Stock futures rose Monday as oil prices fluctuated in response to the latest bout of military exchanges between the U.S. and Iran. Chipmakers also traded higher to give U.S. equity markets a boost.

S&P 500 futures
 advanced 0.5%, while Nasdaq-100 futures
 traded 1% higher. Futures linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average
 rose 203 points, or 0.4%.

The U.S. completed its ninth consecutive day of strikes on Iran overnight, but investor sentiment improved by midmorning in London after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei lifted hopes for a diplomatic settlement.

Baghaei told reporters that intermediaries had continued to exchange messages with Iran amid the latest round of U.S. strikes, and said negotiations between the two adversaries could be pursued based on national interests.

That said, U.S. crude futures were last down 1.9% at $80.96 per barrel, reversing an earlier gain. International benchmark Brent also eased from levels seen overnight, trading around $87.03, down 1.2%.

“Investors still don’t think Trump has the tolerance for a material escalation of the US force posture in the Middle East (i.e. deploying troops) and if that’s the case, then some type of a diplomatic resolution is inevitable,” wrote Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge.

Giving U.S. stocks a bid were chipmakers, as they tried to recover some of their steep losses from last week.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH)
 gained more than 2%. Micron Technology led the advance, climbing more than 5%. Astera Labs, Teradyne and AMD also rose more than 3% each.

The three leading U.S. indexes closed in the red last week, as pressure on chip stocks weighed on sentiment. The S&P 500 dropped 1.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite sank 2.9%, and the 30-stock Dow lost 0.9%. Additionally, the SMH saw its third weekly decline in four weeks, losing nearly 9%.