Asian stocks slip, tracking Wall Street losses, and Iran war doubts push oil higher
HONG KONG -- Asian stocks were mostly lower and oil prices extended their gains Friday as talks on ending the war between the U.S. and Iran remained stalled.
U.S. futures edged lower after Wall Street pulled back from its all-time highs.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.6% to 59,504.22, led by heavy buying of technology stocks. On Thursday, it hit a record intraday high above 60,000.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.8% to 25,714.99, while the Shanghai Composite index fell 0.5% to 4,071.52.
South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.4% to 6,452.33.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.6% to 8.745.00.
Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 2.5% as chipmaker TSMC, which makes up a key part of the index, gained more than 4%.
Progress on another round of peace talks between the United States and Iran was limited even after President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. was indefinitely extending a two-week ceasefire with Iran, a day before it was originally set to expire.
The Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for global energy where roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas normally passed through before the war, remains largely closed and a U.S. sea blockade of Iranian ports is still in effect. After the U.S. imposed a blockade on Iranian ports last week, Iran attacked three ships in the strait on Wednesday and seized two of them.
Trump said Thursday that the U.S. military was intensifying its mine-clearing efforts in the strait and he ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats laying mines in the area.
Oil prices have remained elevated since the Iran war began on Feb. 28.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude to be delivered in June rose 3.1% on Thursday to settle at $105.07 and at one point topped $107. The price for a barrel of Brent to be delivered in July, which is the more popular contract for traders, settled at $99.35 after rising as high as $101.
Early Friday, Brent crude was up 0.4% at $99.70 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude was up 0.6% to $96.62 per barrel.
The global energy shock caused by the Iran war has threatened to worsen inflation in many countries and shaken world markets. But Wall Street has still hit record highs, helped by strong corporate earnings and some optimism that the war will end soon.
“With the S&P 500 still hugging record highs, markets are still at ease to give the negotiations more time,” ING Bank analysts Michiel Tukker and Padhraic Garvey wrote in a research note.
On Thursday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 dropped 0.4% to 7,108.40, halting a weekslong rally that lifted it to new all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also declined 0.4% to 49.310.32, while the technology stocks-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.9% to 24,438.50.
Shares of Tesla sank 3.6%, dragging the market lower despite strong-than-expected quarterly results as investors focused on a big jump in capital expenditures as the company pivots towards artificial intelligence and robotics.
Paramount Skydance lost 4.5%, following approval by Warner Bros. Discovery's shareholders of its merger with Paramount. Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery fell 1.6%.
In other dealings early Friday, gold and silver prices fell. Gold prices dropped 0.7% to $4,689.60 per ounce. Silver prices lost 0.8% to $74.92 an ounce.
The U.S. dollar rose to 159.83 Japanese yen from 159.71 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1677, down from $1.1683.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.
