Oil prices jump as Iran suspends peace talks

Oil prices jumped and equities struggled yesterday as Middle East peace talks stumbled and tensions mounted between Iran and the United States.

Crude futures shot around seven per cent higher after an Iranian news agency announced Tehran had suspended the negotiations with Washington via mediators, reports AFP.

The United States and Iran had traded strikes over the weekend, and Tehran had insisted that any deal to end the war must cover Israel’s escalating offensive into Lebanon.

The report by the Tasnim news agency cited the breakdown of the ceasefire and clashes in Lebanon as the reasons for the halt in dialogue.

“Hopes of further progress in US-Iran talks have been dashed… this has duly resulted in a spike for oil prices, since the combination of this and the weekend’s exchange of fire dramatically raises the chances of a fresh round of conflict,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at online trading and investing platform IG.

After the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran at the end of February, Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows.

While a ceasefire has largely held since mid-April, traffic through the strait has been scant, and negotiations have dragged on.

“Markets know that oil stockpiles are being rapidly run down, and the rosy assumptions around the renewal of supplies involved the straits being open by June,” said Beauchamp.

“No such opening is in sight, and each day brings the crunch point closer,” he added.

The spike in oil prices sucked the air out of an AI-fuelled stocks rally.

Wall Street had been set for a higher open, but the oil price rise sent New York’s main three indices lower as trading got underway.

The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite managed to poke into positive territory, helped by gains of more than four percent in Nvidia shares.

The company unveiled earlier yesterday in Taiwan a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines, staking its claim in the market for next-generation consumer PCs integrated with artificial intelligence.

The company’s graphics processing units are prized for processing-intensive AI applications, but the new RTX Spark chips will be central processing units that run personal computers.

These PCs will be positioned as tools that can easily run AI agents that can carry out tasks for users.

The Nvidia announcement helped fuel gains in tech and AI stocks in Asian trade.

Seoul led the rally, jumping by more than four percent, with shares in memory chip giant Samsung Electronics surging more than nine percent, while rival SK Hynix rose over two percent.

“Investors continue to embrace the AI boom,” said independent markets analyst Stephen Innes.

Investor enthusiasm for AI-related stocks has helped drive stock exchanges to record highs in recent weeks despite the war in the Middle East, which has sparked inflation as energy prices soar and threatened to kill off economic expansion.

Europe’s main equity markets closed lower.

The dollar firmed against its main rivals.

Elsewhere, EasyJet’s share price jumped more than nine percent after the British no-frills airline denounced as “opportunistic” a possible takeover bid from a US private equity firm.

Castlelake, which owns 2.14 per cent of EasyJet, revealed late Friday that it was considering an offer for the carrier, which operates mainly across Europe.

Key Figures At Around 1530 GMT

Brent North Sea Crude: UP 6.6 percent at $97.15 a barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 7.6 percent at $94.01 a barrel

New York – DOW: DOWN 0.2 percent at 50,921.47 points

New York – S&P 500: UP 0.1 percent at 7,587.29

New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 27,053.21

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.7 percent at 10,338.95 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.5 percent at 8,146.59 (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.4 percent at 25,003.04 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.1 percent at 25,452.47

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 67,020.75

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 4,084.46