{"id":555743,"date":"2026-03-31T07:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/555743\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T07:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:31:07","slug":"oil-steadies-and-asian-stocks-are-mostly-lower-on-mixed-signs-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/555743\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil steadies and Asian stocks are mostly lower on mixed signs on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONG KONG (AP) \u2014 Oil steadied and Asian stocks were mostly trading lower Tuesday as signs of a de-escalation of the Iran war<\/a> remained mixed.<\/p>\n

Tokyo\u2019s Nikkei 225 was down 1.2% to 51,245.50. Losses after the Iran war began on Feb. 28 have been wiping out the gains it made from the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s Kospi lost 3.4% to 5,097.11. Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng was down 0.5% to 24,624.55, while the Shanghai Composite index fell 0.4% to 3,908.28.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s S&P\/ASX 200 was up 0.7%, while Taiwan\u2019s Taiex was trading 2.2% lower.<\/p>\n

U.S. futures were up nearly 1% early Tuesday.<\/p>\n

With the Iran war in its fifth week, attacks in the Middle East continued and there was still no clear end to the war. Brent crude futures was less than 0.1% lower at $107.36 a barrel on Tuesday, while benchmark U.S. crude edged up 0.1% to $102.94 per barrel.<\/p>\n

Oil prices have surged in March with Brent crude prices rising more than 40% since the start of the Iran war.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a drone hit a Kuwaiti oil tanker<\/a> in Dubai waters and caused a fire. The U.S.\u2019s Gulf allies were privately making a case to the White House that Iran has not been weakened enough, officials said, and were urging U.S. President Donald Trump to keep fighting<\/a>. Meanwhile, Trump has said the U.S. is in negotiation with Iran\u2019s parliamentary speaker, though Iran denied<\/a> such talks were happening.<\/p>\n

Maritime traffic disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, where roughly a fifth of the world\u2019s oil normally passes through, remains the pain point for global energy supplies. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump has \u201coptions available\u201d<\/a> in response to Tehran\u2019s threats to control the strait, after Iran was said to have effectively created a \u201ctoll booth\u201d there.<\/p>\n

Wall Street stocks were mixed<\/a> on Monday. The S&P 500 dropped 0.4% to 6,343.72, the Nasdaq composite lost 0.7% to 20,794.64, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1% to 45,216.14.<\/p>\n

Shares of food distributor Sysco fell 15.3%, after it said it would be acquiring supplier Jetro Restaurant Depot in a $29 billion deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other dealings early Tuesday, gold and silver prices were up. Gold\u2019s price was 0.7% higher at $4,587.80 an ounce, and silver prices rose 2.4% to $72.25 per ounce.<\/p>\n

The U.S. dollar was at 159.61 Japanese yen, down from 159.71 Japanese yen. The euro was trading at $1.1472, up from $1.1465.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONG KONG (AP) \u2014 Oil steadied and Asian stocks were mostly trading lower Tuesday as signs of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,12,69620,7905,793,801,1570,228242,643,139727,246408,965],"class_list":{"0":"post-555743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-energy-markets","11":"tag-financial-markets","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-iran-government","15":"tag-iran-war","16":"tag-marco-rubio","17":"tag-oil-and-gas-industry","18":"tag-sysco-corp","19":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}