Tokyo share prices sank Monday morning as oil prices soared, with the Nikkei 225 stock average dropping as much as 7.6% before the lunch break.<\/p>\n
Crude oil rose to $117 a barrel in Asia trading Monday, up 30% from Friday, as the war in the Middle East continued and concerns increased that global oil supplies could be seriously disrupted.<\/p>\n
An estimated 94% of Japan’s oil comes from the Middle East, and most of that transits the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
U.S. and Israeli armed forces attacked Iran just over a week ago in a massive assault that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation\u2019s supreme leader for nearly four decades.<\/p>\n
Hostilities have since escalated, and the Iranian government has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed.<\/p>\n
An unexpectedly weak jobs report issued by the United States government Friday also took a toll on the equity markets.<\/p>\n
The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed, adding to concerns that the U.S. economy might face a double whammy in light of the ongoing war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
In trading Monday, the Nikkei 225 fell to 51,407.66, the morning low, at 11:05 a.m. The morning close was 51,740.46, down 6.98%. The index was near 60,000 at the end of February.<\/p>\n
The yen weakened to about \u00a5158.71 to the dollar on Monday morning, from just under \u00a5158 on Friday.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI declined 8% on Monday, triggering circuit breakers at the Korea Exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tokyo share prices sank Monday morning as oil prices soared, with the Nikkei 225 stock average dropping as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,87,46,2374,5839,5268,6874],"class_list":["post-329283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-nikkei","tag-oil","tag-stocks","tag-topix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329283","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=329283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}