London (AFP) – Oil prices retreated and stock markets largely gained Tuesday as investors assessed the chances of a Middle East peace agreement, with tech shares enjoying another strong showing thanks to AI enthusiasm.
Crude futures had soared about seven percent Monday after an Iranian state news agency announced Tehran had suspended its negotiations with Washington. But concerns eased after US President Donald Trump said Iran talks were moving rapidly and that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop fighting. “There is no concrete progress in Middle East negotiations…but investors appear broadly optimistic that a longer-term resolution will be reached,” said Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club. An end to the war would likely boost the global economy, which has been battered by surging energy costs that risk a renewed spike for global interest rates.
Official data Tuesday showed that eurozone inflation rose in May, reinforcing the likelihood of borrowing costs climbing in the single currency area, analysts said. Consumer price rises accelerated to 3.2 percent last month, Eurostat said, up from 3.0 percent in April. The outlook for US interest rates is also on the agenda, with the release of the country’s jobs data due Friday.
Wall Street ended Monday with more tech-led records, as Nvidia’s share price jumped more than six percent after the chip colossus unveiled a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines. That came as Google parent Alphabet announced plans to raise up to $80 billion in stock to fund a major expansion of its artificial-intelligence infrastructure, with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway committing $10 billion. And Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, said it had filed confidentially for an initial public offering that could value the AI lab at nearly one trillion dollars.
“Headlines around Iran grab the steering wheel but the AI trade remains the engine for stock markets,” Saxo Markets analyst Neil Wilson wrote Tuesday. Seoul’s stock market, which has been at the forefront of the AI rally this year, reversed a morning retreat to end at another all-time high, with Samsung shares up more than three percent.
– Key figures at around 1100 GMT –
Brent North Sea Crude: DOWN 1.2 percent at $93.84 a barrel
West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 1.1 percent at $91.16 a barrel
London – FTSE 100: UP 0.3 percent at 10,372.15 points
Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.8 percent at 8,209.35
Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.9 percent at 25,221.03
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.3 percent at 66,734.24 (close)
Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 2.5 percent at 26,038.32 (close)
Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 4,075.10 (close)
New York – DOW: UP 0.1 percent at 51,078.88 (close)
Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1647 from $1.1632 on Monday
Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3469 from $1.3458
Dollar/yen: UP at 159.72 yen from 159.67 yen
Euro/pound: UP at 86.45 pence from 86.43 pence
© 2024 AFP
