London (AFP) – Oil prices jumped and equities slid on Monday as Middle East peace talks stumbled and tensions mounted between Iran and the United States. Crude futures shot more than five percent higher as an Iranian news agency announced Tehran had suspended the negotiations with the United States via mediators. The United States and Iran had traded strikes over the weekend, and Tehran insisted that any deal to end the war must cover Israel’s escalating offensive into Lebanon. The report by the Tasnim news agency cited the breakdown of the ceasefire and clashes in Lebanon as the reasons for the halt in suspending dialogue.
After the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran at the end of February, Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flow. While a ceasefire has largely held since mid-April, traffic through the strait has been scant and negotiations have dragged on.
While Wall Street had been set for a higher open, the spike higher in oil prices turned the tide, with the three main indices sliding as trading got underway in New York. Shares in Nvidia jumped more than four percent, however, after the company unveiled earlier Monday in Taiwan a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines, staking its claim in the market for next-generation consumer PCs integrated with artificial intelligence. The company’s graphics processing units are prized for processing-intensive AI applications, but the new RTX Spark chips will be central processing units that run personal computers. These PCs will be positioned as tools that can easily run AI agents that can carry out tasks for users. The Nvidia announcement helped fuel gains in tech and AI stocks in Asian trade.
Seoul led the rally, jumping by more than four percent, with shares in memory chip giant Samsung Electronics surging more than nine percent, while rival SK Hynix rose over two percent. “Investors continue to embrace the AI boom,” said independent markets analyst Stephen Innes. “The reason is simple. Artificial intelligence remains the dominant engine of market psychology, and as long as Washington and Tehran continue to exchange draft proposals rather than missiles, investors appear willing to give diplomacy the benefit of the doubt,” he added.
Investor enthusiasm for AI-related stocks has helped drive stock exchanges to record highs in recent weeks despite the war in the Middle East, which has sparked inflation as energy prices soar and threatened to kill off economic expansion. The dollar firmed against main rivals.
Elsewhere, EasyJet’s share price jumped more than seven percent after the British no-frills airline denounced as “opportunistic” a possible takeover bid from a US private equity firm. Castlelake, which owns 2.14 percent of EasyJet, revealed late Friday that it was considering an offer for the carrier, which operates mainly across Europe. EasyJet slammed what it called the “highly opportunistic timing” by Castlelake after falls to its share price and deeper losses after the Middle East war sent jet fuel costs rocketing.
– Key figures at around 1330 GMT –
Brent North Sea Crude: UP 4.9 percent at $95.60 a barrel
West Texas Intermediate: UP 5.9 percent at $92.55 a barrel
New York – DOW: DOWN 0.4 percent at 50,852.35 points
New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.2 percent at 7,567.39
New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.1 percent at 26,938.29
London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.7 percent at 10,334.31
Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.6 percent at 8,132.16
Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.4 percent at 25,014.00
Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.1 percent at 25,452.47
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 67,020.75
Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 4,084.46
Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1629 from $1.1663 on Friday
Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3434 from $1.3464
Dollar/yen: UP at 159.69 yen from 159.27 yen
Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.55 pence from 86.63 pence
© 2024 AFP
