points, or 0.01%, at 49,593.03 points.

The S&P 500 was 47.85 points, or 0.65%, higher at 7,384.96 points.

The Nasdaq was gaining 305.52 points, or 1.18%, at 26,111.27.

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(RADIOCOR) 08-05-26 17:24:00 (0570) 5 NNNN