Wall Street futures slid Tuesday but bounced off earlier lows as the opening bell approached.<\/p>\n
Artificial-intelligence<\/a> stocks slid overnight on growing safety fears and oil prices continued to climb as fighting in the Middle East<\/a> squeezes the global flow of crude.<\/p>\n Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.2%, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 0.3%. Nasdaq futures ticked down just 0.1%.<\/p>\n Stocks are also being pressured by rising bond yields. The yield on the 10-year Treasury is trading at 5.01%, up from 3.97% before the war with Iran began in February and at its highest point in 19 years.<\/p>\n An important Saudi oil pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks<\/a> following an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n The pipeline offered a way for Saudi Arabia to shift exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf\u2019s Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, where Iranian attacks have stifled the movement of oil tankers.<\/p>\n Benchmark U.S. crude rose $1.03 to $103.61 a barrel early Tuesday. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 0.3% to $106.94 a barrel. Prices for both are up more than 50% since the Iran conflict began in late February.<\/p>\n That jump in oil prices has sent the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to $4.33 from $4.08 a month ago and $3.18 a year ago, according to AAA.<\/p>\n Those rising costs have greatly increased expectations that the Federal Reserve this week will hike its main interest rate<\/a> for the first time in three years<\/a> to fight stubbornly high inflation<\/a>, a move that would put the central bank at odds with President Donald Trump\u2019s push for rate cuts.<\/p>\n Like markets, however, the anticipated direction of the Federal Reserve has volatile. As recently as March, the Fed had forecast it would cut its rate<\/a> once this year. But with the Iran war flaring up again<\/a> and causing sharp increases in oil and gas prices, inflation is likely to remain well above the Fed\u2019s 2% target for longer.<\/p>\n Besides high inflation, worries about rising debt<\/a> for the U.S. and other governments and other concerns have sent longer-term Treasury yields to their highest levels in in almost two decades.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, in Europe at midday France’s CAC 40 dipped 0.2%, while the German DAX dropped 0.1%. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged down nearly 0.4%.<\/p>\n In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 surged in morning trading then lost those earlier gains in afternoon trading, to finish little changed, down less than 0.1% at 63,484.10.<\/p>\n Softbank Group, the Japanese giant<\/a> that is a major investor of OpenAI, jumped 7.5% in Tokyo trading, recouping its overnight losses.<\/p>\n The decline came after OpenAI<\/a> Chief Executive Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune published Saturday that the company behind ChatGPT would likely wait until next year for a sale of its stock on Wall Street. That would delay a potential gusher of cash for Softbank and other early investors in OpenAI.<\/p>\n Australia’s S&P\/ASX 200 lost 0.9% to 8,672.50. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.9% to 6,627.26. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 1.0% to 24,667.24. The Shanghai Composite lost 0.5% to 3,864.28.<\/p>\n Also weighing on markets are comments from other leaders of the AI industry that warned a slowdown is needed<\/a> for the safety of humanity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe prospect of a coordinated slowdown in AI development remains uncertain, given intense competition both among U.S. firms and between the U.S. and China,\u201d Ng Jing Wen, analyst at Mizuho Bank, said in a report.<\/p>\n AI stocks have been under pressure because of worries their prices shot too high<\/a> in the frenzy around the technology. The concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after one of the industry\u2019s leading voices, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for a deliberate and global slowdown in the development of AI.<\/p>\n