Chicago, IL – April 10, 2026 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. ETFs recently featured in the blog include: Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS, Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ, Vanguard Information Technology ETF VGT, State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF XLK, VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH and Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF FTEC.
Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:
President Donald Trump said on April 7, 2026 that he would suspend planned attacks on Iranian infrastructure for two weeks, stepping back from the earlier threats of imminent large-scale strikes on Iran’s “whole civilization,” as quoted on CNBC.
The decision was “based on conversations with prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and field marshal Asim Munir of Pakistan,” Trump wrote, as mentioned in CNBC. Talks between the United States and Iran are set to take place in Islamabad over the next two weeks.
Trump said the pause is dependent on Iran agreeing to the “complete, immediate, and safe” reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for global oil shipments.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said vessels would be allowed safe passage through the strait during the two-week period, subject to coordination with Iran’s armed forces. Iran also has a list of proposals.
The truce looked increasingly fragile, as Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported that tanker traffic had been “halted” amid Israel’s ongoing strikes in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal said Iran had informed mediators it would restrict ship crossings to roughly a dozen per day — a sharp drop from the more than 130 vessels that transited daily before the conflict, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.
The Iran war posed severe risks to chip supply chains and data centers based in the Middle East. Amazon’s AWS data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were damaged in Iran’s drone strikes last month, as quoted on CNBC.
Major tech companies like NVIDIA, Oracle, Microsoft and OpenAI have announced projects in the Middle East in recent times, per CNBC. A prolonged Iran war could put those efforts in trouble.
A long-standing conflict could have affected the semiconductor sector’s access to crucial materials like helium and bromine, analysts told CNBC. Higher energy costs due to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz were detrimental to the demand of energy-hungry AI data centers.
Per CNBC, Helium is used to transfer heat when chips are made and is important to the lithography process. Qatar produces over a third of the world’s helium supply, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, per the CNBC article. More than 25% of the world’s helium supply could have been blocked by a prolonged shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the same source revealed.
Iranian hacking campaigns were targeting equipment used across several U.S. critical infrastructure sectors in response to hostilities, according to U.S. cybersecurity, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, per Reuters, as quoted on the Hindu. Hackers in some cases altered display data and extracted project data from systems, the advisory said.
Such energy disruptions had the potential to stoke inflationary fears globally. This, in turn, may boost Treasury yields in the United States and other economies. A high-rate environment is not beneficial for growth sectors like technology.
Microsoft has been hit hardest by the war-led crash. Its shares closed the worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008, per CNBC. Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF has lost 5.6% over the past month (as of April 7, 2026).
The above-mentioned scenario explains why a prolonged war could be disastrous for the U.S. tech industry. Thus, a two-week apparent stoppage in the attack and the possibility of a full-blown ceasefire after that should be a winning criterion for the tech ETFs.
The tech-heavy ETF Invesco QQQ Trust advanced about 3% on April 8, 2026, although the fund slipped 0.3% after hours as concerns grew over the fragility of the truce.
Meanwhile, the Fed also hinted that U.S. inflation is under control, which gives cues of less-hawkish Fed actions ahead. Investors can thus bet on tech ETFs like Vanguard Information Technology ETF, State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF, VanEck Semiconductor ETF and Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF.
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Invesco QQQ (QQQ): ETF Research Reports
State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK): ETF Research Reports
VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH): ETF Research Reports
Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF (FTEC): ETF Research Reports
Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund ETF Shares (VGT): ETF Research Reports
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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