New York (AFP) – Stock markets climbed Friday after US President Donald Trump ruled out a strike on Iran before midterm elections, while announcing that Russian diesel would flow to global markets following talks with Moscow’s Vladimir Putin. Trump said Washington was holding “productive discussions” with Tehran after reports that the White House had asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a possible attack ahead of the November 3 vote.
On Friday afternoon, the US leader added that he had secured Putin’s agreement for a major release of diesel to American and world markets, temporarily easing sanctions to allow this to take place. Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones noted that the deal has been “alleviating some of the worst-case scenarios” over supplies and inflation. Global oil prices have soared on war in the Middle East, with Tehran blocking the Strait of Hormuz after US-Israel strikes targeting Iran from late February.
Still, Trump’s comments on talks with Tehran leave “underlying tensions and problems in the Middle East unchanged,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at online trading platform IG. “So long as tanker and insurance rates remain at their current painful levels, a sustained decline in oil prices is much less likely, even if flows are holding up well,” he added.
Tech stocks largely rebounded from a drop Thursday sparked by a report in the Financial Times that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, expected to make $50 billion in annualized revenue this year, below the $70 billion flagged. That spooked tech stocks, even if Bloomberg later cited unnamed sources as saying the firm expected to hit the original estimate. “The discrepancy may reflect differences in revenue measurement rather than an outright deterioration in OpenAI’s underlying business,” said Chris Weston at Pepperstone.
The news report initially helped send Wall Street’s Nasdaq Composite down more than one percent on Thursday, with Nvidia down nearly three percent and Microsoft, AMD and Amazon also ending sharply lower. But US stocks advanced to close the day Friday, after Asia mostly closed higher as well. Europe’s main stock markets also recovered to post solid gains. Shares in Microsoft bounced 2.4 percent and Amazon was up 3.3 percent.
“The big test comes as earnings season gets going over the next few weeks, when the companies writing the biggest checks for AI tell us whether they’re still prepared to keep writing them,” said Josh Gilbert at the trading firm eToro.
Elsewhere, China and the European Union reached an understanding to “moderate” hybrid vehicles exports. This could prevent millions of Chinese cars from being shipped to Europe, the bloc’s commerce chief said, following talks that dispelled a much-feared trade war. Shares in carmakers BMW, Renault and Volkswagen gained more than two percent.
– Key figures at around 2050 GMT –
New York – Dow: UP 0.8 percent at 51,654.95 points (close)
New York – S&P 500: UP 0.6 percent at 7,811.54 (close)
New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.6 percent at 27,366.17 (close)
London – FTSE 100: UP 1.1 percent at 10,552.05 (close)
Paris – CAC 40: UP 1.0 percent at 7,805.68 (close)
Frankfurt – DAX: UP 1.1 percent at 25,087.27 (close)
Tokyo – Nikkei 225: FLAT at 68,030.92 (close)
Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.8 percent at 24,211.35 (close)
Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,813.79 (close)
Brent North Sea Crude: UP 0.4 percent at $104.72 per barrel
West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.4 percent at $91.85 per barrel
Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1203 from $1.1213 on Thursday
Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3240 from $1.3228
Dollar/yen: UP at 158.27 yen from 157.92 yen
Euro/pound: DOWN at 84.62 pence from 84.77 pence.
© 2024 AFP
