Oil prices barrelled ahead again Thursday, extending their volatile run, while global stock markets were stuck as investors assessed corporate earnings, with tech firms back under pressure.<\/p>\n
With traders awaiting developments surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, the main oil contracts rose, Brent crude adding three percent to almost $82, while the main US contract WTI added 2.3 percent to nearly $77.<\/p>\n
Wall Street was in cautious mode with the Dow starting off flat then dropping 0.6 percent two hours into the session.<\/p>\n
The broader based S&P 500 was off 0.2 percent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq inched just into the green.<\/p>\n
European main indices closed mixed with London’s FTSE 100 losing 0.2 percent while Frankfurt added 0.1 percent and Paris 0.4 percent though fresh highs proved elusive.<\/p>\n
In Asia, tech-heavy indices were weighed down by concerns over the profitability of AI investments after disappointing earnings from US giants SanDisk and Western Digital. <\/p>\n
A sharp decline in shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Wednesday also soured the mood, after its earnings results raised worries about huge AI spending.<\/p>\n
With the Middle East conflict still casting a shadow, Iran said Wednesday it had agreed a route with Oman for ships transiting the waterway and were adding the final touches to arrangements for jointly managing it.<\/p>\n
Official sources briefing Iranian media said any reopening would depend on the United States fulfilling what Tehran considers a commitment to end naval blockade of Iran’s ports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oil prices barrelled ahead again Thursday, extending their volatile run, while global stock markets were stuck as investors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[38,102,2107,1747,101,225,80],"class_list":["post-239403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-strait-of-hormuz","tag-donald-trump","tag-hormuz","tag-iran-nuclear-programme","tag-iran-israel-conflict","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-us-iran","tag-us-israel-iran-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117052252032434278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}