Shares were mixed in Europe and Asia on Monday, with big gains for computer chipmakers and other tech stocks after Friday\u2019s rally on Wall Street. <\/p>\n
Oil prices rebounded and Brent crude climbed more than $2 a barrel as the U.S. launched an effort early Monday to guide ships out of the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>. Iran rejected the plan but was reviewing the U.S. response to its latest proposal to end the war, Iran\u2019s judiciary Mizan news agency cited Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei saying Sunday.<\/p>\n The price of a barrel of U.S. benchmark crude was up $1.80 at $103.73 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, jumped $2.23 to $110.40 a barrel. <\/p>\n The future for the S&P 500 was nearly unchanged, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.3%.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s DAX edged 0.1% higher to 24,303.77, while the CAC 40 in Paris declined 0.5% to 8,072.91. Markets in Britain were closed for a holiday. <\/p>\n In Asian trading, Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng jumped 1.2% to 26,095.88.<\/p>\n Markets in mainland China and Japan were closed for \u201cGolden Week\u201d holidays.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s S&P\/ASX 200 slipped 0.4% to 8,697.10.<\/p>\n Strong buying of tech stocks pushed shares in South Korea sharply higher, as the Kospi gained 5.1% to 6,936.99. Samsung Electronics\u2019 shares surged 5.4%.<\/p>\n In Taiwan, the Taiex leaped 4.6% as shares in computer chipmaker TSMC, the market heavyweight, shot up 6.6%. <\/p>\n Much hinges, analysts say, on progress toward ending the war with Iran and unlocking the shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz due to the war.<\/p>\n The oil market \u201cremains the fulcrum, with hundreds of tankers, bulk carriers, and cargo ships still stranded across the Gulf, idling as storage constraints force producers to shut … production simply because there is nowhere left to store it,\u201d Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.<\/p>\n Thousands of seafarers, many on oil tankers or cargo ships, have been stuck in the Persian Gulf since the war began, describing to The Associated Press<\/a> seeing intercepted drones and missiles explode over the waters as their vessels run low on drinking water, food and other supplies.<\/p>\n Trump said what he called \u201cProject Freedom\u201d would begin Monday morning in the Middle East. The U.S. Central Command said it would involve guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft and 15,000 service members, but the Pentagon did not immediately answer questions about how they would be deployed. <\/p>\n On Friday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.3% to another all-time high of 7,230.12, closing out a fifth straight winning week. <\/p>\n The Dow industrials dipped 0.3% to 49,499.27, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.9% to a record close of 25,114.44. <\/p>\n