Stocks on Wall Street suffered their largest daily decline since the start of the war with Iran on Thursday, falling as oil prices rose sharply after President Trump raised the pressure on Iran to accept terms to end the war.
“We’ll just keep blowing them away, unimpeded,” Mr. Trump said at his first cabinet meeting since the war started. While the S&P 500 had started Thursday with a decline, the losses deepened after the meeting.
The index fell 1.7 percent Thursday, its biggest daily decline since January, putting the index on course for its fifth straight week of losses for the first time in four years.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose roughly 5.7 percent, to $108.01 a barrel, its highest this week.
Investors and analysts have been focused on the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that is a vital trading route for oil and natural gas that normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Shipping traffic exiting the Persian Gulf through the strait has been effectively halted since the war began on Feb. 28.
Mr. Trump on Thursday said he didn’t yet know whether he would extend a deadline he gave to Iran to fully open the strait by Friday or the United States would “obliterate” power stations there. He said it would depend on the state of negotiations.
Government bond yields, which underpin borrowing costs across consumer and corporate debt, also rose, with the 10-year Treasury yield reaching its highest since July.
Higher interest rates have accompanied the move higher in oil prices as investors fret about the potential for energy costs to reignite inflation. The Federal Reserve has already said it is likely to keep interest rates elevated until it can be sure inflation is under control.
Elsewhere, stocks also tumbled, with bourses in Asia and Europe lit red throughout the day. Major indexes in London, Germany and Sweden all fell, as did benchmarks in Japan and China.
Joe Rennison writes about financial markets, a beat that ranges from chronicling the vagaries of the stock market to explaining the often-inscrutable trading decisions of Wall Street insiders.
The post U.S. Stocks Have Their Biggest Drop Since Start of Iran War appeared first on New York Times.
