Global stock markets have continued to take a hammering as oil prices rocketed in their biggest weekly gain for six years, with no sign of a swift resolution to the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
London\u2019s FTSE 100 Index slumped 1.6% lower at one stage before closing about 130 points, or 1.2%, lower at 10,284.75 on Friday.<\/p>\n
Declines were compounded by heavy falls on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes down about 1.1% after European markets had closed.<\/p>\n
Gloomy jobs data in the US were adding to market woes, and there were similar declines across Europe as the Dax in Germany and France\u2019s Cac 40 were both 1.5% down at one stage, before paring back some of the losses to close 0.9% and 0.7% lower, respectively.<\/p>\n
By Friday evening, benchmark Brent crude prices shot up by as much as another 10% to 94 US dollars a barrel, reaching levels not seen for three years, after Kuwait reportedly joined Qatar and said it was beginning to halt energy production.<\/p>\n
The sharp gains since the US-Israel war with Iran began on Saturday mean oil prices have risen by more than 25% so far this week \u2013 the biggest weekly gains since early 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Comments from US President Donald Trump that there would be no end to the conflict until an \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d of the Iranian regime has further dashed hopes of a de-escalation.<\/p>\n
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said: \u201cThere is not much to stop (oil) from hitting 100 dollars per barrel in the near term.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil the oil price stabilises it\u2019s hard to see how stock markets and bond prices can recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
She cautioned over further stock market falls next week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the war continues to escalate over the weekend, we think that markets will continue to sell off, especially after the rapid increase in oil prices today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
UK Government borrowing costs have also risen sharply this week due to inflation fears.<\/p>\n
The yields on 10-year government bonds, also known as gilts, have jumped from 4.27% at the start of the week to 4.62% on Friday, with fears that soaring fuel and energy bills will put paid to further interest rate cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rapid repricing of monetary policy expectations and the UK\u2019s history of high energy prices means that UK gilts are particularly vulnerable to this energy price spike,\u201d Ms Brooks said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global stock markets have continued to take a hammering as oil prices rocketed in their biggest weekly gain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,158449,16002,27864,85,46,161737,6807,1760],"class_list":{"0":"post-327345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-conflict-in-the-middle-east","10":"tag-european-markets","11":"tag-ftse-100-index","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-kathleen-brooks","15":"tag-oil-prices","16":"tag-stock-markets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}