Stocks leapt, oil prices sank and the dollar dropped on Wednesday after US president Donald Trump \u200ctouted \u201cgreat progress\u201d towards a \u201cfinal agreement\u201d with Tehran, while momentum in AI-driven trades accelerated. <\/p>\n
Trump said he would briefly pause an operation escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about a \u200bfifth of global oil and has been blockaded by Iran since late February, triggering a global energy crisis. <\/p>\n
The news sent Brent crude tumbling 1.6 per cent to $108.07 per barrel, while S&P 500 e-mini futures were up 0.3 per cent. MSCI\u2019s All-Country World Index rose 0.4 per cent to a fresh record alongside similar milestones for its Emerging Markets benchmark and its broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan, \u200bwhich jumped 2.8 per cent. The share surge was led by a 6.6 per cent charge for South Korea\u2019s Kospi, which cleared the 7,000 mark for the first time. <\/p>\n
Elsewhere in foreign exchange markets, the yen strengthened \u2060sharply in afternoon trading, gaining as much as 1.8 per cent to 155 against the dollar as traders remained on the lookout for fresh intervention \u200cby \u200cauthorities \u200bin Tokyo in support of the beleaguered currency. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of optimism around a US-Iran \u2018deal\u2019 at the moment; it\u2019s possible the authorities decided that was a good moment to give the yen an extra nudge,\u201d said Thomas \u2060Mathews, head of markets for Asia Pacific at Capital Economics \u200bin Wellington. \u201cThat said, it might just be thin holiday-affected trade; best to wait \u200band see how it fares towards the end of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stocks on Wall Street hit fresh records on Tuesday as the S&P 500 rose 0.8 per cent and \u200cthe Nasdaq Composite gained 1 per cent.<\/p>\n
As the Seoul market reopened after a holiday, Samsung Electronics jumped 14.8 per cent, topping a $1 trillion market value, overtaking Berkshire Hathaway and closing in on Walmart.<\/p>\n
Shares in Advanced Micro Devices jumped 16.5 per cent in extended trading as \u200cthe company forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall \u2060Street expectations on Tuesday, helped by keen demand for its dead-centre chips as cloud-computing companies accelerate spending on AI infrastructure. <\/p>\n
In the foreign exchange markets, the US dollar index, which measures the greenback\u2019s strength against a basket of six currencies, was down 0.3 per cent at \u200c98.02. The euro stood at $1.1736 and sterling was at $1.3588 , both up around 0.4 per cent so far on the day. The Australian dollar fetched $0.7246, rising about 0.9 per cent to the highest since June \u200b2022, buoyed by improved risk appetite and underpinned by a third straight interest-rate hike a day earlier. The \u200bNew Zealand dollar was up 1 per cent at $0.5947.<\/p>\n
The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond was flat at 4.424 per cent. Gold was 2.1 per cent higher at $4,651.84. In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin nudged 0.5 per cent lower to $81,264.67 while ether was down 0.8 per cent at $2,364.40. – Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stocks leapt, oil prices sank and the dollar dropped on Wednesday after US president Donald Trump \u200ctouted \u201cgreat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,9951,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-471095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-oil","15":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116527202740315395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}