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A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ahn Young-joon\/AP<\/p>\n
A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan’s Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Eugene Hoshiko\/AP<\/p>\n
A board above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange displays the closing number for the Dow Jones industrial average, Thursday, April 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
Richard Drew\/AP<\/p>\n
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ahn Young-joon\/AP<\/p>\n
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ahn Young-joon\/AP<\/p>\n
HONG KONG (AP) \u2014 Asian stocks were mixed and oil prices extended their gains Friday as talks on ending the war between the U.S. and Iran remained stalled.<\/p>\n
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U.S. futures also wavered after Wall Street pulled back from its all-time highs.<\/p>\n
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Tokyo\u2019s Nikkei 225 gained 1% to 59,716.18, led by heavy buying of technology stocks. On Thursday, it hit a record intraday high above 60,000.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng reversed earlier losses to add 0.2%, at 25,976.65, while the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% lower to 4,090.48.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s Kospi closed nearly unchanged at 6,475.63.<\/p>\n
In Australia, the S&P\/ASX 200 declined 0.1% to 8.786.50.<\/p>\n
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Taiwan\u2019s Taiex jumped 3.2% as chipmaker TSMC, which makes up a key part of the index, gained 5.1%.<\/p>\n
Progress on another round of peace talks between the United States and Iran was limited even after President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. was indefinitely extending a two-week ceasefire with Iran, a day before it was originally set to expire.<\/p>\n
The Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for global energy where roughly a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas normally passed through before the war, remains largely closed and a U.S. sea blockade of Iranian ports is still in effect. After the U.S. imposed a blockade on Iranian ports last week, Iran attacked three ships in the strait on Wednesday and seized two of them.<\/p>\n
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Trump said Thursday that the U.S. military was intensifying its mine-clearing efforts in the strait and he ordered the military to \u201cshoot and kill\u201d small Iranian boats laying mines in the area.<\/p>\n
Oil prices have remained elevated since the Iran war began on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n
The price for a barrel of Brent crude to be delivered in June rose 3.1% on Thursday to settle at $105.07 and at one point topped $107. The price for a barrel of Brent to be delivered in July, which is the more popular contract for traders, settled at $99.35 after rising as high as $101.<\/p>\n
Early Friday, Brent crude was up 2 cents at $99.37 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude was up 25 cents at $96.08 per barrel.<\/p>\n
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The global energy shock caused by the Iran war has threatened to worsen inflation in many countries and shaken world markets. But Wall Street has still hit record highs, helped by strong corporate earnings and some optimism that the war will end soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the S&P 500 still hugging record highs, markets are still at ease to give the negotiations more time,\u201d ING Bank analysts Michiel Tukker and Padhraic Garvey wrote in a research note.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Wall Street\u2019s benchmark S&P 500 dropped 0.4% to 7,108.40, halting a weekslong rally that lifted it to new all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also declined 0.4% to 49.310.32, while the technology stocks-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 0.9% to 24,438.50.<\/p>\n
Shares of Tesla sank 3.6%, dragging the market lower despite strong-than-expected quarterly results as investors focused on a big jump in capital expenditures as the company pivots towards artificial intelligence and robotics.<\/p>\n
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Paramount Skydance lost 4.5%, following approval by Warner Bros. Discovery’s shareholders of its merger with Paramount. Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery fell 1.6%.<\/p>\n
In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 159.76 Japanese yen from 159.71 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1682, down from $1.1683.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[145,31231,98861,23681,59373,84874,59371,84875,59372,88248,61262,82,84,83,98860],"class_list":{"0":"post-264071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-michiel-tukker","11":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","12":"tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","13":"tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","14":"tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","15":"tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","16":"tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","17":"tag-product-32003-ap-online-stock-market-reports","18":"tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","19":"tag-san-antonio","20":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","21":"tag-san-antonio-news","22":"tag-stock-markets-trump-iran-oil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}