U.S. markets were poised to open lower Thursday as oil prices rose and treasury yields resumed their climb amid the ongoing stalemate between Iran and the U.S.
Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each fell 0.2% before the opening bell. Nasdaq futures retreated 0.4%.
Walmart shares slid 2% in premarket after the retail giant delivered another quarter of impressive sales but offered up a weaker outlook than analysts were hoping for.
Walmart has resonated with Americans who have grown increasingly cautious about where they spend their money with inflation taking a bigger bite out of paychecks, particularly since the start of the Iran war in late February.
Nvidia flipped between small gains and losses overnight after the artificial intelligence chipmaker latest quarterly results surpassed Wall Street’s expectations once again.
Massive demand for its high-end AI chips pushed revenue up 85% in the period while profits more than tripled, the company said after markets closed Wednesday.
Oil prices pushed higher early Thursday, a day after falling 5%. Brent crude, the international standard, gained $1.46 to $106.48 per barrel, while U.S. benchmark crude added $1.53 to $99.79 per barrel.
Brent remains well above its roughly $70 level from before the war with Iran. Prices have been yo-yoing on rising and falling hopes that the United States and Iran can reach an agreement to end their conflict and allow oil deliveries to fully resume from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.
Treasury yields also resumed their climb after easing a day earlier and giving markets a lift. The yield on the 10-year Treasury inched back up to 4.60% early Thursday after sliding to 4.57% a day earlier. They were as high as 4.67% earlier this week.
The 10-year Treasury yield had been rising from less than 4% before the war with Iran began, along with other government bond yields around the world, because of worries that the fighting will keep oil prices high, among other factors.
High yields slow economies and weigh on prices for stocks, cryptocurrencies and all kinds of other investments. Besides driving up rates for mortgages, they could also curtail companies’ borrowing to build the artificial-intelligence data centers that have been supporting the U.S. economy’s growth recently.
At midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX and the CAC 40 in Paris each lost 0.3%. Britain’s FTSE 100 shed 0.4%.
Asian markets were mixed with South Korea’s Kospi soaring 8.4% to 7,815.59, helped by strong buying of technology shares. Samsung Electronics gained 8.5% after its labor union and management reached an agreement late Wednesday that averted a potentially costly strike.
Shares in SK Hynix, a computer chipmaker partnering with Nvidia, surged 11.2%.
The Kospi has been breaching records, recently exceeding 8,000 for the first time.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 jumped 3.1% to 61,684.14 after the government reported that Japan’s exports rose nearly 15% in April from a year earlier, despite shocks from the Iran war.
Technology-related shares were among the biggest winners, with Tokyo Electron gaining 5.9% and Advantest up 4.4%.
Taiwan's Taiex, also heavily weighted toward technology shares, gained 3.9% as major chipmaker TSMC's stock gained 3%.
Chinese markets declined, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng losing 1.2% to 25,352.82. The Shanghai Composite index dropped 2% to 4,077.28.
Indonesia's share benchmark dropped 3.3% as the market absorbed the impact of a government decision to put strategic natural resource exports such as coal under state control.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 picked up 1.5% to 8,621.70.
