Oil prices are rising Wednesday following the latest flare-up in fighting to threaten the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, and U.S. stocks are stalling near their records.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.3 per cent from its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 339 points, or 0.7 per cent, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3 per cent lower.
Weighing on the market was a climb of 1.1 per cent for the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, which brought it back to $97.07. It rose after the U.S. military said Iran fired missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain, which failed to hit their targets. The United States said it then struck an Iranian military ground control station on an island in the Strait of Hormuz.
The war with Iran has already sent oil prices and inflation higher, cranking up the pressure on the global economy. But oil prices remain below their peaks from earlier in the fighting, and hope seems to be remaining on Wall Street that the United States and Iran will ultimately agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers. That would improve the global flow of crude and hopefully lower its price.
Such hopes, along with strong profit reports from U.S. companies, have helped launch the U.S. stock market on a tremendous rally. If the S&P 500 can turn around and finish the day with a gain, it would be the 10th straight for the index, which would be its longest such streak in more than three decades.
Medtronic climbed 5.3 per cent after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also increased its dividend payout going to investors.
GameStop jumped 7.7 per cent after the video-game retailer said its revenue in the latest quarter grew 14 per cent from a year earlier. It also announced a program to send up to $2 billion to its investors by buying back its own stock.
Macy’s swung from an initial gain to a loss of 0.9 per cent after the iconic New York department store reported profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ forecasts. The retailer said said an overhaul of its merchandise and better customer service is resonating with customers.
Also on the losing side of Wall Street was Palo Alto Networks, which fell 6 per cent despite topping analysts’ expectations for profit in the latest quarter. Investors may have been looking for even more after its stock came into the day with a surge of 61.3 per cent for the year so far, more than quintuple the S&P 500’s already big 11.2 per cent rise.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with the price of oil, which put downward pressure on the stock market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.48 per cent from 4.46 per cent late Tuesday and from just 3.97 per cent before the war began.
High yields worldwide recently have threatened to slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. They have already forced the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its most expensive level in nine months, and they could curtail companies’ borrowing to build the AI data centers that have supported the U.S. economy’s growth recently.
More expensive loans can hurt smaller companies in particular because many need to borrow to grow. The Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks fell 0.9 per cent, more than the rest of the market.
Reports on the U.S. economy came in mixed. One from the Institute for Supply Management said that growth for U.S. construction, agricultural and other services businesses accelerated by more last month than economists expected.
That’s an encouraging signal for the economy, but the survey also showed businesses are feeling the pinch of higher prices caused by tariffs and more expensive oil. “This is the definition of inflationary pressure starting to affect us,” one company in the accommodation and food services industry said in the survey.
In stock markets abroad, European indexes dipped following a mixed finish in Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.6 per cent, but Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.5 per cent to another record as computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron soared 13.4 per cent.
Excitement around the boom created by artificial-intelligence technology has been a huge engine for stock markets worldwide. On Wall Street, Marvell Technology rose another 7.1 per cent following its best day on record, a surge of 32.5 per cent, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested at a conference in Taiwan that Marvell could be “the next trillion-dollar company.”
The last company to enter the expanding club of behemoths was Micron Technology, which is likewise riding the AI wave.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
