TOKYO: Wall Street pointed lower on Tuesday and oil prices continued to rise amid doubts about a quick end to the Iran war.
S&P 500 futures slipped 0.4 per cent before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1 per cent. Nasdaq futures slipped 0.9 per cent.
As the war with Iran threatened to drag on, benchmark US crude rose USD 3.43 to USD 101.50 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed USD 3.62 to USD 107.83 a barrel.
US President Donald Trump said the US-Iran ceasefire was on “life support” after rejecting Iran's latest peace proposal. That raises the stakes for Trump's trip this week to China. China is the biggest buyer of Iran's sanctioned crude oil.
The war has already sent the price for a barrel of Brent racing up 50 per cent from prewar levels of roughly USD 70 and stoked inflation through the global economy. The war has shut the Strait of Hormuz and kept oil tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide.
US markets over the past couple of weeks had focused on big corporate profits and seemed to look past the war as earnings season rolled out. The strong performance suggested the US economy was holding up even though households are being pressured by expensive gasoline and higher prices for goods due to new US tariffs.
A new look at inflation in the US arrives on Tuesday in the form of consumer price data for April. That could give economists and investors insight into how much the Iran war is impacting Americans and what that might mean for the broader economy going forward.
Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 slipped 0.6 per cent, while the German DAX dipped 1.1 per cent. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.5 per cent.
In Asia, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.5 per cent to finish at 62,742.57. South Korea's Kospi dropped 2.3 per cent to 7,643.15, in what analysts are categorising as fallout from overreliance on fraying AI hopes.
“Global equities remain dangerously dependent on a tiny cluster of AI leaders, creating a rally structure that looks powerful on the surface but increasingly fragile underneath,” said Stephen Innes, analyst with SPI Asset Management.
He believes South Korea may be among the first major economies that will undergo what he called "the political redistribution phase of the AI boom.”
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.4 per cent to 8,670.70. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost earlier gains and fell 0.2 per cent to 26,347.91, while the Shanghai Composite lost nearly 0.3 per cent to 4,214.49.