Wall Street edges lower oil prices volatile after Trump warns Iran 'clock is ticking'

     Hong Kong, May 18 (AP) Wall Street pointed toward losses before markets opened Monday and oil prices grew volatile after US President Donald Trump warned Tehran that the “clock is ticking” as US-Iran negotiations over a permanent end to the war stall.
     Futures for the S&P 500 were down 0.3 per cent before the opening bell and futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.4 per cent. Nasdaq futures inched back 0.2 per cent.
     Oil prices were up more than 1 per cent for a short time overnight after Trump warned Iran in a social media post that “the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won't be anything left of them” following a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
     Trump has set deadlines for Iran and then backed off, so investors have remained cautious about the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and how it is impacting global energy flows, including oil and gas. The strait is still mostly closed, and the US has also imposed its own sea blockade on Iranian ports since last month.
     A drone strike over the weekend on a United Arab Emirates' nuclear power plant added to worries over a potential escalation in the conflict.
     Brent crude, the international standard, lost 6 cents to USD 109.20 per barrel. It was trading at roughly USD 70 a barrel in late February before the start of the Iran war. Benchmark US crude was down 31 cents to USD 105.11 per barrel.
    “Re-escalation risks are increasing,” ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a research note. While there has also been a pick up on shipping activities over the past week around the strait, they said, “this can change quickly.”
     The pair also noted that the oil market was reacting to the lack of tangible results on the Iran war after last week's widely-watched summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, even as the White House said both the US and China had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.
    US officials had hoped that Beijing could use its influence, given its economic ties with Iran, to help broker a peace agreement and reopen the strait. Trump said last week in an interview that Xi told him China “would like to be of help” in negotiating an end to the war. So far it's been unclear how Beijing might do that.
     This week brings little in the way of economic data, however, a handful of major US retailers will be posting their latest financial results, along with chipmaker and AI bellwether Nvidia.
     Target, Home Depot and Walmart all report their first quarter results later this week. Last week, the government reported that Americans tempered their spending in April as higher gas prices fueled by the Iran war left them with less money to spend on nonessentials. Despite that, Americans did keep spending last month, thanks in part to more generous government tax refunds.
     Still, economists worry that spending will drop more dramatically in the coming months as tax refunds run out and shoppers continue to grapple with gas prices that have risen more than 50 per cent since the war began in late February.
     Dominion Energy soared more than 14 per cent in premarket after the company announced it was merging with another East Coast energy giant, NextEra Energy. The all-stock deal, valued at about per cent 67 billion, was sparked by a growing demand for power needed to run data centres.
     Elsewhere, in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 climbed 0.7 per cent by midday, while Germany's DAX added 0.2 per cent and France's CAC 40 lost 0.8 per cent.
     During Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 1 per cent to 60,815.95, a decline led by technology-related stocks. It reached all-time intraday high levels last week above 63,000.
     The yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond surged to as high as 2.8 per cent, its highest level since the late 1990s. That's part of a broader shift toward higher yields as the Bank of Japan gradually raises interest rates and higher energy costs raise expectations of rising inflation. The yield was around 2.55 per cent just one week ago.
     Seoul's Kospi climbed 0.3 per cent to 7,516.04 after trading lower earlier in the day. It crossed the 8,000 mark for the first time on Friday, supported by buying of technology shares driven by the boom in artificial intelligence, but later declined partly on profit-taking by investors.
     Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.1 per cent to 25,675.18. The Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1 per cent lower to 4,131.53, after China reported weaker-than-expected economic data for April.
     Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined 1.5 per cent to 8,505.30.
     Taiwan's Taiex dropped 0.7 per cent, while India's Sensex fell less than 0.1 per cent. (AP) SKS
SKS

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)