Wall Street rebounded and oil prices retreated early Tuesday despite an exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran near the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3 per cent, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 0.1 per cent. Nasdaq futures climbed 0.5 per cent.<\/p>\n
Tensions in the Middle East escalated when the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. ally, said it came under attack from Iran for the first time since the ceasefire last month.<\/p>\n
The fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was tested after the U.S. military said it had sank six Iranian small boats targeting civilian ships, while two U.S.-flagged ships successfully passed through the Strait of Hormuz as part of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cProject Freedom\u201d plan under which the United States attempts to guide stranded ships through the strait.<\/p>\n
The key waterway for oil and gas transport remains largely closed despite repeated demands from the U.S. for Iran to reopen the strait and as the United States imposed a sea blockade on Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing the first signs of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran breaking down amid a re-escalation in the Persian Gulf,\u201d ING Bank analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cContinuation of `Project Freedom\u2019 risks further escalation,\u201d they wrote. \u201cAny relief from stranded vessels making their way through the Strait will be temporary, with very few inbound vessels moving into the Persian Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oil prices came back down slightly after surging on Monday.<\/p>\n
Brent crude, the international standard, fell US$1.14 to $113.30 per barrel. Before the war began in late February, it was trading near $70. Benchmark U.S. crude slipped $1.84 to $104.58 per barrel.<\/p>\n
Outside of the war, markets are focused on the U.S. earnings season.<\/p>\n
Pinterest soared 17.5 per cnet after the online bulletin board topped Wall Street\u2019s first-quarter sales and profit targets as its active monthly users jumped 11% to 631 million. It was the tenth straight quarter of double-digit user growth for the San Francisco company.<\/p>\n
Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch Inbev also topped analyst sales and profit forecasts on strong beer sales. Its shares jumped more than six per cent in premarket.<\/p>\n
Coinbase jumped 3.6 per cent after the cryptocurrency trading platform said in a regulatory filing that it was letting go of 700 employees, about 14 per cent of its workforce.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, Britain\u2019s FTSE 100 fell 1.2 per cent, France\u2019s CAC 40 was up 0.5 per cent, and Germany\u2019s DAX gained 1.2 per cent.<\/p>\n
Asian regional trading was thin, with markets in Japan, South Korea and mainland China closed for holidays.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng fell 0.8 per cent to 25,898.61, while Taiwan\u2019s Taiex gained 0.2 per cent.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s S&P\/ASX 200 lost 0.2 per cent to 8,680.50 after the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to 4.35 per cent, saying conflict in the Middle East had sharply increased fuel and commodity prices that were already adding to inflation. The cash rate hike on Tuesday was the Reserve Bank of Australia\u2019s third quarter percentage point rise this year.<\/p>\n
The bank said Australia\u2019s inflation for the year through March was 4.6 per cent. The bank manipulates interest rates to steer inflation toward a target band of two per cent to three per cent.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s Sensex lost 0.4 per cent.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Chan Ho-him And Matt Ott, The Associated Press. Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wall Street rebounded and oil prices retreated early Tuesday despite an exchange of fire between the U.S. and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[328,703,559,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-98750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-persian-gulf","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-persian-gulf"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116522012066664612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98750","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=98750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}