Asian markets mixed, oil steady after Wall Street hits records

HONG KONG: Shares were mixed in Asia on Monday after US stocks set more records, powered by strong profits for major companies.

Oil prices held steady after US President Donald Trump said the US would help ships leave the Strait of Hormuz, starting on Monday. Iran has rejected the plan, but Trump also said talks with Iran could lead to positive outcomes.

The price of a barrel of US benchmark crude fell 21 cents to USD 101.74 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged 5 cents higher to USD 108.19 a barrel.

Much hinges on progress toward ending the war with Iran and unlocking the bottleneck through the Strait of Hormuz.

The oil market “remains 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,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

Trump said what he called “Project Freedom” would begin Monday morning in the Middle East. The US 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.

In Asian share trading, Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.4 per cent to 26,135.47.

Markets in mainland China and Japan were closed for “Golden Week” holidays.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.3% to 8,704.70.

Strong buying of tech stocks pushed shares in South Korea sharply higher, as the Kospi gained 3.8 per cent. Taiwan's Taiex surged 4.2 per cent.

On Friday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.3 per cent to another all-time high of 7,230.12, closing out a fifth straight winning week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.3 per cent to 49,499.27, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.9 per cent to a record close of 25,114.44.

Apple led the way after delivering better profit than expected. Because it's one of Wall Street's biggest stocks in terms of overall size, its rally of 3.3% was by far the strongest force lifting the S&P 500.

Stock prices generally follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and US companies have been exceeding expectations for earnings in the first three months of 2026. That's even with the war with Iran and high oil prices souring confidence for many US households.

A little more than a quarter of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported already, and 84% of them have topped analysts' estimates, according to FactSet. The index is on track to deliver roughly 15% growth in profit from a year earlier.

The main uncertainty for the global economy is where oil prices are heading because of the Iran war. Oil prices spurted higher last week on worries that the war might keep the Strait of Hormuz closed for a long time, trapping oil tankers pent up in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide.

Brent was selling for a little more than $70 per barrel before the war began, and soaring prices helped the two biggest US oil companies report stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

But stock prices nevertheless fell for both Exxon Mobil, 1%, and Chevron, 1.4%, as oil prices regressed Friday and each reported drops in net income from a year earlier.

In other dealings early Monday, the dollar rose to 157.18 Japanese yen from 156.80 yen. The euro fell to USD 1.1724 from USD 1.1746.