US equity markets rallied on Friday (24 April), lifting the S&P500 and Nasdaq to fresh records as investors assessed signs of progress in U.S.-Iran peace talks and weighed solid corporate earnings against downbeat forward guidance due to war-related energy price shocks – Dow slipped -80-points or -0.16%, with Merck & Co Inc (down -2.37%) the worst performer in the 30-stock index. Nvidia Corp rallied +4.32% to US$208.27, clinching its first new record close since 29 October last year and lifting the chipmaking giant’s market capitalisation back above >US$5 trillion. The stock is still below its all-time intra-day high of US$212.19. Amazon.com Inc rose +3.49% to a record closing high of US$263.99 following news that it will supply its Graviton processors to Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (+2.41%) to support the social media giant’s agentic artificial intelligence (AI) workloads